Why I bought the Amazon Kindle Fire HD

My last Best Buy experience didn’t go as well as I thought it should. I was looking for a 7″ tablet for one of my daughters and ready to buy. Heck, I’d even spring for a 10″ if the price and specs were right. I mean, I wasn’t going to buy her a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 or anything, but I was open minded.

After asking the sales rep a couple of questions about the Insignia Flex (which they were out of) and the Galaxy Tab 2 7″ (which they were out of) I did a right face and was confronted with the Best Buy island of Amazon Kindles. My experience suddenly got a whole lot better. I gotta’ tell you…the display pulled me in.

The center-piece, of course, is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. It’s a thing of beauty and the more I played with it and in it, the more I looked at that vibrant screen, pushed the well-hidden buttons and realized the user-friendly experience my daughter would have with it I bought the damn thing.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD Specs:

Display: 7 inches, 1280×800 display resolution, Touch screen, anti-glare

Disclaimer: This is not my daughter’s hand.

OS: Amazon Android

Processor: Texas Instruments, 1.2 GHz clock speed, dual-core.

Memory: 16GB basic, 32GB available.

Pre-Loaded Software: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Gmail, Calendar and Mail

USB/Tether Capabilities: USB 2.0, HDMI port and Headphones jack.

Battery: Run time calculated at 11 hours. (Source: CNET Review) I haven’t tested this yet.

Main Features: Micro HDMI and Front facing camera.

Size and Weight: 5.4 in. width, 0.4 in. deep, 7.6 in. height and the Kindle HD weighs just under 14 oz.

Limited 1-year Warranty. (Of course, you can purchase longer and more protection.)

My Amazon Kindle Fire HD Goods and Bads

The Goods:

The 7 in. HD display may just be the best in the world! It’s just vibrant! The Fire HD is sleeker than the regular fire. The battery life will rock your socks…even international flights don’t stand a chance against it. The price at 199.00 through Amazon is the best going for the quality of this tablet. Plus, you get wi-fi capability and all of the good Amazon products and media offerings to choose from.

The Bads:

I bought this for my daughter because I loved it. The limited app selection may be an issue with her. The Amazon app store, while large, is not the vast pool of choices that the Android Market has. There are bound to be apps that her friends have that she just can’t get.

The Amazon store is slow loading and the available games (yes, I checked those out) are just “eh”. Not to mention the Amazon Android locked down UI.

Final Analysis:

It’s Amazon and this awesome Android tablet is an e-Reader at its basic existence. But for my 22 year old daughter I thought the Kindle Fire HD was a perfect fit. It’s sleek and modern looking. She has the tablet with the best display of anyone out there. It’s light and it’s not so much of an investment that I would want to disown her if she ever lost it.