The new Kindle Fire HD started shipping out to customers on Friday, September 14th, giving those who got their hands on it initial impressions. We received our device here in the early afternoon, and began to test it out immediately. Also purchased with the device were a $45 case for the new Kindle Fire HD, the accelerator wall charger, and a micro HDMI cable.  We had ordered screen protectors, but for some reason the items weren’t ready until the 21st, so we went without them.

Upon receiving the item, it’s recommended to plug it in and begin charging the battery. We did this but also began to test the unit after plugging it in. The item turned right on, and you’re immediately asked to make sure it’s registered with your Amazon account. That process is relatively easy if you purchased it with your Amazon account, since it’s registered for you. From there you’ll set up things like your time zone, and social networking: Facebook and/or Twitter.
A caveat with Facebook, there isn’t a pre-installed app on the Kindle Fire HD for Facebook. However, there is a selection when you go to the internet for the mobile Facebook site. The initial integration you do for Facebook is mainly to help share content, such as a passage you highlighted in a book, or photos, or Amazon purchases. More on that later.
For those who “fire up” their tablet and try to type on the internet, you may experience a Kindle Fire HD keyboard issue. We had a problem typing into the webpages to log in, in fact we couldn’t do it at all on the internet. However, this was remedied by doing a restart. Hold down the small power button on the top/side of your Kindle Fire HD, then say Power off when asked. You’ll need to wait, and then when you try to turn it on again, the item restarts, powers down, then begins to do an upgrade which could take about 5 minutes or so. After this happens, you’re good to go with typing on the web with your Fire HD.
Email is very easy to set up on the device, and it comes ready to connect with popular services such as AOL or Gmail. All that’s required is entering your log-in information, and you’re ready to look at your inbox or send emails out.
We’ve seen early reviews talking of issues with response time between tapping a key or app and waiting for it to come up. We haven’t notice a terrible issue with this so far. In fact at times, one thing is the device is super responsive to the touch, so be careful not to tap too much on the face.
As for WiFi speed, we experienced no serious lag yet. We weren’t running too many computers or other devices at the same time, but the speed seemed very good, so far. Websites loaded quickly, and information/apps downloaded and installed at reasonable rates.
Graphics and images on the device look stunning on the HD display. You can use your fingers to zoom in on images and stretch them and they still look crisp and colorful. Games and websites looked just as good on the device.
We have yet to test the camera out in this review. Other reviews we’ve read claim it is only for Skype, and possibly for use with Facebook. We will update this review when that’s been tested.
Same goes for video and the HDMI output, which will be updated here as well.
Initial impressions: For $200, this Kindle Fire HD tablet is well worth it. Seems like it’ll be a hit for the holidays, especially for kids whose parents may not want to spend several hundred more on the costlier iPads. At $200 or so, this item provides plenty of great value in terms of entertainment, web browsing, checking email, storing contacts, and using Skype for video chats.
What Kindle Fire HD needs: Some things we’re hoping they’ll add for this device in terms of future software updates or hardware that is developed include a stand alone keyboard – possibly bluetooth may work with it, but we have yet to discover if that’s true. Also, there is a microphone built in, but we aren’t seeing any speech to text like many Android devices offer.  Other needs include a way to expand the internal storage, possibly via a micro USB plugin.  There are clearly some features Amazon will want to integrate into their tablet to stay competitive with the likes of Google Nexus 7 and the iPad.
You can view and purchase the new Kindle Fire HD here.