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November 30, 2012

I just totally missed the stories that this was out. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire starting at $299. I grabbed the table comparing the newest iPad with the Nexus 10 from my earlier post and added the info for the Kindle Fire 8.9" and then decided that to be fair I should also include the 9-inch Barnes & Noble Nook HD+:

* the price of the Kindle is lowered by $15 if you accept advertisements which Amazon calls "Special Offers."

Kindle Fire 8.9"

In addition to the numbers above, Amazon makes some claims that are less measurable, but may be perceived by the customer who holds the device in hand - maybe. The Kindle has two Wi-Fi antennas which they say means faster downloads. Amazon says the "Google tablet" (I think they mean Nexus) downloads at 20 MBPS, the iPad 3 (why they are comparing to the iPad 3 is beyond me) maxes out at 22 MBPS, while the Kindle goes all the way up to 31 MBPS (if your provider is willing to feed it to you that fast - and if you are regularly getting speeds like that you must live in Kansas City, Kansas, and you've already signed up for Google fiber and you got your free Nexus 7, so a new Kindle Fire is just gravy for you). If simply increasing the number of antennas increases download speed, I expect other tablet manufacturers to begin to follow suit. Eventually the interior of a tablet may look like the urban rooftops of the 1950s-1970s, thick with numerous antennae. Actually, they say one antenna is for 2.4 GHz and the other for 5 GHz, and the software can switch back and forth between them for maximum speed.

The model with 4G connectivity ($200 extra) allows you to sign up with AT&T for a data plan that gives you 250 MB/month for only $50/year for the first year. You can pay more for higher limits. The $50 deal with AT&T does not give you access to non-free AT&T Wi-fi. A 3GB/month plan costs $30/month with $10 more for each additional gigabyte.

Amazon claims the Kindle has reduced glare by eliminating an air gap between the LCD and the touch sensor "by laminating the touch sensor and the LCD together into a single layer of glass." Barnes & Noble makes a similar claim for their Nook HD+.

The display uses in-phase switching which can appear washed out at angles, but Amazon says they've improved that "by applying an advanced polarizing filter directly to the LCD panel."

Now here comes the snake oil: "Booming sound without distortion." "Exclusive, custom Dolby audio, dual stereo speakers, and auto-optimization software for clear, crisp, balanced audio."

We put stereo speakers on both sides of the display for a wide stereo sound-field similar to that of a home stereo, then tuned them to better reproduce low notes. The result - deeper bass in your music, loud, rumbling movie soundtracks, and room-filling stereo sound without distortion, even at higher volumes.

I've known that the future would bring us tiny speakers that could move air as well as the big speakers that we know and love, but I didn't expect that breakthrough technology to appear so soon and on a $300 tablet from Amazon. IOW, I am highly dubious. If they can really fill rooms with loud, rumbling soundtracks, then they should be marketing this as an audio breakthrough device with an LCD touchscreen thrown in.

Kindle offers a new thing they call "FreeTime" which is for kids and can be used to limit both the content and the amount of time the little darlings can use the device. They talk about how rugged the device is, but they don't say anything about its water resistance, if any.

The Kindle Fire uses an updated version of Amazon's Silk browser, which has its fans and detractors. PCMag measures Silk as significantly slower than unspecified browsers on the Nexus 10 or iPad 4 (probably Chrome and Safari, respectively).

They claim more than 10 hours of battery life. Charges in less than 5 hours. The Nook HD+ makes a similar claim.

There are 396 reviews for this product. In the most negative reviews some warn that you can't depend solely on cellular connectivity. Wi-fi is required for some functions, including movie and magazines. Text-to-speech will not work on newspapers or blogs, even though older Kindles will do that.

One negative review suggests you have much less flexibility with PDFs on the Kindle compared to iPad or the Nexus.

You can buy a pink cover for the Kindle for only $55! Lesser colors are available at the same price.

Nook HD+

There are only 76 user reviews of the Nook HD+ as I write. The 8 worst reviews include three from people who don't even have a Nook HD+, leaving only five with no particular pattern. One person thought the Nook HD+ should be equal to an iPad, but hundreds of dollars cheaper.

The Nook HD+ has a microSD slot, which is good, but the "30 Pin Port for charging and connecting to a computer (HDMI Compatible)" is proprietary. It's one thing when a market dominator like Apple wants to annoy us with yet another proprietary connector, but it's entirely different when the market laggard tries to do it.

NOOK HD+'s special audio technology lets you enjoy your favorite movies and TV shows in high-quality surround sound. The bass & clarity are unsurpassed – even in noisy environments.

Barnes & Noble offers no more description of the audio than that. Sounds similar to Amazon's unbelievable claim. Reviewers say the device has only one speaker, but as long as you're selling snake oil you might as well claim surround sound from a single speaker.

You can buy a pink cover for your Nook HD+ for $30, and in the process of searching for that I learned that B&N's website does not work nearly as well as Amazon's. B&N seems to be the Sears of bookstores. The ultimate goal of actually selling something to the customer seems to get lost along the way.

Filed under Books,Shopping,Technology | permalink | November 30, 2012 at 12:48 PM

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