In doing a little reading tonight, I came across Walt Mossberg’s review of the Kindle Fire… Here are a few highlights…

The Wow…

the Fire has some big things going for it. First, the $199 price… Second, the Amazon and Kindle brands… Third, Amazon is the only major tablet maker other than Apple with a large, famous, easy-to-use content ecosystem…

The Ouch…

…The Fire’s hardware is plain and clunky. It’s a thick black box with zero style…
…After years of suggesting the gray-scale, E-Ink screen on the Kindle was better for reading than a color LCD screen…
…When I asked an Amazon executive about the reading issue and the company’s past position, he suggested people who prefer E-Ink buy one of each…
…A big selling point for the Fire is a supposedly speedy Web browser called Silk… …However, in my tests, the Fire’s Silk browser was noticeably slower than the iPad 2′s browser…

The Oof…

To be clear, the Kindle Fire is much less capable and versatile than the entry-level $499 iPad 2. It has a fraction of the apps, a smaller screen, much weaker battery life, a slower Web browser, half the internal storage and no cameras or microphone. It also has a rigid and somewhat frustrating user interface far less fluid than Apple’s.

If you have a few and are interested in the Kindle Fire, Walt does a thorough job of staying away from corporate bias, but simply reports his reactions, obviously positive and negative, and insights in comparing the Fire to the iPad and Nook 2.

The Fire does appear to have some positives, but not many to me personally. Also, I will say this… I would not have been able to use it to take notes (including full sync’d note/audio recordings of 4 full – 1hr and 15 min breakout sessions – via Notability) all day today at a conference like I did with my iPad. I still have 50% of my iPad’s battery left as well… Based off Walt’s battery estimates, I would only have made it a bit past lunch…

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