Review: Amazon Kindle Fire HD

When the Kindle Fire first arrived last September, it was in a class all its own. There were plenty of other 7-inch tablets running Android, but none of them were as successful. Sure, Amazon's tablet did most of the same things as competing offerings. Some of those things it did ably, some it did sloppily – but it did them all for $200, less than half the price of the cheapest iPad.

It turns out "cheap" was quite the trump card, and despite its many quirks, the Fire was a huge smash. But things are different now, and other manufacturers have come out with devices that hit (or come close to) that magic price point. Most notably, there's Google's own Nexus 7, a consumer favorite that's set new expectations for how a $200 tablet should look and perform.

Competitive pressure is usually a good thing, and after using the newly updated 7-inch version of the Kindle Fire HD for close to a week, I can say that the changes Amazon has made in order to stay at the head of the budget tablet pack have produced a machine that's just plain better all around.

The Fire's user interface has been improved, and is now smoother and more polished. The hardware is more elegant, too, with a better screen, a smarter set of controls, and a redesigned shell that no longer looks like a BlackBerry PlayBook. Enhancements to the Kindle Fire's core functions – reading books and watching movies purchased from Amazon's vast content store – have make consuming media on the tablet more enjoyable than before.

The depth of the hardware improvements can't be overemphasized. The very first thing I noticed when I picked up the Fire HD was how the new rounded edges nestled into my hands more naturally than the chunky, square edges of the original Fire. While the screen is still 7 inches, the face of Fire HD is larger than that of its predecessor: it's 2 millimeters taller and 17 millimeters wider. But what the Fire HD has gained in 2-D real estate, it's lost in height and weight, measuring 1 millimeter slimmer and 18 grams lighter. That might not sound like a lot, but the device is noticeably lighter.

The original Fire oddly lacked external volume controls, so you had to tap through the menus just to raise or lower the sound. This super-annoying quirk has been corrected, and volume buttons now sit flush along the tablet's tapered edge, next to the sleep button. The old protruding sleep button is gone, too. It's now recessed, so it's much harder to accidentally press it by placing the tablet on a table or in a cradle while holding it in portrait mode. Goodbye, inadvertent sleeping.

The new display is much nicer, a 1,280 x 800 IPS panel with a pixel density of 216 ppi. When viewed next to the Nexus 7, the Kindle Fire HD's display is clearly crisper and has better contrast, though neither can compete with the latest iPad's Retina display. The Fire HD's display is also notable for its glare protection. It won't eliminate glare entirely, but it does have less glare than the iPad and Nexus 7, making it easier to use in less-than-optimal lighting situations.

Like the previous Kindle Fire, the HD model runs a version of Android that's been dressed up and customized by Amazon – though the Fire now runs Android 4.0 instead of stale old 2.3, and performs much better because of it.

Amazon has removed the "bookshelf" from the Kindle's interface, replacing it with a "favorites" drawer. You can access this personalized list of favorite items from within any app by tapping the star that resides near the home button. You can place whatever apps, albums, movies, websites (anything that appears in the main carousel) you want into the favorites drawer for quick access.

It's a welcome addition, but the Favorites drawer can't replace the power of a quick app switcher. If an item doesn't reside in the Favorites drawer, you need to return to the Home screen and scroll through all your installed items to access it. This is a pain for power users who have become accustomed to quickly switching between apps on other devices.

If you do have to navigate back and forth between apps, the process is much smoother than before. Flicks of the carousel and swipes of the menus are responsive and smooth as butter. All the herky-jerkiness of the original Fire's UI has been exterminated. The only times when I encountered stutters or system hangs was when I was launching the Silk browser by tapping on a link in some app or document. The tablet always seems to hesitate a moment before launching the browser.

The browser itself is better than before, but it's still the place where the Kindle's weakness is most exposed. Some sites lacks the smooth scrolling evident in the rest of the operating system. Amazon did add some fancy custom features, like the ability to strip ads, photos and other miscellaneous items out of articles – similar to the Reader feature Apple built into Mobile Safari to make reading web articles easier. Alas, the Kindle has no read-it-later feature; you'll need to pick an app for that. In all, the browser lacks the polish and smoothness I've grown used to on other devices, and it feels about 90 percent finished.

Likewise, the e-mail client, contacts manager and calendar are serviceable, but they all feel kind of not-quite-there. The e-mail app is as quick and snappy as the rest of the system, and it supports Exchange, so it takes only a few moments to set up a new account. However, the client doesn't support downloading inline images in e-mails to the device. Attached images will download just fine, and you can open them separately, but you can't download images that are inline.

And the e-mail client isn't the only thing that has a problem with images – the tablet has a front-facing camera, but it ships without a default camera app. As of press time, the only way to access the front-facing camera is to use Skype for Kindle Fire HD. By using Skype, I can confirm that the camera works, but I can't actually determine how well it captures pictures or video. I'm sure Instagram will appear in the Amazon App Store with support for this camera at some point, and we'll all be able to apply funky filters to our selfies.

Upon its unveiling, the Kindle Fire HD displayed "Special Offers" (ads) on the home screen, and there wasn't any way to get rid of them. After a wave of public outrage, Amazon reversed its stance and announced that for $15, users could opt out of the ads. Before that announcement, I actually used two of the on-screen special offers to save $10 on a couple of video and music downloads. It's smart of Amazon to give customers the option to opt out of seeing the ads, but I'll stick with them. Hey, I like deals on music, what can I say? Your cheapness my vary.

Of course, the ads are there to promote all the best stuff within Amazon's content ecosystem, the consumption of which is why the Kindle Fire HD exists in the first place. It also helps that this same ecosystem enables the Fire's best features.

LAST YEAR'S MODEL

Amazon's original Kindle Fire, released in November 2011, just saw a price drop with the introduction of the newer HD model. You can get the previous Kindle Fire – which isn't great, but isn't terrible, either – for only $160. Read our review.

X-Ray – the feature that brings up an index-like listing of information for whatever you're reading or watching – is outstanding, and especially helpful for novels with a plethora of characters. The new integration of IMDB data into the X-Ray for Video feature is also excellent. At any point, you can pause your movie and look at all the associated data about the actors, director, or whatever. It's interactive and fun, and totally in tune with how the ultra-connected among us already watch movies.

The new features Amazon has added to the e-book reading experience are also top-notch. Initially, I thought the Immersion Reading feature – a sort of "read along with me" trick that highlights text while the audio version of a book is read aloud – was just a cute gimmick I would tire of quickly. But after reading along to the text of "Bossypants" as Tina Fey spoke the same words to me through the speakers, I'm a believer. It's mesmerizing.

Better yet, the Audio Whispersync feature is flawless. I listened to a book for a while, stopped the audio, then opened the text version. The sentence where the audio left off appeared at the top of the page every single time.

Speaking of sound, the audio pumped out by the Kindle Fire HD sounded better than other tablets. The Dolby-tuned stereo speakers actually produce a clear stereo image, instead of the flat, tinny reproduction you get on other tablets with one speaker. Bass is negligible, and in a loud room, you're always going to be better off with headphones or an external speaker. (It has Bluetooth, so hello Jambox.) But in a pinch, it's a decent setup for listening to tunes or audiobooks.

Where do you store all those books and videos? Amazon's cloud, of course, though the Fire HD ships with 16GB of storage, which is more than you get on most tablets in this price range. (The Nexus 7 starts at 8GB for the same price.) You can double that storage for an extra $50.

Clearly satisfied with the success of last year's initial launch, it seems Amazon is now intent on building up the Kindle Fire HD to make it the most compelling and feature-rich tablet you can buy for $200. Purists will still prefer something like the Nexus 7, which has a better browser, extra goodies like GPS, and offers a more well-rounded experience. But if you're aligned with Amazon's vision, and especially if you've fully immersed yourself in the company's ecosystem – signing up for Prime, watching tons of streaming videos, reading stacks of books – you won't do better than this.

It's possible the 8.9-inch version of the Kindle Fire HD, which has a sharper screen and sells for $100 more, will be the smarter purchase. But we won't know for sure until it's released in November – and by then, we'll have new options from Microsoft, and possibly Apple, to consider as well. However, even as other compelling tablets swoop into the spotlight over the next few months, the Kindle Fire HD will still be a great piece of hardware at a great price.

WIRED New physical design and updated user interface make for a more refined overall experience. Audio Whispersync and X-Ray for Books and Video make watching, listening and reading that much more enjoyable. Beautiful screen. Good speakers. HDMI out for mirroring on a TV. Battery lasts about 10 hours.

TIRED Silk browser still needs work. No quick app switching. No default camera app. E-mail, calendar and contacts feel like afterthoughts – the emphasis here is clearly on consuming content, playing games and reading books, not advanced productivity.