The Kindle Fire was given to me as an early Christmas gift, and I have been playing with it extensively for a week. The design is minimal at best, but I happen to like it. The soft touch/ rubbery back is comfortable to hold, and makes the Fire easy to grip. The display is crisp, bright, and easy to read but it is very glossy and I had trouble reading it in a lit room. It became almost impossible to view outside. The screen also collects smudges very easily, but fortunately they are easy to clean off. The real problem for me with the Kindle Fire is the skin that Amazon put on it. I personally find it very difficult to use the carousel and I constantly skip over the things I try to select. I often have to touch things several times to get them to open, and I have to hold down certain buttons (like the home button) for it to register my press. Battery life tends to be quite good, especially if you spend most of your time reading, however if the screen brightness is all the way up the battery life suffers severely (in my experience).