Tablet World.pdf

“Cloud Drive
offers 5GB of
online storage
for your
documents,
while Cloud
Player stores
up to 250
audio fi les”
READ
PC ADVISOR
ON THE
KINDLE FIRE HD
Tapping each menu item at the top of the screen displays the content
stored on your device for that section. A toggle button at the top lets
you switch to what's available in the cloud.
Confusingly there are two separate cloud services: Cloud Drive and
Cloud Player. The former provides 5GB of storage for your documents,
photos and videos; the latter is just for music and lets you access all
the tracks you've bought through the AmazonMP3 store, plus 250
of your own tracks. This is increased to 250,000 with a £22 annual
subscription. Similarly, you can upgrade your 5GB of fi le storage to
20GB for £6 per year, up to 500GB for £160 per year. The device
itself has 16GB of storage (or 32GB for £199).
It's possible to drag-and-drop fi les to the Fire HD as you would
a USB fl ash drive, but we saw mixed results. Some photos were
displayed with the wrong aspect ratio, and some MP3s were ignored.
Books and fi lms
One of the main reasons to buy a Kindle is to read e-books, and
the Fire HD’s interface is almost identical to a traditional E Ink
Kindle. Of course, the experience is completely different. The
Fire HD’s LCD isn’t nearly as easy to read in bright light, and it's
refl ective. You get the option for a sepia look if black text on a white
background is too dazzling, and there's a white-on-black mode, too.
The Kindle Fire HD uses IPS panel technology, which offers very
good viewing angles. The screen resolution is also suffi cient that
characters are sharp and easy to read.
Whispersync means you can carry on reading any title from where
you left off, even if you pick up on a different device.
Amazon owns Lovefi lm, which means you
can access Lovefi lm's library of on-demand
movies. The selection isn't all that impressive,
but more disappointing is the lack of offl ine
viewing. At least movie soundtracks sound
better than on most tablets, thanks to a pair
of rear speakers with dual drivers and Dolby
virtual surround technology.
Apps and browser
Amazon's Appstore has a lot of popular apps,
but it's not as packed as Google's Play store.
You'll fi nd top titles such as Angry Birds, Bad Piggies, Netfl ix, Facebook, Twitter,
iPlayer and more, but no Google apps.
The browser is based on Amazon's Silk technology and looks much like the
standard Android browser. The default search engine is Microsoft's Bing, but if
you delve into the Fire HD's settings you can change this to Google. The browser
doesn't support Flash, so catch-up TV and YouTube videos are out of the question.
Hardware and performance
At just under 400g, the Fire HD is pretty heavy, and that's without one of
Amazon's cases. It's very well put together, though, and feels like a solid slate, with
no creaking or bending. You’ll fi nd a micro HDMI output, volume rocker, power
button and headphone socket on its sides. A front-facing HD camera is primarily
intended for Skype; there's no rear-facing camera.
The Fire HD isn't as fast as we'd like. It doesn't feel as snappy as an iPad mini
or Nexus 7, especially when browsing the web or launching apps. Scrolling around
web pages shows a white screen until the content is loaded.
In Geekbench 2, the Fire HD managed 1,124, which is signifi cantly lower than
the Nexus 7’s 1,452. Running the SunSpider Javascript test it returned a score of
1,783ms – again, this is slower than the Nexus 7’s 1,665ms.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD REVIEWS
SPECIFICATIONS
7in (1280x800) capacitive
multitouch IPS screen;
Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream
Sandwich; 1.2GHz TI
Omap 4460 dual-core
processor; 16GB storage;
dual-band 802.11b/g/n;
1.3Mp front camera; mini
HDMI out; micro USB 2.0;
accelerometer; 16.4Wh
lithium-ion battery
TABLETWORLD 53