Amazon Kindle Fire review roundup

Amazon has built a huge following with its Kindle reader and has created a very tough act to follow, even for itself, so it comes as no surprise that many were expecting huge things from the the company's next major product sporting the Kindle branding - the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.

The anticipation surrounding the Fire has been extremely great and the number of reviews since the recent release can only be described as review madness. Amazon has really stepped up their game though, for starters we’re looking at a dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor, a beautiful 7-inch display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

That being said, before starting the round up, one great thing about rounding up a number of reviews in one place is finding out what numerous sources agree upon about a particular piece of hardware and what they think overall.

Alright, here we go with the roundup:

• CNET: "It’s affordable, has most of the apps you’d want, and it’s easy to use, but the tablet lacks GPS, removable storage, and even cameras or mics."

• New York Times: "The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.”

• Engadget: “The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $200. It’s a perfectly usable tablet that feels good in the hand and has a respectably good looking display up front. Yes, power users will find themselves a little frustrated with what they can and can’t do on the thing without access to the Android Market but, in these carefree days of cloud-based apps ruling the world, increasingly all you need is a good browser. That the Fire has. This thing feels incredibly solid, as if Amazon simply put a chisel to a big piece of slate, gave it a good whack and then put the resulting slab into a Frustration-Free box."

• Gizmodo: "If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It's not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it's also a sliver of the price—and that $200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon's digital abundance. It's a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date."

• PC Mag: "The Kindle Fire is one of a kind, at least this week. It's the first affordable, easy-to-use general-purpose tablet. It doesn't replace the Apple iPad: It complements the iPad, which is bigger, more powerful, more expensive, and has far more apps. While there are other good small tablets out there, most notably the Acer Iconia Tab A100, they're also more expensive and just more fiddly. While geeks have more options with a "generic" Honeycomb tablet, non-geeks get less guidance as to what to do with them."

• The Verge: "There's no question that the Fire is a really terrific tablet for its price. The amount of content you have access to — and the ease of getting to that content — is notable to say the least. The device is decently designed, and the software — while lacking some polish — is still excellent compared to pretty much anything in this range (and that includes the Nook Color). It's a well thought out tablet that can only get better as the company refines the software. It's not perfect, but it's a great start, and at $200, that may be all Amazon needs this holiday shopping season."

As I'm sure you guessed, reviewer’s opinions varied across the web, but they all seemed to agree that the Amazon Kindle Fire is a great tablet for the price, but its performance is nowhere near that of other Android tablets or the iPad even. A cheap, fantastic tablet one might say.

The Kindle Fire sports a 7-inch display, 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of on-board storage. It also features an improved Silk Browser, that makes browsing much faster by processing results in the cloud. Very similar to Opera Mobile.

And of course, there’s also access to music, videos, books and thousands of apps from the Amazon App Store. Access to the Amazon app store really makes this a much more desirable product. This, among the other features, makes the Amazon Kindle Fire a fantastic, usable tablet.

Definitely an amazing deal for the cash I'd say. Will you be buying a Kindle Fire?

Image Credit: The Inquisitr