Amazon Kindle Fire HD review

Battery life

Amazon claims that the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is good for 10 hours of use in between charges (this is actually down from 11 on last year's edition), and everything I've experienced in our hands-on time suggests that they're about right.

With the screen cranked up to full brightness and in heavy usage (video watching, gaming and web browsing) it came up a little short of double figures on the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, but it's still very respectable and in line with its big rival, the iPad mini.

After playing our standard self-installed test movie, which is 720p and one hour and thirty minutes long, with the screen brightness cranked up to full and Wi-Fi and notifications on, I was left with more than 80 per cent battery life in the tank. Not bad at all.

Arguably of more interest when it comes to battery life is Amazon's decision to omit a mains charger from both packages. You get a USB lead, which will charge the tablet through your computer or a generic USB mains adapter, but it's an odd omission nonetheless.

If you wish, you can buy Amazon's PowerFast charger, though this will set you a back a pretty wallet-busting £17.99. That's a bit steep, but it does promise to fully charge your Amazon Kindle Fire HD in less than five hours - although this is no quicker than the iPad mini, despite both having a capacity of 4400mAh.

Connectivity

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD is Wi-Fi-only, so you won't be able to carry them around and take advantage of 3G connectivity. Still, with tablets that's far less of an issue for most users. If you're planning on taking the tablet out on the road and connecting to the web, you'll have to plump up the extra cash and pick-up the Kindle Fire HDX model.

Amazon has ditched the MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out) technology that boosted Wi-Fi speeds on the last model, sticking to plain old Dual Band Wi-Fi this time around.

There is a bit of a noticeable difference between the two models, but I can confirm that my connection didn't drop in the slightest, regardless of where I was in my, albeit small, flat.

I tried downloading a number of large email files on both Amazon Kindle Fire HDs and then did the same on my iPad mini with Retina display, but couldn't see much difference.

Outside of this, The Amazon Kindle Fire HD comes with just a microUSB connection. Sadly, Amazon has done away with the microHDMI port that last year's model had - so no outputting to the big screen.

The tablet also comes with Bluetooth for use with speakers, keyboards and other wireless peripherals. There's no microSD card slot.