Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Review: the Most Worthy Buying Kindle Fire

With the coming of shopping season, Amazon has shipped Kindle Fire HD 8.9 on November 15, a few days earlier than announced. It is undoubtedly the best Kindle Fire at present for its high-performance but low price. With the larger screen, higher resolution, the faster processor and the new user interface, Kindle Fire HD 8.9 delivers a much better tablet experience than its 7 inch predecessor. Let’s just discuss it in detail below.

Appearance

The Kindle Fire 8.9’s unique size lands in between the 7.9 inch iPad Mini and the 9.7 inch iPad, which makes it neither small nor big. From the statistics about Kindle Fire HD 8.9, we can find it is in fact thinner than iPad and matches the Nexus 10’s profile length.
The tablet is dark gray and looks common. The only highlighted and impressed trait is a tablet-wide black strip on the back. A 720p Web chat camera lies in the middle of the top with a nearly invisible ambient light sensor sitting to its left. From top to bottem, you can also find Micro-USB port, Micro-HDMI port, a headphone jack, volume rocker, a power/sleep button and a microphone pinhole. Different from Nexus 7, the back of Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is very smooth with Dual inch-long speaker on it.

Key Specs

• Display and Processor.Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Offers 1,920 x 1,200(254 ppi) HD display and up to 1.5 GHz dual-core OMAP4470 processor with Imagination PowerVR 3D graphics core for fast and fluid performance.
• Storage.Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes in 16GB(starts at $299) and 32GB in Wi-Fi version while the 4G LTE-enabled version comes with 32GB(starts at $499) or 64GB of storage.
• Battery life. 10 hours continuous use. But from CNET, actually, if you set the Kindle Fire HD 8.9's brightness as about 75 percent and constantly use it, then you may need charge about once every five hours.
• Connectivity. Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth and 4G LTE.
• Speakers. Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has dual stereo speakers which can delivers clear, loud (if you need it to be) sound when clear, loud (if you need it to be) sound. Unluckily, it lacks bass.For those who cannot stand the loud sound, the headphones is a very good option.
• Camera.The front-facing camera on the Fire HD 8/9 can record video up to 720p in resolution.

Interface

Amazon has completely redesigned the interface in 2012, first debut on Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire (2012).And the new interface on Kindle Fire HD becomes more mature. Images and texts are sharper thanks to the 1,920 x 1,200 display. And it developed the scrolls interface with the stay of carousel.

You can still find the content options tab including Newsstand, Books, Music, Videos, Docs, Apps, and Web. The new Shop, Games, Audiobooks, Photos, and Offers. Searches tabs have joined the tab family. Offers. Searches allows you to search in Amazon's stores in addition to the Web and your own library. The new Interface has also added social network integration, more customization, and tighter security.

Software

• Apps

When you use Kindle Fire HD, you access to the Google Play market with Amazon App store which stocks a fair number of top free apps on Google Play, including Facebook, Flipboard, Netflix, Pinterest, Pulse, Twitter,Words with Friends,etc. In addition, Amazon supplies more than 120,000 movies and TV episodes and about 22 million songs,and lists about 400 magazines in its database, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic and ESPN.

• FreeTime

Amazon’s FreeTime is an app that allows Fire owners to create a profile for each of their children and choose what books, apps, games and videos they want to give their kids access to.With FreeTime, parents can limit their kids' screen time or restrict certain categories - like games and video - while leaving unlimited time for reading. It is really useful tools in this times.

• X-ray

Amazon offers innovative features to people including X-ray and Whispersync. You can enjoy X-ray for movies(supports IMDB), X-ray for Books(supports Wikipedia and Shelfari), X-Ray for Textbooks on both Kindle Fire HD and on Kindle Fire HD 8.9.

• Whispersync

Whispersync can automatically sync not only your content, but where you were in a particular book or movie, across devices. Even better, if you've downloaded a book that has an Audible audiobook, you can switch between reading and listening seamlessly.The services you can enjoy include Whispersync for Voice, Whispersync for Movies, Whispersync for Books, Whispersync for Games.

• Amazon Prime

If you have bought a Kindle Fire HD or the 8.9 inch one, you can receive a free month of Amazon Prime, which costs $79 per year. Amazon Prime lets you borrow any title from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library for a month (which has more than 180,000 titles), and stream more than 25,000 movies and TV shows.

Verdict

The big disadvantage about Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is its lower pricing, superior streaming capability, and higher-resolution screen. Also, it has powerful ecosystem and supplies a series of unique service. It is indeed a top-end Kindle Fire and if you just want a Kindle Fire, this one is absolutely the best one. 


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Nexus 10 vs iPad 4 vs Surface RT vs Kindle Fire HD 8.9