Kindle Fire $49.99, But Is It Any Good? One Website Literally Opens The Tablet To Find Out (Video)
Christmas may have come and gone, but retailers such as Amazon are offering tablets for amazing prices. The Kindle Fire is one example, with Amazon offering the device for as cheap as $49.99 two weeks after the Christmas holiday has passed.
AutooMobile reports not only the Kindle Fire at an unbelievably low price, but also its sister device the Kindle Fire HD at $79.99. In addition, the Apple iPad Mini 2 is being offered for $199.
With the deep discounts, one may wonder whether devices like the Kindle Fire are any good. TechRepublic looked at the internals of the device being offered for $49.99 and said it has many features the original Kindle Fire offered and more.
“Its dimensions are nearly identical to the original Kindle Fire, but it weighs slightly less and has a more rounded back cover. It also has a lot of features the older tablet didn’t have, such as cameras, a microphone, and a microSD card slot. That microSD slot’s important because, like the original Kindle Fire, this tablet only has 8GB of internal storage and more than 2GB of that is used for the operating system.”
The main difference between the Kindle Fire and the more expensive Kindle Fire HD is screen resolution, with the non-HD Kindle Fires offering only a 1024×600-pixel resolution.
“And the front panel isn’t made with Gorilla Glass, so it’s not as durable as many other tablets on the market,” TechRepublic reported.
TechRepublic went further in its exploration of the devices and actually opened a Kindle Fire, where it found a smaller battery with “less capacity.”
“It also has a single speaker, compared to the early Fire’s stereo setup,” the site added. “The circuit board has been redesigned to allow room for the new cameras, volume buttons, and the microSD card slot.”
While the Kindle Fire has been a resounding success for Amazon, bringing in consistent revenue with its app store, eBooks, and movies and television shows available for purchase (and free viewing through Prime memberships), the company has not always found success under the “Fire” brand.
As BGR noted, the Fire Phone was a rare dud for Amazon that is hardly remembered even by most diehard Kindle Fire fans.
“However, Amazon screwed up literally everything about the Fire Phone: It was loaded with gimmicky features that weren’t compelling to most smartphone users, it was priced at $199 on contract, and it was an exclusive to AT&T,” BGR reported. It went on to note that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “made an overly expensive machine jam-packed with his own dream features that were appealing to himself and just about nobody else.”
The result of the Fire Phone’s failure in the market has been an exit from the smartphone business by Amazon, which focuses instead on research and development of the company’s proven success in the tablet business and exploring other concept devices, such as Amazon Echo. Echo, like Siri, responds to voice commands, but is built into a sound system rather than a phone.
Amazon has also focused on Fire TV, which has allowed the company to take streaming television off the tablet and instead blast it onto the big screen. Amazon Prime members can view original content for free, as well as many popular television programs and movies. Others are available for purchase or rental, while services like Netflix and Hulu are offered on the device, as well, positioning Amazon to continue competing with Apple in every arena except the smartphone market – a market where Apple has not only thrived, but dominated its competition.
Interested in the internals of the Kindle Fire? Watch the video above to see what the Kindle Fire tablet looks like deconstructed.
[Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
