Kindle Fire is the tablet version of Amazon’s popular e-reader, the Kindle. The first generation was released in 2011 and used a specialized version of the Android Gingerbread 2.3.3 operating system. Since then, the fire has gone through several generations and improvements. Now called only Fire, in 2014, the Kindle part of the name was removed. If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can stream endless videos to your Fire Device. Though if you were outside of the US or UK, you would need to use a VPN.
| Rank | VPN Service | Our Score | Server Locations | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | 9.8 | 160 |  |
| 2 |  | 9.4 | 87 | |
| 3 |  | 9.2 | 95 | |
| 4 |  | 9.0 | 110 | |
| 5 |  | 8.8 | 73 | |
As we mentioned, the Kindle Fire has gone through several changes. Always featuring a seven-inch touch-sensitive screen, the first generation of the device included 512 MB of ram and a 1ghz processor. Though it was listed at $199, their materials cost alone ranged anywhere from $150 – $201.70. Amazon’s thought behind that is they would make more money from the digital content for the Fire, rather than the device itself.
The second generation of the Fire saw some changes. For one, the amount of ram was doubled to 1GB, and the processor speed was upgraded to 1.2 GHz. Additionally, the price was dropped to $159. As with any technology, time means that costs drop. At that point, the video-friendly HD version was released at $199 for the 7-inch display and $299 for the 9-inch version.
The latest version of the Fire is the Fire HDX 8.9. It showcases 2GB of ram as well as a quad-core, 2.5ghz processor. Like many other tablets these days, the Fire HDX includes an 8-megapixel selfie camera and a front-facing 720p camera. Audio is also crisp and clean because all Fires use Dolby technology. These features are just perfect for streaming video from Amazon Prime or having a video chat with someone. They are also good reasons to use a VPN.
If you are reading this, you probably already know what a VPN is. However, in case you don’t or need a refresher, we will explain it in easy language along with the benefits of using one with the Fire device. A virtual private network (VPN) is software that creates a secure connection to a server, possibly in another country, depending on your purpose. By doing this, a layer of encryption is added to anything you do online, as long as you are connected to the VPN. Whether you are communicating with someone, or just browsing material online, there is a potential for any wireless activity to be intercepted. Even if you are at a location that specifies they have secure wireless, there is no need to take the risk.
Another good reason to use a VPN is because of its ability to unblock access to geo-restricted content or sites. Geo-blocking is a technology that identifies a user’s location based on IP address. This technology creates a barrier that will either keep blocked websites out (depending on where you are in the world) or restrict content to a specific area. By selecting a server in a different country, you could get around these restrictions. Let’s use an example to clarify this scenario. Suppose you lived in the USA, and you had an Amazon Prime subscription and/or a Netflix subscription. With a VPN, you could connect to a server in the UK and view their library, or visa-versa. Since both of these streaming services are known to have different libraries in different regions, you could gain access to areas you would not normally. The same could be said for any other region you wanted to connect to.
Now that we have explained the concepts, we will have a look at the options. No matter which company you go with, they will have different protocols you may use. All of the selections we offer here use secure encryption, but using a version of the OpenVPN protocol would always provide you with the best security. If speed is of the essence, you would use OpenVPN (UDP). That is the best option for VoIP, Skype, online gaming, or even using streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Pandora. If you have connection issues or problems with the connection dropping, you could switch to OpenVPN (TCP). The TCP version is not quite as fast, but the data is error checked. Now that we have gone over that, we will go over the companies that are good for specific reasons.
If you want to unblock content or secure your data, we recommend ExpressVPN. They don’t keep any kind of logs and they offer a kill switch feature, so it will make sure you are protected when and if the connection drops. For using streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Pandora, ExpressVPN again is the best choice. Because they offer an Android client, you should have no problems in supporting Fire. They also have the fastest network in North America and Europe, so you would only need to connect, and you could enjoy streaming blocked content from other countries.
If you only want to check out geo-restricted content, your best option is to go with the MediaStreamer (Smart DNS) feature of ExpressVPN. The Smart DNS with their VPN will aid in unblocking channels without a slight speed loss. Of course, that depends if the SmartDNS unblocks the specific channel you wish to see. Because of the nature of Wi-Fi, we would suggest using the encrypted option. There is no need to sacrifice security for speed. Whereas speed could be a problem if you are trying to stream sometimes, as long as you don’t see any quality difference, the extra layer of encryption the VPN adds more than makes up for any speed you might lose. Both are included with your ExpressVPN membership.
Check out our top 10 VPN services list if you want other options, but there should not be a need to. In choosing the best overall selections in this post, we used security, speed, price, and server availability as criteria for our choices. Also, we also picked the companies with large numbers of network servers you may wish to connect to for the best viewing. What you want to look for in a dependable VPN provider is one that will keep you safe, and have fast networks to give you the option to stream high definition content from other countries.