The 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HD goes far to correct many of the issues that plagued Amazon's first foray into tablets nearly a year ago. The Fire HD also introduces several tech enhancements over competing tablets, and while in the end the Kindle Fire HD falls short of Amazon's goal of being the best tablet at any price, it does excel on many metrics?and at $199 for the 16GB version and $249 for the 32GB version, it delivers a strong, value-priced experience that's optimized for consuming stuff from Amazon.
How the hardware and software comes together is the key, and that's a big part of why Amazon has chosen to differentiate itself on its retail and Web services strengths. In so doing, Amazon diverges from the open and straight path of stock Android 4.0, which serves as the core of Kindle Fire HD's software. Instead, it veers in the direction of Apple's walled garden, but with more meandering paths in and out than Apple's fortress-like garden provides. That's perhaps the best way to describe the distinction, given Amazon's support for only a subset of the greater Android app universe, limited file handling abilities, and the way Amazon saddles the Kindle Fire HD with in-your-face advertisements (you can eliminate these for an extra $15).
The result is a tablet experience that will appeal less to experienced tablet users, and more to the casual newcomer who values consuming movies, TV, books, and music above a full-featured tablet. What Amazon succeeds in, though, is delivering a capable device with a 28 percent smaller display than Apple's 9.7-inch iPad, and it does so at 60 percent of the price. And for these reasons, the Kindle Fire HD may just be enough tablet to satisfy many shoppers in the coming holiday season.
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