Amazon recently announced the Kindle Fire HD at a press conference in Santa Monica, Calif. Sept. 6. Reviews are in, and some are positive while others are negative.

Here is an overview of the Kindle Fire HD.

The Kindle Fire HD ranges from $199 (16GB 7-inch), $299 (16 GB) to $499 (32 GB) for the 4G LTE Wireless. It has an 8.9-inch screen, which has 25 percent less glare, two antennas for Wi-Fi, which gives a stronger signal. The Kindle HD will also have MIMO, which adds up to Wi-Fi that should be way faster than the competition, 41 percent faster than the iPad and 54 percent faster than the Nexus 7, according to Amazon.

The HD starts at 16GB of local storage, up from the 8GB of the original. It weighs 20 ounces and has 1920 x 1200 resolution with 254 ppi. It has longer battery life. It also has two speakers, one at the top and bottom of the device in portrait mode. It has an OMAP4470 processor.

The new Kindles have dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digitial Plus optimization as well as Whispersync for Voice, which Amazon syncs all your books across all your gadgets, that syncs your words-book with your audiobook. You can also sync up your progression in games. Another feature will be Immersion Reading. You can listen to the narration of your book while you read it. There is also X-Ray for movies and a camera. It also has "FreeTime," which allows parents to set time and content restrictions for kids.

Ups

Video

Many seem to like the video on the Kindle Fire HD.

According to WPTV, the video "really shines."

The new Kindle Fire HD has a faster processor, double the RAM, improved audio and a higher resolution screen that gives off less glare. With a  bigger screen, it can turn into a little TV.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime is Amazon's $79-a-year membership that includes free two-day shipping and access to over 13,000 streaming movies and TV shows.

Amazon announced EPIX earlier last week. It will involve a multi-year licensing agreement which will "beef up the company's Prime streaming service." The company notes such movies as "The Avengers," "Iron Man 2," "Thor," "The Hunger Games," and those are just a few of the 25,000 movies or TV episodes available on this service. The Prime Instant Video service currently costs customers a $79 per year fee, but also includes free two-day shipping on most Amazon products.

Amazon's Vice President of Video and Music, Bill Carr, said of the new deal:

"We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Prime Instant Video library for our customers. We have now more than doubled this selection of movies and TV episodes to over 25,000 titles in just under a year."

Netflix/HBO/NBC Content

WPTV reported, "The new versions of the Kindle Fire look like a boost for Netflix fans. The Netflix app was one of the first on the Kindle Fire, but it has struggled with streaming speed and quality issues. The beefed up processor power on the new Kindle Fire should fix that and make viewing movies on Netflix a more enjoyable experience. Netflix also has a larger library of available movies and TV shows.

HBO Go is a boost for Kindle Fire HD, and to turn your tablet into a TV. Its great for customers who watch popular shows such as "Boardwalk Empire," "Game of Thrones" and "True Blood," but there is no online-only subscription option. HBO Go is only for existing HBO subscribers on participating cable providers, according to WPTV.

Since HBO owns all its own content, the app is thorough, offering all episodes of popular shows -- 1,400 shows in total, according to HBO.

Amazon also did some recent updates to its Prime service. It added NBC content such as Friday Night Lights," "Parks and Recreations," "Parenthood," "Heroes," to the Amazon Prime library. Members can get access to the new content at no additional cost on Amazon's own Kindle Fire and other supported devices like Mac OS X computers, Windows PCs, Xbox, Playstation and iPad.

X-Ray

This feature provides insights into the book or movie you're enjoying.

According to the Associated Press, An on-screen tap during a movie will list actors in the scene. With more clicks, you can learn more about them from Amazon's movie information service IMDb. In books, X-Ray has been a popular feature on the Kindle Touch e-reader. That now works on Kindle Fire and gives you a bird's eye view of where characters or ideas appear later on in a book.

Games/Immersion/Whispersync

The Kindle Fire HD is getting a new game, Crytek's Fibble - Flick n' Roll -  in an exciting new form on the HD.

A dazzling physics-based puzzler, Fibble - Flick 'n' Roll will be available for Kindle Fire HD, inviting players to guide extraterrestrial explorer Fibble through colorful levels that will put their logic, skill and reflexes to the test. Two brand new areas feature in the Kindle Fire HD version of Fibble - Flick 'n' Roll, with the Holiday Hop and Summer Spin environments bringing the total number of levels on offer to 65, according to SacBee.

"Providing players with new ways to experience our games is always an exciting opportunity," said Nick Button-Brown, General Manager Games at Crytek. "The unique features of the Kindle Fire HD are ideally suited to showcasing all that Fibble has to offer, and we hope everyone who picks up the system will download the game and discover the joys of having Crytek quality at their fingertips."

It also features Whispersync for Voice, which Amazon syncs all your books across all your gadgets, that syncs your words-book with your audiobook. You can also sync up your progression in games. Another feature will be Immersion Reading. You can listen to the narration of your book while you read it.

DOWNS

Ads

The Business Insider reported that there is no way out of the ads that display on the Kindle Fire HD's lock screen.

"Unlike Amazon's policy with Kindle readers, you can't pay a bit extra to opt out of the ads. They baked that into that attractive $199 starting price," Business Insider said. "Based on Amazon's official documentation for the Kindle Fire, the ads seem most likely to promote Amazon products and services like e-books, music, movies, etc. But the same documentation shows ads for third-party stuff will sneak in."

Computer World said, "Whether or not that's a problem is up to you, but when you're dropping $200 to $500 on a device, you deserve to know it's going to be plastered with ads.

Suggested Items

Business Insider reported that many people woukld be bothered by suggested items when you browse.

"It gets worse. I've been perusing a bunch of hands-on photo galleries of the Kindle Fire HD and something caught my eye. Whenever you hover over an app, e-book, song, etc. in the Fire's content library, you're prompted to check out other apps or e-books or songs or whatever. Like reading Esquire? Check out GQ! Like playing Angry Birds? Check out Flight Control! Like Kanye West? Check out Jay Z! And so on...

"It's very similar to Amazon's experience on the web, and they could actually help customers find cool apps and music and games they'd like to try. However, I'm sure the suggested content will really bother some people, especially since it's so different than the tablet computing experience they're used to on devices like the iPad and Android tablets like Google's Nexus 7."

Performance

Computer World reported some reviews:

NBC News said: "Perhaps our expectations were too high or perhaps we'd been spoiled by the Nexus 7 and iPad, but the Kindle Fire HD seemed downright sluggish at times, lagging at odd moments."

Gizmodo said: "It's just not nearly as smooth as the Nexus 7 on Jelly Bean. ... It's bad enough that when you tap an icon, you wonder if you did it wrong, if maybe you didn't tap firmly enough."

Droid Life noted: "The UI itself is almost identical to the original Fire, including the consistent presence of lag from the home screen. Jumping between sections like Books or Videos takes a few seconds, making the overall experience feel cheap."

Applications

The Kindle Fire 2 will use Amazon's own Android app store, which has far more limited selection that the main Google Play Store for applications. According to Computer World, the Android app store also tends to be far slower in terms of processing and pushing out developer-made updates to apps (which generally come fast and furiously when unfettered). Also, since the HD doesn't have access to the Google Play Store, the apps you purchase won't be recorded and stored within the Play Store and linked to your Google account. There will be no record, and users may end up having to repurchase apps to get them on the Amazon tablets.

"To be clear, Amazon's app store does have a lot of big-name applications available -- but plenty of popular items are M.I.A., including most apps that are tied to Google services (Google Voice, Google Talk, Google+, Google Drive/Docs, Google Play, Google Earth, Google Authenticator, and so forth) as well as Google's Chrome for Android browser. Numerous third-party applications are absent as well; it's really just hit and miss."

Platform/Connectivity/Bing

The Kindle Fire HD is based on Google's Android operating system, Android 4.0, but they are not "Android tablets." Computer World reported, "Amazon has essentially created its own platform that revolves around its custom applications and content." The website said this is "far less flexible and powerful than the standard Android setup, but it's also far more straight-forward and focused."

Customers also won't have "the typical customizable Android home screen with widgets, live wallpapers, and all that sort of stuff. You also won't have the standard suite of Google applications, such as the Android Gmail app, YouTube app, Google Maps app, or Calendar app (with native Google Calendar syncing). You won't have Google's Voice Actions, either, or the newer Android 4.1-level Voice Search and Google Now functions. There's actually no indication Amazon intends to upgrade the device to a base of Android 4.1, which -- features aside -- provides noticeable performance enhancements over the 4.0 platform."

In terms of connectivity, the Fire HD does have HDMI out-ports but not GPS functionality or NFC for contact-free sharing.

It was recently revealed that Bing search enging will be the default for the Kindle Fire HD web browser, not Google search. This could be bad news for Google fans if they prefer Google over any other search engine.

What do you think of these ups and downs? Do they help you decide to buy the Kindle Fire HD? Sound off below!