Nov. 15, 2012 at 2:37 PM ET
Video: In 1995, Jeff Bezos took his love of books and created Amazon.com. Seventeen years later he has transformed the way we read with the release of the Kindle ebooks. Jeff talks with TODAY’s Matt Lauer about being named 2012 businessperson of the year by Fortune magazine and what the future holds for Amazon.
The Kindle Fire HD was announced back in September, but the impressively decked-out 8.9-inch version wasn't ready to ship until today. If you've been thinking about buying into Amazon's ecosystem but yearned for a larger screen than the original Fire HD, this could be your chance.
The new device has a 1920x1080 (1080p) screen at 254 pixels per inch, which is close enough to the new iPad's 264 ppi that the difference wouldn't be noticeable. But of course the $299 Fire HD's nearest neighbor in price isn't the iPad, but the $329 iPad Mini, and without question the Kindle's display blows the Mini's out of the water.
We reviewed the smaller, 7-inch Fire HD shortly after it was announced, and while we liked it as a media consumption device, we were a bit disappointed at its lack of versatility. With the larger, more expensive 8.9-inch version, that lack might be even more emphasized.
If you mainly want a tablet for watching TV and movies, reading books, and playing the occasional game, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD seems (as we noted when it was announced) to be a real bargain. But app collectors and form-factor fetishists will naturally gravitate towards the useful, well-built iPads.
You can get the new tablet, in 16GB or 32GB and with or without 4G or built-in ads, at Amazon. There's currently a 2-week delay on shipment, but people who pre-ordered or got their order in first thing today should be receiving theirs in the next few days.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
