It’s been a few months since Amazon released their Kindle Fire as the most buzzed-about addition to the growing tablet market, and the success has been overwhelming. Millions of Kindle Fire tablets had been preordered before the device was even released in November, and millions more were purchased during the ensuing holiday season. In fact, early market analysis suggests that Amazon sold over 5 million Kindle Fire tablets in 2011, and that’s just in two months.

So it’s an understatement to say that the Kindle Fire is selling well, but how does the device itself hold up as an eReader after the holiday craze? As a Kindle Fire owner myself, I’d like to weigh in on the pros and cons of the device after a few months of use.

As an eReader

Amazon designed the Kindle Fire first and foremost with the intent to create a formidable digital reader, as a device meant to streamline the eBook for all readers. In this regard the Kindle Fire succeeds in spades. Downloading and reading eBooks has never been easier (or more stylish) than with the Kindle Fire. Amazon designed the Kindle Fire’s interface to be as user free as possible, and after months of use I can safely say that the Kindle Fire is the most intuitive digital reader I’ve ever used. Within moments of turning on the tablet, I can browse through my list of “to-read” books on Amazon, purchase one, and start reading. The eReader interface allows you to define words as you go on using the built-in dictionary, and you can also highlight and make notes at any time during your reading. I find the touch screen to be completely intuitive and book-like as I flip through pages and read text.

And my reading isn’t limited to novels downloaded from Amazon. I utilize the Kindle Fire’s Newsstand feature to read digital prints of my favorite news sources on a daily basis. In a pinch, Amazon’s news aggregate “Pulse” also provides some interesting and informative reads.
The drawbacks to the Kindle Fire as an eReader are few—the main issue I encounter is with the screen. If you’re in the comfort of your home, there’s no issue with the tablet’s 7” glass screen. However don’t expect a pleasant reading experience if you want to take your tablet outside, particularly if you’re out on a sunny day. It’s difficult reading with the glare, though not impossible; one can definitely manage, but you’re best off reading inside with this device.

As a device for other media

Look, the media-fostered rivalry between the Kindle Fire and the iPad has been well documented over the past few months, usually with the Kindle Fire coming out on top pricewise and the iPad dominating performance wise. There’s no mystery to why this is the case: the iPad has better specs, which is why you pay hundreds of dollars more for it. The Kindle Fire has only 8GB of storage and 512MB of RAM, but you aren’t meant to store much on the device other than eBooks. Whatever shows or movies you watch on the Kindle Fire have to be streaming, and your tablet must be connected to WiFi, so your options for video consumption can be considerably limited. Sure, you can stream all your favorite shows from Netflix on your Kindle Fire if you really have to, but those are tasks better left to a computer.
As far as I’m concerned, the other perks to the Kindle Fire are purely secondary to its capacity as an eReader. Amazon does a great job of making songs and videos readily available for whoever wants to buy them, but for now the only thing I’ll buy from the site is my next read.

This is a guest post from Jacelyn Thomas. Jacelyn writes about identity theft for IdentityTheft.net. She can be reached at: jacelyn.thomas @ gmail.com.