Amazon Kindle Fire 8GB, Wi-Fi, 7in - Black Tablet (Latest Model)(Australian version)

What you need to be aware of is the main purpose of any Kindle device is to deliver Amazon content to you. Amazon hopes that you will get the majority of your content from them. That’s why the Kindle Fire is so well priced. If you don't plan on using Amazon to obtain your media, you may want to take this into consideration before purchasing a Kindle. Also, the Fire is designed for consumption, not creation, so if you think you’re getting an iPad or the bells and whistles some tablet PC's come with, you may be disappointed.

After opening the Amazon box containing the Kindle Fire, a quick guide plus US power adapter, (which does support 100-240V) and physically laying my hands on the Fire, I found the dimensions and weight closely resembled a physical book. When holding it in a vertical position, it feels nearly the same as a real book.

Plugging in and charging (approx. 4hours) was as easy as charging any new phone.
Setting up the wireless connection and registering is also very easy with step by step guides. The Fire supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or networks with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; but doesn’t support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks.

Once charged and registered with Amazon (you'll need an Amazon account), the Fire greets you with your name and subsequently presents you with a carousel-like shelf, which should have all your Kindle book titles. The shelf is not just limited to books though; media of all types (books, music, video, documents, apps, and even web pages) all appear here, in the order that you use them. The touch navigation is very responsive.

Web browsing is extremely fast using Amazon's silk browser. It is based off of technology that is designed to increase page loading times by pre-fetching part of the content.

The Fire is perfect for lying on the sofa, sun lounge or bed and reading the latest best seller or for surfing the net or watching a video/movie. For reading, the text and background colour can be adjusted for differing light conditions, while audio books/movies/videos are clear and loud. It also has a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack and top-mounted stereo speakers.

Memory is approx. 8 GB (with 6GB available for user content), but with the Fire you get free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud.

While it may be a disadvantage to some, the Fire doesn’t have a camera or microphone to allow audio/video chatting, picture-taking, and video-making (your phone probably has all of that anyway).

Battery life is not as good as I expected. Amazon Fire specifications say 8 hours of reading, so if you like to read for 1 to 2 hours per day, you should be happy. Battery drain, Wireless ON, becomes quickly apparent if surfing the web, checking emails or downloading content. I’ve found I need to re-charge about every 1-2 days. With Wireless OFF, I’ve managed to make it last around 4-5 days.
You can either shut down the Fire or put it in Sleep Mode, fine if you want to put your book down for a few minutes or a few hours and then pick up where you left of. The Fire restarts immediately, bypassing the start-up screen. Sleep mode does not appear to drain the battery any quicker than shutting down/turning off.

You will require an Aust. Plug adapter for the US 100-240V power adapter.

Kindle Fire is a great colour E-Reader, well worth the money.

It is a great product, the graphics are very bright, and it just looks exciting. It's linked to my other Kindle so when I download to one it downloads to the other. It does rely on wireless, which I don't have at home, but there are many free places these days. I don't think I can download movies to it in Australia, but I don't really want to. It holds it's charge very well, my grandson and I have had a great time looking at all sorts of kids YouTube videos for hours at a time with no sign of the battery going flat.

I don't have any other tablet to compare it to only my netbook. It's very light in my handbag, which is a real bonus, it weighs about 430gm, my netbook weighs 1.5kg with a 10" screen. The Kindle Fire has a 7" screen. Plus it is very, very fast, when you turn it on, you're ready to start surfing!

I bought it because a friend of mine bought one, I have not ben disappointed! Cheers Judee

Good but only downfall there's no Australian App Store so can't download apps and can't transfer games to it from online

Been an avid reader and library user all my life. Couldn't see any reason to get a reader, then saw Kindle Fire on internet. Bought Kindle Fire because of the extras (e-mail, internet). Love it. Downloaded enough books to keep me going all year. So glad I bought it. Everything is great. Needs recharging a lot but that is no problem as I have charger on bedside table. Only downside is that as yet can't get apps, videos or music from Amazon. Hopefully will happen before end of year. So easy to use.

I bought the kindle as a christmas present to myself. I had kindle PC and wanted to read in other locations and postions other than at my desk. Which is one of the things I like about it - portability and simplicity. I can easily bookmark where I am up to and come back to it. I don't understand the location system as it doesn't equate to normal page numbers ie one screen change is a largish jump in numbers. I can tell how far I am into the book via the percentage count. I am not too happy about the battery life, it is used up too quickly and needs to be charged almost daily. Need to find battery life saving measures. I would still buy it again as it was a bargin and links nicely to amazon and the millions of books available there. It also reads pdfs nicely too.