Amazon Kindle Fire

The basics

Not content with selling more eBook readers than anybody else, Amazon is now taking on the tablet market with the Amazon Kindle Fire. Boasting a colour screen, it's considerably cheaper than tablets like the Apple iPad 2.

The good

The 7-inch screen on the Kindle Fire is impressive. It's sharp enough to do justice to web pages and photographs, and it also offers decent viewing angles.

The Kindle Fire's web browser is more than capable, and everything responds at a decent pace. We managed to get 7-8 hours of runtime from a single charge.

The Menus on the Kindle Fire are all laid out sensibly – the Fire runs a reskinned version of Android, and it could be easier for the first-time user.

The bad

That's unfortunately where the good news ends. For a start, the Kindle Fire will not be coming to the UK – and is on sale in the US only.

The Kindle Fire is also less capable than the standard Kindle when it comes to use as a regular eReader, with the display proving harder on the eye.

The 8GB of storage space is limited, and there are virtually no features – from a camera, to 3G, to a decent choice of games – everything is omitted to keep the price down.

The bottom line

The Amazon Kindle Fire is no Apple iPad replacement then, but it doesn't try to be. If you just want a way of immersing yourself in the Amazon eco-system, it's worth a look, but we suspect there will be more fully-featured models joining the Fire in the not too distant future. It's these models that are likely to be coming to the UK.