Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First of all, people who give a product a 1 or 2 star review because of one issue don't get the point of reviews. They should reflect the overall experience so people can get a fair idea of what they might be buying. Secondly many people are dinging this product because of a lack of flash. Get over it people! It's not Amazon's fault. Adobe doesn't support flash on ANY new Android device. The Good: The display is outstanding. I cannot see any pixelation in text and even the tiniest fonts are clear and sharp. The HD video is outstanding. The reading experience on books is far superior to the original Fire with a much more pleasing to the eye experience. The size is perfect. 10 inch tablets are too big and 7 inch (including the original Fire) are too small. I love this 8.9 inch device. I am not experiencing the slowness in browsing some are reporting. I have an excellent connection on wifi and maybe that is why. I would note however that I bought the original Kindle Fire and after a few updates to the firmware Amazon fixed many of the problems with browsing. The speed on this device is far superior to the original fire and it does have a better wifi signal sitting side by side in my home. The bluetooth is a huge plus over the original Kindle. I'm typing this with a bluetooth keyboard and I love it! I have a quality logitech keyboard. Don't cheap out on your keyboard. I haven't tried a mouse. I also have connected to external bluetooth speakers and it works great. Love that sound! Everyone and their Grandmother is complaining about the fact you can't install non-Amazon apps. OK, that is NOT true. You can and I side-loaded multiple apps that work beautifully on this device and some that looked awful. There are massive amounts of Android apps not available on the Amazon app store that work perfect if side-loaded. Side-loading does NOT invalidate your warranty. Just don't root it unless you know what you are doing. Side-loading means changing your default setting to allow unknown apps to install (See Amazon allows this!). Then get the apk file on your device and tap it. The Kindle will install it. You can do this in many ways, to me the easiest is to simply download them from dropbox or something like that. The Not So Good: If it wasn't for the hype the speakers on this device would be in the good. I was extremely disappointed with the sound quality after Amazon's "Booming Dolby" hype. As I've listened to it subsequently I like it better. For a tablet it is actually quite good, but frankly listening to music or a movie on this thing can't even begin to compare to what you get even with fairly cheap external speakers. The good thing is I can pipe it to speakers via bluetooth. Don't get me wrong, the speakers are tablet good but do not live up to the advertisement. I have never liked Amazon's user interface. I much prefer a native Android interface. On my original Kindle Fire I installed GO Launcher but I've read it doesn't work on this device. Apparently there are some that do and I assume more will as time passes. Come on Amazon you can do better than this and STILL push people towards your content. There is very little difference in the interface over the original fire. Yes there are some improvements but they are incremental and the UI remains much the same. The build quality seems to be good overall but the power and volume buttons are very hard to feel and figure out which is up or down. That's a mistake. You get used to it but that is going to bother a lot of people. There is no charging light and that irked me because I like to walk by and see the green light on my original Fire and know it is charged. With this one you have to hit the power button and unlock the screen. A light would have cost more but it probably would be worth it. The app market on Amazon is limited even compared to the original Fire. I assume that is because the apps aren't ready and that is not Amazon's fault. For example I side-loaded an app I have on my original Fire that I got from the store that is not available on this one. It looked horrible. We have to wait for the developers to update apps. This is to be expected and I don't blame Amazon, but you need to be aware of this. Summary: This is a darn good device. The reason it is inexpensive compared to similar devices is because Amazon sells at cost and they left a few features out. You get what you pay for but with this device you are getting more than you pay for because Amazon hopes to make money off of your content purchases, but you don't have to buy a thing. People need to quit complaining about stupid stuff like chargers. OMG, I have numerous charges that work with this device. Pay 10 bucks if you want a fast one. It would be an even better buy if it had a rear-facing camera. Well gee it would cost more too so I'm glad it doesn't. Yes I would use it some but I can click a photo with my cell phone too. For the money this is great hardware and a good experience. If you want a pure Android experience DO NOT BUY THIS DEVICE AND THEN COMPLAIN. Do a little research first.