Some of you might have noticed the announcement today that Amazon is coming out with three new Kindle Fires. I am thinking of buying one - mostly for travel, but sometimes for reading. I am a technology "sorta-dumbass." I can work things and am not stupid, but it isn't always intuitive to me. I was looking at the two 8.9 Kindle Fires. One is $299 and one is $499. The $499 is a 4G LTE wireless one and it seems the difference between it and the $299 one is that it has the 4G LTE, cloud storage and 250 MB a month (for a yearly price of $49.99). Here are my questions. With the cheaper $299 one, can I: surf the 'net if I'm near a wifi place (like on my couch, or in some airport or motel). Can I watch a movie by streaming with this for no extra cost? Thanks for any help. I really want the $299 one for the price, but want to make sure it does what I want. At the minimum, I need to be able to surf the 'net sometimes in addition to being able to read books, but I'd like the capability to see movies through my Amazon Prime. If I can't, I can't, but I figured I'd ask. You guys know technical stuff. P.S. $499 is a bit pricey for me, and no, no Apple crapple. I find Apple to be very overpriced and not worth the extra cost. I'm a mid-range cost type person; don't buy the cheapest crap, but don't get the most expensive. For one, you get crap; for the other, you get ripped off. Mid-range seems to work out the best.
Get the $299 model. So long as you have Wifi access wherever you are, you can do everything the more expensive model can do. The only difference is that if you're somewhere where there's no Wifi, you won't have Internet access, but any content already downloaded onto your device (such as ebooks and movies) is still available to you. And, honestly, a $250/month data plan is not enough to actually stream TV shows, movies, etc. Light web browsing and email is all that's good for. Also, you get cloud storage with all models, so that's not even an issue.
The $299 model will work for surfing the net and video stream as long as long as you have wifi access. If you already have Amazon Prime, then yes, you can stream video from Amazon with no extra cost (again assuming you've already paid for Amazon Prime on your own, I'm unclear if the Kindle Fire comes with a Prime subscription or not). You could also subscribe to Netflix Instant if you find Amazon's video streaming selection to be thin (it's like 7.99 a month I think). Yes you can also surf the net or read books as well. You get some useful Android apps from Amazon's app store too. The $499 model is basically like having a phone data connection. But keep in mind 250MB isn't really enough for lots of video streaming. You should go with the wifi $299 version.
Given how severely the $499 one's data plan is capped, it seems like a tremendous ripoff. Two hundred more bucks for a feature they basically punish you for using? Classy.
I read that an thought, "You can't use a Kindle for travel! It's an e-reader, not a vehicle or anything - unless they made a serious upgrade that I haven't paid any attention to. Can it double as a Visa and a boarding pass?"
Am I the only one who thought this was about a big forest fire in the Brazilian jungle? Oh, those poor little monkeys . . .