To start off, this is not about comparing the Amazon Kindle Fire to other products out in the market, nor is it about its physical capacities either.  This is a look as to what the Kindle Fire is packing and not what it’s lacking, specifically as it pertains to the media side of the mobile world.  The Kindle Fire, after all, is a media cloud device–it’s not about the specs, but rather it’s about providing access to a wealth of media and services that circle around Amazon’s booming ecosystem, from books to movies, music and beyond.

Amazon is renowned for the services they offer in books, movies, songs, and TV shows and these services make up the core of the Kindle Fire.  It’s actually quite nice to see that they incorporated something that they are known for.  In this way, the Kindle Fire holds the promise of a media hub that’s built around Amazon’s strengths.

The 7” screen is perfect for watching movies and TV shows you can rent, buy, download and even stream directly from Amazon.  You can choose from over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases, in just a simple tap.  And if you are an Amazon Prime member, you get unlimited, commercial-free streaming. And listening to music is almost perfect, as you can stream your music library from the Amazon Cloud Drive or download it to your device and listen to your tunes offline.  And with over 17 million songs in the Amazon MP3 Store, you just may be in music heaven.

Books and magazines come alive on the Kindle Fire’s color rich display, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d actually think you’re holding the real thing.  This is an aspect of the tablet experience Amazon’s been working on for several years now.  Magazines come with glossy, full-color layouts, photographs and illustrations.  You can choose from hundreds of titles, such as Bon Appetit, Elle, and Oprah, as well as special edition titles like Vanity Fair, Wired, and GQ, some of which come with built-in video, audio and other interactive features.  So reading a magazine with the Kindle Fire is actually better than the real thing.

Beyond magazines, the Kindle Fire boasts best sellers, children’s books, comic books and even cook books.  And of the 1 million books in the Kindle Store, 800,000 titles are priced at or under $10.  Plus, if you’re more into reading really old books but you’re deathly allergic to dust or old things, you can enjoy those pre-1923 books sneeze-free.  Amazon’s library holds more than two million, free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books.  And enticing your kids to read books won’t be a daunting task anymore as there are over a thousand beautifully-illustrated children’s books, including favorites like Brown Bear, Curious George, and Circus Ship.

With Amazon’s Whispersync technology that automatically syncs your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across your devices, you don’t have to hit your head just so you can remember where you left things off.  But wait, there’s more!  Whispersync now extends to videos.  So if you’re streaming a movie on your Kindle Fire, then you suddenly decide you’d prefer to watch it on your TV, it automatically picks up where you left off.

As for the apps, since Android is its base platform, Android game and app developers can make their products available to users via Amazon’s own Android app store.  And with its Silk “cloud accelerated” browser, web browsing is as smooth as, well, silk (as long as you have a good Wi-Fi connection).  Amazon says Silk is faster than any other web browser available to date, and it also supports Flash.

The Kindle Fire is like a media melting pot, somewhere between an e-Reader and a mobile tablet.  It’s not trying to compete directly with the iPad’s full-featured tablet, but it delivers more media beyond book-reading to take full advantage of the services Amazon’s been building out for the past couple of years.  It’s not fully mobile, but it works independently of carriers, and sometimes that’s a perk in and of itself.  True to Amazon’s nature, the Kindle Fire is its own breed of devices, serving a wide consumer market with distinct benefits that appeal to the majority of mobile users’ needs.