Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9” review

The Kindle Fire 8.9

The original Kindle ereader is a lens through which, primarily, to view books bought from Amazon. The Kindle Fire HD is, likewise, a device through which to view films and TV programmes bought on Amazon. It’s a screen that technically runs Google Android but in practise runs Amazon’s own version of software that is hardly recognisable from the original.

And while there is an app store, with Facebook and the iPlayer and many others, and there are options to check email and browse the web, in practise Amazon knows that its market is not primarily people who might otherwise have bought an iPad. The Kindle Fire HD is a device for users keen to buy a tablet at an attractive price to consume media primarily from the company’s own library of 22million films, books and more.

As such, the 7” version and the new 8.9” version fulfil specific functions, and they’re built to do that job alone. The criticism from iPad or Nexus 7 and 10 fans therefore, is that the Kindle Fire HD devices lack the processing power to challenge rivals. But that’s to rather miss the point. These are products built for specific purposes and sold at just the right price, just as, say, the Nook focuses on magazines.

The new 8.9” Kindle Fire HD model offers great Dolby sound and a screen that more than does justice to whatever’s being shown on it. Although it’s 1920x1200, offering ‘just’ 254 pixels per inch, it looks excellent. Similarly, its processor doesn’t struggle, and it features nice touches such as X-ray, which reveals during a film who is on screen, and there are also easy options to access Amazon’s cloud storage and to use it to read Kindle books too. Battery life claims 10 hours, which I’ve not been able to get to quite myself. But this is more than enough for most uses. Streaming from Lovefilm is a nice touch, but other tablets offer rival services such as Netflix.

None of this is a revolutionary feature for a tablet that when it launched in America was perhaps erroneously billed as Amazon’s iPad-killer. That’s to misread the bookseller’s mission. It wants to sell devices that make it easier to shop online at Amazon, to buy its books and films and music and to download the apps that it has approved. If you’ve yet to see the point of apps, or yet to think you can justify a tablet that’s nearly twice this price, then perhaps the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9” is the perfect device for you. Its books, films and TV are what most users want from a tablet anyway.

It comes with a web browser that works quickly thanks to invisible acceleration from the cloud, there’s a decent front-facing camera but the best bit is those 22million books, films and apps - Amazon calls it the world’s largest ecosystem. It sits between Apple’s very walled garden and Android’s Wild West openness. Seldom has a compromise been so compelling.