While watching TV last night, I caught what may be Amazon’s second Kindle Fire commercial. As I’m fairly well acquainted with the 7″ Playbook tablet, what struck me was the amount of reflection and glare from the LCD. Which is perhaps somewhat ironic given Amazon’s earlier e-Ink Kindle spot that took a shot at the iPad by pointing out its “Easy to read even in bright sunlight.” Of course, glare is not unique to Amazon LCDs… although there seems to be much less shown in Apple’s promotional videos (versus Real Life™) and Barnes & Noble attempts to reduce its impact on the Nook Color/Tablet utilizing some sort of coating for “minimal reflection & glare.” Ah well, if Verizon can retreat from their Land of Misfit toys commercial after releasing the iPhone, we’ll cut Amazon some slack for eradicating this prior YouTube entry.
By the by, I’m not sure how well B&N’s antiglare coating works… since they also offer a film kit and I once saw a very irate customer at B&N wanting to return her Nook Color because she couldn’t use it outdoors. Oh, and I forgot about another Kindle sunlight commercial/screencap. Of course, Amazon isn’t retreating from e-Ink as they’ve released two new models – it is stellar outdoors and in regards to battery life. Just wish we could get a little more contrast out of it.
Yup, I could shave by using the Kindle Fire as a mirror. OK, maybe it’s not THAT bad, but it’s worse than the Nook Tablet, which minimizes but still has some reflectivity.
I’ll just put an anti-glare screen protector on it, like very other gadget I own. Not the end of the world.
So Dave, why are you so down on the Kindle Fire? Second post in the week dissing it.
Have you used it? I have and I think highly of the device.
“So Dave, why are you so down on the Kindle Fire? Second post in the week dissing it.”
He’s an iOS fanboi.
Richard, not enough to pass judgement other than to say I still have no imminent plans to purchase one. And, in fact, I was one of the few who seemed to quite like the Blackberry Playbook… of similar hardware descent. This post isn’t meant to bash Amazon or even comment on the Fire’s performance. Rather, it was interesting to see the commercial during prime time (though probably on HGTV or Food Channel) and I found the amount of reflection/glare in the ad a bit startling – which is more reflective of their production techniques than the Fire’s screen versus other LCDs. (Related, I also saw a Nook Tablet television commercial – both these guys are going into the holidays with guns ablazin’.)
Chucky, ha. I’m less fanboi and more anti-tablet at this point. They appeal to the gadget connoisseur in me, but between my laptop and my phones I’m feeling pretty well covered. Although my primary phone could use a larger screen…
“Chucky, ha. I’m less fanboi and more anti-tablet at this point.”
I’ve never gotten tablets. Cool toy. I genuinely appreciate ’em. Nice to have under the Festivus Tree. But seriously?
If you’re a road warrior, wouldn’t you rather pack an ultra-light laptop? If you’re at home, aren’t there better solutions?
Touch is overrated. It demos like butter, but the ergonomics aren’t optimal after the hedonic boost wears off.
But what do I know? I still IBM Selectrics are the holy grail…
Glare and outdoors performance (or lack there of) are two of my biggest complaints about our iPad. If the Fire has worst glare performance, then it’s a no go for me.
Of course, I’ve hated glossy screens since they started showing up on laptops (and now seem to be the standard). Give me a matte screen!
As for the tablet form factor, I find it useful for some limited use cases, but I always return back to my laptops when I want to actually do something productive.
I was interested in the Fire (and still am) as a simple computing device for my kids (11 and 8), mainly because of the price point. The show stopper for me is the lack of parental controls or even the ability to password protect purchases. It’s wide open right now. No way I can give them to my kids until that’s addressed.
John
Tablets are for sit-back media consumption, and there’s really no comparison with a phone for that. What makes them useful is the “good enough” factor for doing a lot of things, whereas laptops and phones are great at their thing, but lousy for consumption of video/news/etc.
I have laptop(s) and an iPhone as of this month, but they don’t replace my iPad anymore than it replaces them.
I think, though, if I was an outdoor reader, I’d be conflicted, since the iPad is certainly useless there. I guess the Kindle’s getting cheap enough that it’s worthy of consideration in that niche even in addition to the rest, but I don’t have that need.
I will say that the iPad screen really does start to look fuzzy once you have an iPhone, so I’m looking forward to the next generation there.
Scott, we’ve had a few tablets make their way through our house and my wife has an iPad 1. They’ve never ended up on the couch. Whereas our phones are always with us and always charged. I do prefer the 7″ tablet form over the 10″ and imagine watching HBO GO or Hulu on it at the gym would be more enjoyable that dealing with my 3.5″ phone. And I did watch all of Game of Thrones on the iPad in bed while my wife watching something else on the TV. But I’d be mostly satisfied with a larger screened phone… thinking 4″ – 4.3″ might be the sweet spot. I still have a loaner EPIC 4G here and appreciate the extra height of the screen – but the keyboard is probably unnecessary and negatively impacts phone thickness and for comfort. My work Blackberry isn’t even worth mentioning. All it’s good for is being tasked with work off hours. ;)
“And I did watch all of Game of Thrones on the iPad in bed while my wife watching something else on the TV.”
Watch Game of Thrones on the big screen.
The HBO original programming dramas have insane production values. They are meant to be watched on the biggest screen you’ve got.
(It’s not the best series they’ve done, but it does essentially work.)
Watch Hulu on your phone and tablet. Save HBO for the big screen.
“Also I seem to prefer the low end Kindle over the Kindle Touch. The extra weight and sluggish response isn’t worth it.”
Correctamundo.
The low-end current-gen Kindle is the most attractive hardware Amazon has produced to date.
Depends what you want to do with it. The Kindles are cheap, and great at reading books. I don’t do anything else with them, but they’re cheap enough, and easy enough to keep charged, that they’re worth having just for that. You wouldn’t take your iPad poolside, but you’d take a Kindle. Yes you could drop it and break it or get water on it, but hey its $100 (or less), all your content is in the cloud so it’ll be easy to get a replacement, etc. And of course its highly readable in sunlight.
The Kindle Fire looks like a fine video player, though since doesn’t have much flash it won’t work so well when traveling (airplanes or backseat of car on long trips) unless you load it up each time with EXACTLY what you need and your destination has GREAT WiFi (I don’t trust hotels to complete movie downloads from past experience).
Game player etc for your kids? Like others have pointed out, not a viable choice without some additional options for locking it down or requiring a password when purchasing. It’ll come but not yet.
It also looks like a fine web browser for couch or bedroom browsing.
Sounds like Comics work great, but magazines not so much until more of them are converted. The PDF scanned versions of most magazines available right now require too much “pan and scan” for comfortable reading right now, though that will improve I expect. An iPad would be better just because the screen is bigger, though a Retina iPad would be even better of course. Or a Kindle DX, but we all know how popular those are…