Kindle Fire – do I need a high speed charger?

Xmas pressie for daughter. My wife has been told a high speed charger is pretty much essential – is this true? Can’t you just charge if off a normal plug / laptop, or does this take ages?

thanks

we just plug the usb cable from the mrs kindle into an iphone charger … charges just fine

its not like trying to charge the ipad from usb – that takes like 8 hours to get 30% in it ….

Some info here

http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2U9W2MML8EWQR

It’s right, sort of.

USB power historically was low power / high power, IIRC something like 100mA and 500mA. The low power spec is essentially trickle charge, and USB should negotiate higher power ‘intelligently’ as needed. In this sense, yes, you need a high power charger.

However. There’s also now a thing called a Dedicated Charger Port, which is higher power. This is what the iPad uses, IIRC the plug supplied with it is a 1A device, and the USB spec goes higher still (up to 1.5A I think). Do you need one of these? No.

EDIT – the link above mentions the Kindle Fire, which is an Android tablet rather than a Kindle ‘proper’ – it looks like this does need a DCP, but it’s an exception.

On the upside, pretty much all USB mains charger plugs are high power devices (and your laptop USB port should be too). I’ve not seen one that isn’t, at any rate. So whilst the advice you’ve been given is technically correct, it’s a non-issue in practical terms.

I think.