It was 10 months ago that we had a doppelgänger in our midst. Amazon unleashed the Kindle Fire to the world and we spent much of the beginning of our review comparing and contrasting it to the (even then a bit long-in-the-tooth) BlackBerry PlayBook. Now, finally, we can stop making that comparison — at least for this, Amazon’s current top-shelf tablet.

It’s the Kindle Fire HD and it quite handily addresses nearly every concern that we had with the original Fire. It’s thinner, lighter, faster and, yes, better looking. It’s a huge step forward from that which came before and yet it still follows very much in the footsteps of its predecessor, existing as a physical portal to a digital marketplace with an alluring selection of premium content. Is it enough of an improvement to topple our current king of budget tablets, the Nexus 7? You’ll just have to read on to find out.

Continue reading Amazon Kindle Fire HD review (7-inch)

Filed under: Tablets

Amazon Kindle Fire HD review (7-inch) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:00:00 EST.