It's great as a reader, video player, or (somewhat) game player.

Everything else on it sucks ass: browsing, email, whatever.

I don't know about the latest version though. It's probably faster.

Prime gives you free video (the selection is a bit worse than Netflix) and free rental books each month. Unfortunately you can't get the free rentals on anything other than a Kindle device, or I'd recommend you just get an iPad Mini or Nexus.