Amazon’s premium tablet, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″, is now shipping to those that pre-ordered. It’s got a high resolution 1920×1200 display, granting it a PPI of 254, versus around 300 PPI on the Nexus 10. But, it’s priced lower than the Nexus 10 at just $299 for the 16GB WiFi model, compared to a starting price of $399 for the Nexus 10. With LTE and 64GB of storage, the Fire HD 8.9″ can cost as much as $599. It’s running Android with Amazon’s heavily-modified skin on top. It’s an Amazon-content-consumption-device, and that’s a good thing considering the breadth of multimedia that is now available to Amazon members. If you’re paying for Amazon Prime, you get access to a ton of streaming video titles at no extra cost.

• Like the Kindle Fire HD 7″, the 8.9″ Fire HD feels fantastic in-hand, thanks to a large bezel around the device and soft-touch plastic on the back
• The speakers are amazing! Somehow they are able to produce hints of surround sound, even when they’re fired away from you
• The display is fantastic: it has terrific color saturation and contrast, and because of the 254PPI, you won’t be able to see pixels from an average viewing distance
• This tablet would be much more awesome if it could run stock Android. A quick look over at XDA shows us that there is little progress on rooting the Fire HD 8.9; we’ll keep an eye on it