Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot what I expected.
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2015
I have a Kindle Paperwhite. I love it. But I thought it would be nice to have color on the screen and a camera and all the stuff I'll use, too, right in my hand, and the price was right. The screen for reading books, which is my major use of this, is narrower than the paperwhite's. It's also a very heavy object in my hand as I read. The screen is clear and easy to read. Until I finally found what turns it off, everything I did was cluttered with recommendations and what other people have bought, all based on the tracking software installed and what I already had. I turned all that off (Maybe. I'm not sure I got it all!) and improved it greatly. I paid to have no ads on it, but I got ads, anyway, disguised as recommendations. That rather ticked me off. I bought the second one for my grandchild, and I planned to read books using mine to record me doing so, so she can listen to her grandmother read books I planned to buy for her and install on her Fire. Well, I can't put my books onto her Fire, and until it's set up for her, which I cannot do, I cannot put any books onto it. She needs her own account for all of that, and I don't know what her parents will use as her account. This bothers me. My expectation was to buy her books, put them onto her Fire, and put videos of me reading them on there for her, too. That can't happen. Disappointing. I hope I can figure out how I can buy her books and put them onto her fire so she can have them.
I am also disturbed because I cannot remove links to apps, a newspaper you think I should want and I don't want, links to email, links to freetime, goodreads, newsstand, contacts, games. I do not use social media, and I have a computer for any online news I may want to read. I stuck them all into one folder just to get them off the screen, but I really would like them to go away. Nothing is intuitive about this device. Until I can figure out how to stop it from putting everything I do onto "the cloud", I can't do anything with it. I can't take photos or make videos until I know they will be mine alone, not out somewhere on some server that any idiot can hack into. The help is non-existent without having wi-fi connected, which tells me it's being transmitted somewhere for someone else to peruse what I look up. I did get the free kindle fire owner's manual, but it's not for this model. What's in that does not apply to this model. Everything has its own "settings" display, and I have to set everything individually. Maybe I'll get them all one day. I did contact Amazon using the chat forum, but because it's so new, they had a hard time figuring out what I was saying and why I didn't have the same buttons they have and couldn't click those links. That will improve over time, I'm sure, but right now, it wasn't as helpful as it could have been.
When I turn it on, it boots slowly. I expect it to turn on immediately, but that only happens when it's "asleep", not turned off. Half the time, when I try to turn it off, it asks me if I want that and when I touch "OK", it does not turn off. It takes several tries to shut it down. I cannot figure out why it boots up saying "amazon", then "fire", and takes its good old time doing it all. I know it's from amazon, I know it's a fire.
Overall, I'm almost sorry I bought it for myself, and I seriously doubt it will do well for my grandchild to learn to read and enjoy books as I do. She will most likely have games on it, but I'm sure they'll cost money that isn't to be spared for that. I got it as a teaching tool for a child to learn to read and enjoy books. I do hope it works for that, but I have serous doubts that it will. It's just too hard to use that way. It is my hope that because she is a child, she will find it intuitive. Children learn more easily than old folks do, after all.
Because it's not intuitive and because I cannot get the owner's manual to tell me what to do with it, I have not yet figured out how to borrow movies from the library and watch them on it. I hope to get that figured out soon.
I got the case from Amazon, not the cheaper ones, and it does work nicely. It stands it right up in front of me for reading hands-free when I am at a table that is the correct height. I do like that! It closes firmly. It looks nice, it feels nice in my hand. I ordered screen covers for my grandchild, but they are not here yet. Demand was too high, I suppose, and the supply did not meet it. I'll wait. This is a Christmas present, and the promise is for later in October, so I will be patient and wait for them.
I'm sure that if I can ever find out how to shut down all the tracking and "cloud" issues, I will love it. The screen is much more clear than the one on the paperwhite and reading is easier. The battery does not really last as long as it is advertised to last. It went from 100% to 42% as I read one book over a period of 5 hours. Maybe it holds the charge while it waits for you, but not so much as you use it. If I sit and read all day in winter, I will have to plug it into an outlet to do so. I'm sure movies will make it drain even faster, which is the secondary purpose I have for it.
Although this is not an HD screen, the photos already installed are crisp and clear. It is a good screen. There are good points to this device. The only really bad points I have are related to the fact that there is so much tracking software attached to it and so many things on it that I do not want and cannot be rid of. Would I recommend it to someone else? I would, with reservations and explanations about how much data it transmits to unknown places and people for unknown purposes. I keep it in airplane mode and transfer my books to it by USB. I will continue that until I know I have all the tracking software turned off. I will continue trying to figure out how it works and how to watch movies on it. I am certain that once I have it figured out without any written materials available to tell me how to do things I want to do, I will love it. Until then, to me, it's just "OK".
