For most of 2013 I had been looking for a tablet.  I had an older one from 2011 that I got when I was with the phone company that shall not be named.  It was not the best thing and was full of “bloat ware” from the aforementioned phone company even after I left services. When my daughter was having trouble getting things to load, I heavily considered getting a new table of some kind. I had considered many, many styles.  I had wanted to get a Kindle Fire HD, but I decided to wait because things come out and go on sale towards Christmas.  (Patience is not my virtue, so it was hard to not just impulse buy whatever I wanted)

Luckily for me Amazon released the HDX before Christmas and it was out long enough for them to put it on sale when everyone else did.  In fact, it went on sale, the Samsung Galaxy Tab went on sale, the iPad mini came with gift cards.   All of these 7 inch size and like I wanted.  I tried many store displays,  but by the end of November I had resolved not to get a tablet after all.  Instead, I was going to get the Wal-Mart exclusive Nintendo 3DS XL with Mario game for a cool price of 179.00.  I actually went to the store with the flyer in hand and they said oh you can’t buy that until 12/3 because the system won’t sell it to you even though it doesn’t say that in the flyer.  WTF?   So, I went home mad!  However, later that night I discovered that the HDX that is normally 229 dollars was on sale for 179.00.  Uhm.  Hello!  I snapped that sucker up quicker than I could blink my eye.

So, why did I pick that one over all the other ones that were cheaper and with a full Android base?  Because I am a PRIME member and that is really what I wanted to do….watch my PRIME stuff.  My older tablet didn’t play the stuff from Amazon anymore.  I checked to make sure the Kindle would also play the CW app so I was good to go.  Also, it has a really fast processor.  Most of the ones I tried out and even the one I had only ran about 1.5 GHz.  I tried loading my blog on the Galaxy tab and that was a disaster.  When I got the Kindle I was able to load all my web pages very quickly!

There are a few things that I find to be drawbacks, but not to regret my decision.  1) You can’t have everything on the Google Play store.  You can’t get Chrome.  2) The battery life isn’t all that great, but then again what does when you are watching videos.  3) Not everything is in the Amazon App store.  4) WiFi only, but then again you don’t get bloat ware if you go this route and that is what I wanted.  5) It can’t take an SD card, but it has a lot of room at 16 GB.

If you want a robust tablet that does all that multi-tasking stuff so you can work and all that junk you should get like a Windows or a Nexxus 7 etc.  If you have PRIME and you like things you can get on PRIME, but don’t really need a tablet to do much of that worky work stuff b/c you have a Chromebook or something along those lines I would say get the Kindle Fire for your entertainment purposes

Before I got this I wasn’t using my PRIME for anything more than shipping, which  is great, but I wanted to watch the free stuff and I never really got a chance.  My tiny child monopolized the X-box for Blue’s Clues and it was hard watching anything like Firefly or Dresden without her walking in and being like can I see.  Uhm NOOO.   Please don’t watch the murder and flayed skin scene.  Pause, where is the pause!

I’m not saying that you can’t work on this tablet, because there are lots of great things available to work on it, but I wanted one to watch my PRIME stuff on and get my books and music on….this works great for me…being an Amazon groupie and all LOL.

They also give 500 coins when you get a tablet like this to buy apps.  Plus you get that free app of the day.  And all those things that say “kindle edition” only apps.  Oh and they gave me a bunch of apps on sale.

And let us not forget…the display is BEAUTIFUL!  It really is nice HD.  I actually prefer watching the tablet over the brand new smart TV we have.

So, the next time somebody dissuades you about the Kindle Fire line…..like you get stuck with Amazon only things…the app store isn’t that great….it has ads (only when you wake it up and goes away once you swipe to unlock)…..etc….keep in mind that it is a very fast and beautiful tablet that is great for apps and entertainment.  And also, the browser is great for most websites.

Do you have PRIME?  Do you buy your music from Amazon?  Do you buy your books from Amazon?  Do you like shopping on Amazon?  Then this is a contender and that is what sold it to me.  🙂