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I was thinking of getting my 8-year-old son an iPad to entertain him on long trips with games and videos. But now I'm thinking that the Amazon Kindle Fire might be a good fit. Which would you recommend for him? The Kindle Fire or the iPad? What are the pros and cons of each device? Also, can you take pictures and film videos on the Kindle Fire?



The Kindle Fire has been the talk of the town ever since Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos introduced it to the world. So, Should you get an iPad or the Amazon Kindle Fire, or more properly, who should get an iPad and who would do better with a Kindle Fire? Truthfully, I think it's still a little too early to say. Since the Kindle Fire was just announced this week and I haven't even seen it in person yet. But make clear what you want to do with the gadget may help you make the right decision.

Do you want to read books?

They both do that. The iPad have a larger screen, but ebooks can have their font enlarged, so it doesn't matter. Neither will display PDFs well.

The Kindle Fire supports text formats: AZW, PRC (Mobipocket), PDF, DOC, TXT and DOCX. It supports still image formats: PNG, JPEG, BMP and GIF.

The Apple iPad 2 supports text formats including: DOCX, HTML, PDF, DOC, RTF and TXT. It supports still image formats, such as: PPT, TIFF, JPEG, GIF and PPTX.

Do you want to watch movies?

They both do that. The iPad has a bigger screen and might do it better. The Amazon Kindle Fire sports a color 7-inch touchscreen 1024 x 600 (169 ppi) display. The color depth has up to 16.2 million colors. The Apple iPad 2 has a 9.7 in. IPS TFT active matrix with an LED backlight. It has is touch-screen with a 1024 x 768 (132 ppi) display resolution. The display is fingerprint-resistant with oleophobic coating and supports multiple languages and characters simultaneously.

The Kindle Fire supports MPEG-4 digital video formats and AAC, WAV, OGG, MP3, and MIDI digital audio formats. It has stereo speakers.

The Apple iPad 2 supports MPEG-4 SP (up to 640x480), H.264 Main Profile Level 3.1 (up to 720p) and Motion JPEG (up to 1280x720) digital video formats. It also supports AAC, WAV, AIFF, Protected AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless and Audible digital audio formats. The iPad 2 comes with a microphone and speakers.

As for battery life, Amazon made its Kindle Fire have an 8-hour battery life, but the iPad boasts up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video or listening to music.

Do you travel a lot?

The iPad weighs in at 1.33 lbs., while the Kindle Fire is only .09125 lbs., so the Fire wins here. But it's smaller, with size specs that look like: 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45. The iPad measures in at 9.5 x 7.31 x 0.34. Amazon's claim to fame here is that it's "easy to hold in one hand, so it's small enough to fit anywhere….but so is an iPad, really.

Do you want to surf the web?

They both do that. The Fire has an exciting new type of browser. That could be fun.

Do you need wireless connectivity?

The Kindle Fire is Wi-Fi based with no 3G option. Apple offers both a WI-FI and 3G options on all of its iPad 2 GB models, but the 3G ones increase the price. Both have Wi-Fi specs of 802.11 b/g/n. Oh, and if you're wondering about Bluetooth ability, the Fire has none while the iPad is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Do you want to take pictures of stuff and send to Evernote?

Sadly, Amazon skipped putting in a camera so that obviously means no video, either. The iPad 2 has a front and rear camera, allowing you to take pictures and more. The back camera has HD video recording (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio, as well as a still camera with 5x digital zoom. The front camera features: Video recording, VGA up to 30 frames per second with audio; VGA-quality still camera.

Do you want to listen to music?

They both do that, but how realistic is it to stick the Fire in your pocket and go for a walk?

Conclusion

The Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle Fire are both great devices, to decide what to get for this holiday comes down more to whether you want to consume (Amazon) or create (Apple), because without the productivity apps and Bluetooth connectivity, the Fire is pretty restricted. The Fire doesn't go on sale until November 15, so you'll have plenty of time to read reviews of the device by then.