I’ve always said tablets need to be cheaper, something like 200-300$ maximum, to become mainstream. Now Amazon is proving it has the same belief as it just announced the Kindle Fire (as rumored yesterday), a cheap 7 inch tablet with a clear multimedia focus: eBooks, movies, music, browsing and related actions.

    And cheap is the word of the day here: just $199 will get you this beauty. It’s not a complete tablet, not by a long shot since it lacks 3G, a microphone and a camera, but it has everything you need for media consumption. It even comes with a 30 days trial to Amazon Prime so you get a taste of the $79/year movie streaming service that also offers some other goodies (check official page for details).

    As expected Amazon is using the Kindle Fire tablet to promote its services, whether we’re talking about ebooks, music or video, so there’s tight integration with all of them. That’s something I like, especially since Amazon is pretty competitive as pricing and features are concerned.

    Kindle Fire – ordering info

    I dare to say it’s even more competitive than Netflix, as it offers currently over 11.000 movie titles and TV shows in the Prime streaming library. That’s a lot, and Amazon is planning to licence more titles as we speak, offering even more options to choose from.

    By the way, Netflix is a customer for Amazon Cloud Storage, from where it stores and streams its library. This says a lot and Amazon could break them with the flip of a switch, but it wouldn’t be good for business, I’m sure.

    Amazon Kindle Fire tablet

    Amazon Kindle Fire tablet

    Specs and interface

    Now back to the Kindle Fire Tablet so let’s take a short look at the specs: 7 inch IPS display (1024 x 600 pixels, 169 ppi, Gorilla Glass, 16 millions colors), 1GHz TI OMAP dual core processor, only 14.6 oz weight, comes with free Amazon Cloud storage and allows you to delete content when you want, and get it back whenever you please. There’s  also no need to use a cable for sync: everything is done wirelessly at this point. Amazon Whispersync with sync all your bookmarks and will allow you to resume reading and streaming on any of your devices, without any user intervention.

    Quick specs:

    • 1GHz dual core CPU by TI
    • 512 MB RAM
    • 7 inch IPS screen (1024 x 600 px resolution)
    • 8 GB internal storage
    • Size: 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″
    • Weight: 14.6 ounces
    • Battery life: 8 hours continuous reading or 7.5 hours video playback

    The user interface is very intuitive and easy to use: your name on top, then search bar with buttons for buttons for newsstand, books, music, video, docs, apps, web, then comes a coverflow style library with recent accessed items on top. Below recent items you can pin your favourites. Now back to performance, here’s where the Amazon Kindle Fire impresses, with very fast switching between music, movies and books. The interface cleverly allows you to listen to music while reading, as expected. Games also run very fast, so this tablet is no slouch, even if it’s cheap.

    As we’ve mentioned before you won’t get Google Android Marketplace, but the Amazon App Store, which offers plenty of apps as it is right now.

    Design similar to Blackberry Playbook

    Design similar to Blackberry Playbook

    Amazon Silk browser

    One important software piece is the browser, custom built by Amazon and called Silk, which will use also company’s cloud computing service to pre-render some elements in the cloud (the CPU intensive tasks mainly). If it seems familiar is because Opera browser uses a similar technology called Opera Turbo. Amazon’s version is called Dynamic Split Browsing. All sites you visit will be converted to fit the Kindle Fire screen resolution and display orientation. Page preloading will also be used to speed up browsing.

    And the best thing is the price, which at $199 will kill the iPad 2 if Apple doesn’t rethink its strategy. The iPad tablet was successful because it was the best and the cheapest tablet on market at the same time, but right now the Kindle Fire is a game changer. Pre-order starts today and actual shipping will begin on November 15th.

    Note: as things are right now, the Amazon Kindle Fire will only be available in US, mostly because there are copyright issues with the titles distributed by the Amazon services, and I’m referring to those only available in US. Hope things will change soon.