Kindle Fire Takes Heat Over Usability Issues

The Amazon Kindle Fire is  taking heat from consumers who find it clunky and hard to use. Worse yet, it's getting a bad review from usability guru Jakob Nielsen who says the Fire provides "a disappointingly poor user experience."

"Using the web with the Silk browser is clunky and error-prone. Reading downloaded magazines is not much better," Nielsen said in a recent review.

Most glaring was what Nielsen described as the "fat-finger problem," a phenomenon familiar to anyone who uses a smartphone touch screen.  

Nielsen described the problems of subjects who participated in a test he conducted: 

"You haven't seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you've watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire. One poor guy spent several minutes trying to log in to Facebook, but was repeatedly foiled by accidentally touching the wrong field or button — this on a page with only 2 text fields and 1 button." 

Volume control

A consumer who posts under the name "jocampo" on MobileRead.com echoed Nielsen's comments and added a few of her own:

"The lack of volume button is a negative point to me. And I would re-locate the power button or make it a slider (I've found myself pressing it by accident while using the unit) same for speakers, both are on same side, you cover those frequently while holding; I would put both speakers on the back, like the Nook Tablet."

It's not ink 

Several users posting to various sites commented on the Fire's weight, which also bothered Nielsen:

"The Fire is a heavy object. It's unpleasant to hold for extended periods of time. Unless you have forearm muscles like Popeye, you can't comfortably sit and read an engaging novel all evening," Nielsen said. "The lack of physical buttons for turning the page also impedes on the reading experience for fiction. On the older Kindles, it's easy to keep a finger on the button when all you use it for is to turn the page. In contrast, tapping an area of the screen disrupts reading enjoyment, is slightly error-prone, and leaves smudges on the screen. The Fire screen also has more glare than the traditional Kindle."

In fairness to the Fire, many of these comments also apply to the iPad, which this reviewer found to be inferior to the original Kindle for reading books.  The extra weight, the super-sensitive touch controls and the glare from the shiny screen were all negatives when reading text-heavy materials that don't benefit from the gee-whiz colors and other whoop-dee-doo features. 

"Most successful"

Amazon, meanwhile, says the Fire is the "most successful" new product it's ever launched but hasn't revealed any numbers.  

There's no question the Fire is low-priced.  It's hundreds of dollars less than the iPad.  And there's no question that Amazon has a huge and constantly-growing trove of books, magazines, movies and so forth -- all floating along in the cloud just waiting to be downloaded by some lucky consumer whose account will be debited instantly for each purchase.

And therein may lie the rub.  While one can quibble all day about weight, brightness and so forth, the Fire is a lot of tablet for the money.  Many speculate Amazon is selling the device at or below cost, just as in the legendary marketing strategy that supposedly led Gillette to sell its spiffy razors for less than cost so that it could sell a constant stream of blades.

The real question for consumers then becomes: what happens down the road, when just about everyone has a Kindle, Kindle Fire or whatever device the Amazon gods dream up next?

Will there still be 99-cent books?  Will Amazon still offer tens of thousands of free movies and high-def TV shows to its Premium customers?  Or will Amazon, once its user base reaches critical mass, simply put the hammer down and do what Economics 101 predicts -- namely, raise prices for consumers and take a bigger bite out of the authors, publishers, musicians and producers who supply its content?

Guess we don't learn the answer til the last chapter.