Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire has been available in the US for over a year, but has only just launched in the UK. It has some very nice visual features, but the rumoured text-to-speech is only for book content and can only be turned on if you can see and use the touch screen.

Like the Kobo Arc and the forthcoming Nook tablet, the Kindle Fire is being marketed as good for eReading and playing music and film. You also have access to an online store of other apps you can buy and download. Currently there are nowhere near as many apps as the iPad has, but it's early days.

Display options

The Kindle Fire has a clear and vibrant 7" colour screen, with a good contrast between the mainly white or orange text on a black background. It's a touch screen device whose main interface contains buttons at the top and a carousel of books and other apps and media you can scroll through by swiping the screen left and right with one finger.

Once a book is open, you can use a pinch and zoom gesture to change the font size - put two fingers together on the screen and push them apart to increase the font size; put two fingers on the screen separated and pull them together to decrease the font size.

No speech for me

There is text-to-speech for book content, but you have to use gestures on the touch screen to start it. The voice is an improvement over previous Kindles, but there is only a single female US voice from IVONA. The speed of the speech can be increased.

The Kindle Fire is a Bluetooth device, so it's possible to attach a Bluetooth keyboard to it. However, it doesn't seem possible to use the keyboard to control the voice in any way except change the volume.

In the US, it's possible to buy Audible audiobooks from the Fire, or copy them from a computer, and then play them. However, the Audiobook feature has been removed from the Fire in the UK (although confusingly there is reference to the feature in some areas). Apparently some people have managed to transfer audiobooks onto their Fire and play them, but Amazon don't make it easy. Hopefully at some point in the future Amazon will restore this functionality for UK readers.