Amazon Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2: Devices in Different Leagues

Some analysts in the technology field praised Amazon’s new Kindle Fire Tablet, calling it the only true competitor for Apple’s iPad.

The Kindle Fire certainly undercuts the iPad in terms of pricing with a $199 sticker.

The lowest price 16 GB iPad 2 usually retails at around $499 making it less affordable than Amazon’s device.

Nevertheless, can a tablet with a lower price and smaller frame outdo the iPad 2, a device that has dominated the tablet market since the original version’s entry in 2009?

Technology blog iDownloadblog recently pitted the two tablets against each other by testing speeds and other aspects of the devices.

In truth, these two devices are in different leagues with the iPad including a more powerful dual-core processor and optimized software. It allows the iPad 2 to boot much quicker that the Amazon Kindle Fire during the test video.

Safari also worked faster on the iPad 2 to no surprise outdoing the Kindle Fire’s Silk browser that offloads page rendering to the Amazon cloud.

However, in Kindle Fire’s favor, Amazon’s device was loading Flash content while Apple’s tablet does not support Flash. Although Adobe recently announced it was halting future Flash endeavors, in favor of HMTL 5.

Graphics on the iPad 2 also proved to be smoother in the test while the Kindle Fire is choppy when it comes to displaying various screens and scrolling.

However, Kindle Fire did stream Netflix much more smoothly over the iPad 2. This is mostly due to the new version of their Android client that is not yet available for Apple’s device.

The tests performed on the devices were quite basic, but its shows that customers get what they pay.

“There’s really no comparing Kindle Fire to iPad 2, be it on the price, overall polish, performance or shininess,” said technology website 9to5Mac.

The website suggested that the Kindle Fire is more of a competitor for Android tablets than for the iPad.