Mixed Kindle Fire reviews rolling out, consumers to decide

The Kindle Fire has been the center of attention for the past several weeks as there may be a true contender to the iPad dominance. Priced right at $200, the slightly underpowered scaled down Android tablet seemed to have a good strategy  to set it apart from other lack luster Android tablets. The Kindle Fire as I said will not have the “Fi-Yah” when it comes to specs. We thought the 1 GHz processor enough to run a what we hoped would be a cleaned up Amazon UI, but it was the 8GB of storage that had us worried. Granted, the whole Kindle Fire experience was built around the Amazon Cloud services which would also help offset some of the cost reduction for Amazon to sell the Fire at $200. Another strike against the Fire in my opinion is that it is a 7 inch tablet. For me, it is too small to make the tablet experience worth while after using a 10 inch tablet. But, the Kindle does not market itself to the horsepower junkies, it is for a more casual user that just wants to stay connected and wants their media services all wrapped up in a bundle, which in the Kindle Fire’s case, is $80 dollars a year for movie streaming as well as some reading material to boot.

With all the major media sources weighing in with their verdict, which so far is mixed at best, we remain skeptical of the device, and think it should have included more memory and a few other whistles and bells to compliment what we thought was a good idea wrapping it up with the Amazon services. Because what we are really talking about here is a device that is only $100.00 less expensive that a superior iPad (original) tablet which you can just as easily match services. With all that said, let’s leave it up to the consumers to decide.

• CNET: 3.5 out of 5.0
• Gizmodo: 4 .0 out of 5.0
• The Verge: 7.5 out of  10.0
• PC Magazine: 4.0 out of  5.0
• Engadget: It isn’t a perfect experience
• Mashable: Minor gripes, but is a winner.

So there’s a pretty good round up of all the “bigs” in the Media summing it all up. Let us know what you think, drop a comment and start our week off with some discussion.

[roundup source]