The official launch date for the Kindle Fire tablet is Nov. 15, but Amazon said today that it will be shipping the device a day early to those who have placed pre-orders.
"We're thrilled to be able to ship Kindle Fire to our customers earlier than we expected. Kindle Fire quickly became the bestselling item across all of Amazon.com, and based on customer response we're building millions more than we'd planned," Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement. "Customers are excited about Kindle Fire because it is a premium product at the non-premium price of only $199."
In reviewing the Kindle Fire, PCMag's Sascha Segan said the device "puts the Apple iPad on notice." The device offers "amazing specs for just $199" and is "open enough to attract geeks." Though it was occasionally sluggish, Segan said he was willing to be patient given the low price, and awarded it a PCMag's Editors' Choice.
Amazon unveiled the Fire in late September. It features a 7-inch, 1024-by-600 touch screen and includes 8GB of storage, plus access to the Amazon cloud. It runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a dual-core 1-GHz TI OMAP 4 processor and has 512MB of RAM. The Fire has a "split" Silk browser that takes advantage of Amazon's EC2 for faster Web browsing and buyers get one free month of Amazon Prime, which normally costs $79 per year.
During an earnings call last month, Amazon said pre-orders for the Fire exceeded expectations, prompting the company to ramp up productionon the tablets.
"September 28th was the biggest order day ever for Kindle, even bigger than previous holiday peak days," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said at the time. "In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic ink Kindles are double the previous launch. And based on what we're seeing with Kindle Fire pre-orders, we're increasing capacity and building millions more than we'd already planned."
For more, check out PCMag's Kindle Fire unboxing as well as our spec showdown between the Fire, Nook Tablet, and Nook Color. Are you trying to decide between the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire? Take our poll and let us know.