Amazon Kindle Fire Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on November 29, 2011 3:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Mobile
- Amazon
- Kindle Fire
- Kindle
GPU Performance
I threw GLBenchmark on the Kindle Fire (Android apps can be sideloaded via USB and a file manager to run the .apk) to see if Amazon skimped on its GPU driver optimizations. Luckily it didn't, the Kindle Fire's PowerVR SGX 540 performs just as well as you'd expect it to:
WiFi Performance
Amazon didn't sacrifice compute in building the Kindle Fire, but WiFi performance is pretty bad. As I alluded to in our earlier piece on Silk performance, the Fire is limited to around 15Mbps over 2.4GHz 72Mbps 802.11n (5GHz isn't supported):
It's unclear if this limitation is due to the TI WL1271 chip on-board or if Amazon just didn't tune the WiFi driver stack for performance vs. power consumption. I'd assume the latter given the focus of the Kindle Fire.
I also measured transfer rates over USB 2.0 to confirm this wasn't some NAND performance limitation. The Kindle Fire uses a single 8GB eMMC package from Samsung. Sequential read speeds were nice and high at 24MB/s, but sequential writes to the device were noticeably lower. I measured between 4 - 6MB/s, which isn't unheard of for low-end NAND. The lowest sequential write speed I measured is still 2x the speed of the fastest transfer I recorded over WiFi, so this is definitely the result of the wireless stack.
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tiffanykennedy - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
My bf got me a Kindle Fire for my birthday and I love it. It's lightweight and easy to use straight out of the box. The first thing I recommend anyone with a new Kindle do is install the nook app. We got our instructions from www.kindlemad.com through google.It basically unlocks all the Android marketplace apps and unlocks the device. Super happy!
Reflex - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
I would strongly suggest rerunning the performance tests. Just my subjective point of view, but perf just got a major boost. The browser is certainly faster, and so is the book reader. The UI and tap response also seem much improved. All of the Fire's on the market should autoupdate in the next couple days...VivekGowri - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Downloading, I'll post my findings later today :)Reflex - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Thanks, wanting to make certain I'm not imagining things.Reflex - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link
Any update on this? Or waiting for the Nook Tablet review?Chaser - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
As I have stated I don't believe the Fire will TAKE marketshare from Apple. But just like the airline price wars of the 80s and 90s, the Fire with its undeniable market recognition will put A tablet in the hands of those that would not have considered a tablet before.With Apple holding 90% of tablet sales I personally only see iPads in use when I am on business travel. I very rarely seen an Android tablet anywhere in use in public except for a Color Nook. So the tablet scene is expensive iPads and their happy owners. I think the Fire will change that.
Toadster - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
I'm curious how a PC or regular laptop would fare against the Android/iOS versions of the GL Benchmarks... is there one made?kawatwo - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
John Phillips in C&D. Nice! I have the 8 inch Vizio tablet. I bought it to read my digital magazines with mostly as I subscribe to several on Zinio. Zooming only takes a couple taps so that doesn't bother me. You can also pinch to zoom. I am assuming the Kindle works the same way? The Kindle and Nook do seem like a lot of performance for the money if you only need to do the things they can actually do.freedomfries - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
what kills the competition with this piece is the price, though it's still not as impressive as the iPad's to me... at least when I hold and use one.elestein - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
I have been using Kindle fire from last one year. Its was simply superb. As student its very useful for me. Any way to get it for lower cost for my brother?