There's one glaring weakness in Amazon's vast media ecosystem. One area in which this digital giant bows down to both Apple and Google.

When it comes to apps, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are sorely lacking. Amazon tried to head this issue off more than 18 months ago when it introduced the Amazon Appstore to our US cousins, but even with all of its work it still finds itself well short for the UK launch.

While many of the major players are present, such as Facebook, Flipboard and Evernote, there are also some major omissions.

We thought Dropbox was available pretty much everywhere - it's one of the main reasons the cloud-storage tool is so popular - but you have to download it directly from Dropbox if you want it on your Amazon Kindle Fire HD.

What is this, a Blackberry Playbook?

In fairness, though, the very fact that you can side-load non-official apps on to the Amazon Kindle Fire HD in this way is another sign of the device's hidden Android legacy, and adds another welcome dash of flexibility to the otherwise-rigid Amazon interface.

The games offering, too, is distinctly sub-standard.

Amazon has worked hard to get certain timed exclusives over the much larger Google Play store, and, as with the apps, there are a number of big hitters here.

Angry Birds Star Wars, Temple Run 2, Plants vs Zombies, Jetpack Joyride, Real Racing 3 - all present and accounted for.

For every game that's here, though, there are several that aren't. Obviously Apple reigns supreme when it comes to mobile gaming, but even compared to the frequently-derided (though vastly improved) Google Play store, this is a little barren on the gaming front.

We have Need For Speed Most Wanted here, but where's Draw Race 2? The Amazon Appstore has Temple Run 2, but where are Agent Dash and Whale Trail? Where's mega-gaming-experiment Curiosity?

In terms of how those games that are present perform, the Amazon Kindle Fire's 1.2GHz dual-core CPU is more than adequate for casual time wasters like Cut The Rope and Angry Birds.

However, we were also impressed with how they handled meatier 3D fare like Dead Space and Real Racing 3. The latter lacks the mirror reflection effects that can be found on the iPad version, which is disappointing, but otherwise the game runs smoothly on both devices.

Both Amazon Kindle Fire HD tablets are more than capable gaming devices, then - it's just a shame there aren't more games to enjoy on them.

In all of this we have to wonder why Amazon didn't just allow access to the Google Play store. Especially when you realise what a sluggish, difficult-to-navigate mess the Amazon Appstore is.

It's bizarre when you consider that the custom stores for music, videos and books are quite pleasant to use, if still a little slow.

When it comes to pre-installed apps, it's equally slim pickings.

Aside from the mentioned email, calendar and contacts apps, Amazon has included IMDb (which, as we've said, integrates nicely with video).

There's also a version of Skype to take advantage of that front-facing camera, as well as OfficeSuite for viewing MS Office files.

Arguably, the biggest omission here is a complete lack of mapping. Again, why Amazon didn't compromise a little and adopt Google's ready-made Maps app we're not sure. It's a mapping misstep of Apple proportions - although at least Apple tried to offer an alternative.