Amazon's Kindle Fire, the newest 7 inch tablet to hit the shelves, may well be an impressive piece of kit. But, as with the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and other 7 inch tablets, I've often wondered whether the size is more of a limitation than a useful feature. My reasoning for this comes from first hand experience with such tablets. It was on a trip to PC World not long after the launce of the Samsung Galaxy Tab that I got my first look at this new 7 inch form factor.

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After fiddling around with an iPad in the Apple store a couple of weeks prior, I had high hopes. Sadly I felt disappointed. Not so much with the quality of the device, afterall it was decent enough (albeit running a version of Android that was only ever intended for phones). No my problem came with the screen size. It was when I loaded up my first web page on the device that it became all too apparent. I couldn't read the text on the site without zooming in. I quickly realised that any possible portability advantage over the 9.7 inch iPad was wiped out by this horrendous limitation. If you had to zoom in to read what was on the site, how was this an improvement over Apple's larger device on which you can comfortably read a website without zooming.

The 7 inch display form factor has seen numerous attempts by various manufacturers since then, but to me it continually seems to fail to work for easy web browsing. Yes display quality has improved and resolutions are higher, but the text is just too small to read comfortably. And therein lies my issue. I don't wish to take anything away from the Kindle Fire, it's a truly great looking device with a handy price tag to boot. But if mobile web is a requirement, I'd still lean towards the iPad. In fact, personally I would rather invest in a netbook for the same price as the Kindle Fire and have a much more useable device.

Did Apple hit the nail on the head and find the sweet spot for tablet size on their first attempt? Are 7 inch tablets just impractical for web browsing? Would you rather have a netbook than a 7 inch tablet? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one. Please comment below and tell me what you think.