Kindle Fire finally comes to Europe

As announced yesterday in the news, Amazon are finally releasing the Kindle Fire in Europe.

And the great news is they have updated the Fire for its debut and are releasing 2 models. Both have 7" screens. The original Fire gets a slight update and is released for just £129. And the new Fire HD comes with a high resolution HD display with a 1280x800 resolution. Its price is also really nice at just £159 for the 16GB version and £199 for the 32GB version.

These are amazing prices for the spec. It means the 32GB Kindle Fire HD is the same price as the Google Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. They both only have 16GB on board giving the Fire HD a big advantage. The Nexus has the same resolution screen, but lacks a memory card port, so can't have its storage increased easily unless you connect a memory card reader to its usb port. The Tab 2 does have a card slot so you could increase its 16GB by up to a further 32GB. However the Tab 2 does lose out with its lower resolution screen. You have to wonder if Samsung will be updating the Tab's screen to match the new competitions resolution.

All three 7" tablets have their pros and cons. The Fire has some of the best specs for the price, but is running Amazon's customised version of Android which isn't compatible with the Android App store.

Finally some bad news. Amazon are also releasing a new larger 8.9" version, but only in the US. I wonder how practical importing one would be? Did anyone import the original Fire?

not really interested in the fire. amazon's custom OS is a deal killer for me, I'll go for the nexus 7. But I am very interested in the paperwhites. damn they're too quick to update their lines ! I just bought the kindle 4 this april ...

regarding your original question, amazon devices usually function based on the location of the account you register on them. So, as long as the content for fire hd is available in the UK, you should be ok. But I'ld advise asking them directly, there mught be cave eats ...