Plenty of Kindle Fires have flown off store shelves since the device was announced. What’s more, the Fire seems to be at the top of everyone’s holiday wish list. While the Fire comes backed by Amazon’s amazing library, some cool options, and a decent price tag, the Fire has one major problem that you should know about before you choose this tablet (more on that in a moment). Amazon released some Fire updates today, but none of them address the one problem that reviewers across the board have been complaining about: this tablet is slow – very slow.

Is Amazon unaware of this issue or is the company just having problems fixing it? Nobody can say for sure what’s happening, but the Fire needs to pick up some speed. Otherwise, quite a few gift recipients aren’t going to be too thrilled about the pace at which the Fire moves. Then again, Amazon never said that this tablet should be hailed for its speed, or, for that matter, for the device itself.

Back In Time

If we head back in time a bit to the original Fire announcement, we’ll see that Amazon was banking on its collection of books and music. While the Fire itself is still a fun toy that looks good and is relatively solid, Amazon never wanted the Fire to stand out for its device capabilities. Yet, Amazon did produce the original Silk browser, which is said to have quite a few nice touches. In the end, Amazon’s Fire received much praise all around thanks to its browser and device capabilities.

Now that the Fire has been around for awhile, and the general buzz has worn off, some are wondering why this device is so slow. It does, after all, have a lot of the same guts (including a 1 GHz dual-core processor). Still, Amazon reminds consumers time and again, the Fire is a $200 device, which is significantly less than what the iPad 2 is going for. Does this mean that the Fire has the right to be slower? When loading some pages with Silk, users may have to wait up to three minutes – this just isn’t the case with the iPad 2.

Should You Still Buy a Fire?

That depends on what you want to do with your device. If you just want to read books, the Fire is a cool and inexpensive toy to have. If you’re looking to purchase a tablet that’s fast and capable of browsing the Internet at quick speeds, the Fire is not your best bet. Sure, the iPad 2 is around $500 dollars, and that’s a good $300 more than the Fire, but the iPad is bound to bring Internet users a lot more pleasure.

In this reviewer’s humble opinion, saving up to purchase the iPad 2 might be a good idea. I use the word “might” here because rumor has it that Apple will be releasing an iPad 3 soon, and those iPad 2 prices might start to drop (or not). It’s somewhat difficult to compare the Fire and the iPad 2, but if you’re looking for a device that will let you surf the net quickly and without complications, the iPad 2 is a much better option – until Amazon fixes the speed issue, that is.