iPad or Kindle Fire

iPad & Kindle Fire

I don't often do product reviews or comparisons but I recently bought a Kindle Fire HD 8. That will surprise people who know me as I'm a huge Apple fan. Between my wife and I, we have 9 Apple devices at home. However, I've also always been aware that the Kindle is an excellent e-book reader (my wife and father-in-law have them). The Kindle is light, has excellent battery life (weeks) and its e-ink screen is great in bright conditions. But, the Kindle Fire is different to previous Kindle's; it's not just an e-book reader, instead, it's a fully functional tablet, just like the iPad.
I decided to buy a Kindle Fire to compare it to my iPad partly because it's so cheap. The Kindle is $59.99 (USD) compared to an iPad for $329 (USD). In other words, the iPad is 5.5 times more expensive than the Kindle! In fact, you can buy a Kindle for less than the iPad's optional cover! So how does the Kindle compare? Well, the Kindle isn't as fast as the iPad, the touchscreen isn't quite as responsive and its backlight isn't quite as bright. The battery life is fine easily lasting a day of use.
Amazon has its own app store for the Kindle, but it doesn't stock all of the apps that the Apple app store or Google Play for Android devices stock. However, Amazon doesn't advertise this, but since the Kindle is running Android as its OS you can quite easily (5 mins) install Google Play on your Kindle (just Google it) and then you have access to all Android apps. This means you can install all the productivity apps and games you are familiar with.
Finally, although the Kindle has less built-in memory than the iPad, 32GB max vs. 128GB (add $100 to the iPad's price for this) you can easily upgrade the Kindle's storage by using a micro SD card ($38.20 for a 128GB card). In conclusion, the Kindle Fire is a perfectly usable tablet. If work was paying for my new tablet I'd insist on the iPad, but if I was paying myself I'd buy the Kindle Fire and spend the $269 I'd save on something else.