I'm not by any means new to technology, but I am new to tablets and had been flirting with an iPad Mini. Amazon had a special for one day, whereupon I bought the 8.9HDX (3rd Gen) and IMHO, this thing dances swirls around the iPad Mini. Resolution, colors, crispness of images and sound, oh what a difference on sound. A fair bit of research that day was telling me that Amazon's tablets are, dollar for dollar, superior in hardware and features--this made possible, I'm sure, mainly because if you get a Fire, you're more likely to buy their apps, books, etc. That's been true, and it's more than fair. That said, I was worried that I would not be able to access competitors' websites (or at least it would be made difficult) because somewhere I'd read something along that line and that has not been the case, at all. There ARE some PlayStore apps that you can't install, either direct from them OR via sideloading and I don't know the extent of that yet; I've only run into it on a game so far. (Jury's out on that, in other words.)
But regarding apps. When I checked on Amazon's apps prior to ordering, I didn't see much! However when I went to the same app store through my Fire, whammo! There was a whole lot more there. I've found a lot of apps in categories such as "Productivity" and I'm thinking maybe the Amazon App store is underrated.
Apps aside, this Fire is doing far more than I ever thought it would. Especially great is the microphone on the virtual keyboard that I can use "speech-to-text" so I can dictate emails, website URLs, search terms -- anywhere you'd enter text, you can hit the microphone instead. It has EXCELLENT voice recognition software, even picking up on terms unique to spinning and knitting, slang, purposely mispronounced words such as "gotta" and "whatcha gonna do?" if you pronounce them clearly. It picks up on punctuation including "full caps yes exclamation point" will give you "YES!" In google searching for "Voice Recognition Commands" to see what else is there, I keep reading that Android Voice Recog. software seems lacking. That might be a big plus for the Amazon products. If so, it's an important feature to me because it saves soooo much time.
Youtube videos on this thing are far better than they even are on my laptop, which is excellent. I have yet to run into a buffer wait, and you can click on the full screen square on the video and that's another place where the very high resolution on the Fire wins the day.
Rear camera takes outstanding photos and videos. I mean, really good. I exported them off the tablet and onto my laptop and they are crisp, clear, very accurate colors, really good. The sound is beyond expectation. I noticed that right away but I'm super aware of it in youtube tutorial videos I call in that are often created by women in other countries with heavy accents. I was made particularly aware of the sound last night when I installed Netflix app and brought in an episode of Parenthood that I've seen on TV - I could hear background conversation more clearly than I could on TV. The 4th Gen (2014) has even better sound (I compared the two in an electronics store side by side) but that's simply gravy on already outstanding potatoes and I didn't find myself envious of the difference, and I'm prone to that.
And a word about Skype. I'm crossing my fingers, arms, legs and eyes on this one, because the reviews on the Skype app are horrible. I didn't expect to be able to Skype on it. The first try, I did have delayed sound, but it cleared itself after a minute an it was in synch. The second Skype call was to someone else and we had outstanding picture/sound quality and perfect synch. So I may have gotten lucky, but my Skype is working really well from what I can tell so far.
There is a bit of a learning curve, but Mayday is fast and convenient. I cannot rave about the 3 Mayday experiences I've had, however, because they were not able to answer my questions without transferring me to someone more experienced; but they're good for basic stuff and quick answers and I may have gotten newbies to the job. There's a minimalist, but adequate, tutorial and "owner's manual" (in quotes) if you hit the ? icon (help). See those. And why they don't make it more clear, I don't know, but a finger swipe from the left brings up that program's operating menu. A finger swipe from the top brings down the Fire's operating menu. Always. That's the way it is on everything. Just figuring out those two constants made everything else quicker to learn.
All in all, I'd buy it again without a 2nd thought. Definitely get into perspective the extra $50 or $100 for more storage because whatever you buy, you're gonna live with it. Cloud does save the day on that, but I'd really rather not have to think about how much I'm loading onto my device.
Reviews with images
Not everything I expected...
Cons:1. Built on Android does not mean you can have Google Play Apps. This is an unfortunate inconvenience, as there are some Google Apps that are just better than their Amazon App counterparts, and a few that I can not find within the Amazon Apps. If you want a fully functional tablet, then buy a tablet and download the free kindle app. If you want to pay more for something that does less, then the kindle is for you. This was a gift, so I will keep it, and continue to use my phone for the rest of my Apps that are not available on the kindle.2. Camera is less than perfect. Limited settings available. Again, I will use my phone for pics, the same scene with my phone showed the flames, with a small amount of glare. (Husband is a firefighter, so I take a lot of pictures of their exercises for their training.) An old Casio Exilim C721 phone with 5MP camera still takes better pictures at night.3. Kindle unlimited... I can not find anything worthy of paying a subscription price every month for. The Authors I want to read are not included.4. Amazon Prime... See #3, They doubled the price, and to me I just don't see anything there worthy of the cost, including Amazon instant video, no shows that I watch are included. Another family member did the 30 day trial, and was quite disappointed when his content disappeared after the trial.5. Youtube videos work ok, sometimes choppy, could be my connection or the device (computer playback worked fine when I had the time to test simutaneously). Other online video from various sources would not play in Silk Browser, refer to #1 Chrome Browser not available to download.6. Office Suite... I can not figure out how to unlock documents. I can view them, but I can not edit them.Somewhere in the middle:1. Email is easy to read, but hard to organize. If using folders that automatically sort your incoming mail (Yahoo) those folders are unavailable.2. Battery Life, I am just not getting the advertised battery life out of my kindle. 4 hours of reading and the battery level drops to 15%. Two-Three hours of video and it is time to plug it in again. Not horrible, but not as expected either.3. The carousel drove my nuts, thanks for fixing it!4. Audio is acceptable, would be nice to have bass and treble adjustment. Good volume for your personal space, but too big to carry around with you if you are moving room to room doing chores.Pros:1. BIG beautiful screen, indoors and out2. Keyboard is easy to use, I considered a case with a bluetooth keyboard and discovered that it was not needed.3. Whispersync is awesome when the battery dies and I have to switch to my paperwhite or (again) my phone.Why I wanted the Kindle Fire... I am an EMT and the course for the next level is starting early next year, the book weighs a ton, and is 1550+ pages. There is a Kindle Edition of the book available, and I wanted the full features available of the ebook. The Kindle was a gift based on what I thought I wanted... Hindsight shows that I wanted and expected so much more.
