Amazon Kindle Fire 2 Review

Introduction:

Back for round two, the true successor to Amazon's flagship tablet is finally here in the form of the Kindle Fire (2), coming with upgraded processor, memory and battery but otherwise identical to the original model. Tempting consumers with its attractive and lower price point of $159, it's sure to raise a few suspect eyes in the process, but will it still be substantial enough to make it a worthwhile offering compared to its more impressive sibling in the Kindle Fire HD?



Design:

New model, same design as before. That pretty much sums up the Amazon Kindle Fire 2, as it's an exact facsimile to its predecessor in every aspect – both in its construction and choice of materials. Certainly, we can't expect much in the design front, especially for its price point and all, but hey, it's easier to grasp with one hand than the Kindle Fire HD.




Analyzing its body meticulously from head-to-toe, it's safe to say that it has one clean appearance – with only its two speakers, power button, 3.5mm headset jack, and microUSB port occupying its sides.



Worth pointing out, there's no expandable memory or microHDMI port with the Amazon Kindle Fire 2, which isn't too surprising at all.

Display:

Employing the same 7" IPS LCD display as the first generation, it's effective enough for most things – such as reading a book or surfing the web. Even though we're seeing higher resolutions on other 7-inch displays, the Kindle Fire 2's 1024 x 600 resolution still coughs up enough detail for us to comfortably view fine text. Even though we like its neutral color production, there's some distortion at various viewing angles. Additionally, outdoor usage is challenging, seeing that it has a tendency to appear washed out.

Interface:

On the surface of this Android-based tablet, the Kindle Fire 2 packs the same heavily skinned UI as before, lacking the core Google apps such as the Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube. Its homescreen is predominantly occupied by a 3D carousel of recently accessed apps. Obviously, if you've experienced the Kindle Fire already, you'll be familiar with this one, since it's unchanged. However, we're now greeted with various ads in the lock screen, which seems to center around Amazon's retail ecosystem. All in all, it lacks the depth of personalization and "with Google" comforts found with other Android tablets in the same category, but the basic no-frills approach earns itself a low learning curve that some people appreciate.



Processor:

Whereas the outside and most of the hardware are unchanged with the Kindle Fire 2, its processor has been upgraded to a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP4430 ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with 1GB of RAM. For an entry-level tablet, it exudes a mostly responsive performance with nearly all operations – though, its action isn’t as buttery smooth in execution as the Kindle Fire HD.

Internet:

We've seen better performances with other tablets, but nevertheless, the web browsing performance of the Amazon Kindle Fire 2 is agreeable. Relying in the same Webkit-based Silk browser, which offers server-side optimizations for faster page loads, it handles all navigational tasks without much fluff. However, there are still some rendering delays when scrolling very quickly, but it's not terrible at all.



Camera & Multimedia:

In keeping to a strict budget more than likely, the Kindle Fire 2 again lacks any sort of cameras. Indeed, some might be bummed about this, but as we've pointed out on numerous occasions, some don't take fancy in shooting photos or videos with a tablet.

Same UI, same exact music player from before. Despite its barebones approach, we're comforted to find the audio quality from its stereo speakers to be very pleasant.

Fortunately this time around, the preloaded "Personal Videos" app with the Kindle Fire 2 enables us to watch our movies – rather than downloading a third party one. For the most part, our test video that's encoded in MPEG-4 1920 x 1080 resolution is pleasing to watch.

Battery:

With our normal usage, which consists primarily of web surfing and emailing, we're able to soundly get through a solid day on a single charge – so yeah, it's rather average in this day and age.

Conclusion:

Amazon seems like they're playing with fire with this tablet, mainly because it's competing in the space as its more prestigious offering in the Kindle Fire HD. Consumers will no doubt take notice of the Kindle Fire 2's $159 price point for a new tablet, but considering that it's only $40 less than the superiorly equipped Kindle Fire HD, we don't see much value or reason to pay less to stick with the non-HD Kindle Fire. In all honesty, you're better off just spending the extra moolah to move up to either the Kindle Fire HD or Google Nexus 7 running unpersonalized Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 10.1.3_user_1326620

Amazon Kindle Fire 2 Video Review: