Aesthetically, its a slick little contraption. Elegantly black, it has a rubberized back surface which is comfy to grip and keeps it from slipping off surfaces. Since it's a touch pad device, there is only one physical button, the power button. While that keeps the clutter down, a physical volume control would be nice. The LCD screen seems durable enough, and I hear tell its made of something called Gorilla Glass which is supposedly uber-resistant to scratches and such. I like the size, though some may prefer something larger along the lines of an iPad. It's 7.5x4.7, which is the perfect size to fit in my back or cargo pocket of my pants/shorts. The display itself is seven inches diagonal.
I've already had a couple people ask me if its better than an iPad, but that's kinda like comparing apples and oranges. Or maybe tangerines and oranges. The Kindle Fire is somewhere between an e-reader and a full featured tablet. The iPad is capable I'm sure of doing more than the Kindle Fire, but I'm not so sure about $250 to $400 more. The iPad commercials like to show Appleostles recording albums, painting masterpieces, editing movies, and performing other such wonders on the latest model, but let's be honest here for a second. What is it that we actually do on our tablets? Watch Netflix, listen to music, surf the web, read books, and play games. Am I right? Be honest. The Kindle Fire does all that, and very well.
Pair it with Amazon Prime ($70 a year) and it's tough to beat in those fields in my opinion. With Prime you get a Netflixish video library for free, free access to the Kindle Lending Library, 5GB of free storage in the Cloud, plus free two day shipping on almost anything from Amazon.com. I thought Prime was worth it before just for the free shipping.
You can view most of your documents (PDF, Word, Excel, what have you), but at this point anyway, I don't know that you could do much actual creating. Even if I had an iPad, I don't know that I'd use it to type substantive documents, as virtual keyboards can be exceedingly frustrating. I hate editing video even on my laptop. Give me a desktop for those jobs.
There are some minuses. The aforementioned volume control buttons would be nice. You can't customize your homescreen much, which is a little odd. At about 7GB it has less storage than an iPad or a Barnes & Noble Nook, though with the Nook that is somewhat deceiving. The newest Nooks have 16GB of storage, but only 1GB of that is available for user created content. The other 15GB have to be used for content purchased from B&N. Lame. An SD card slot on the Fire would be a plus as well. The app selection is not nearly as wide as the iPad, but since it's brand new I'd wager it won't be long before a lot more will be available. But it does have Angry Birds!
If you plan on using your tablet-esque device for creating content, you have the extra $400 to throw around, and are looking to join the Cult of Steve, then an iPad or similar is probably more in your wheelhouse. Godspeed to you on your quest. But, if you plan on mainly consuming content and like having extra money in your bank account, I say Fire away! See what I did there...with the Fire......?
