ZDnet’s Larry Dignan: Review: My 20 minutes with Amazon’s latest Kindle:
When playing with the new Kindle a few things jump out at you. First, it’s all screen since the frame around the device is much smaller (actually 21 percent) than its predecessor. It’s also light—a critical point for those of us that haven’t found any way to truly consolidate our devices. And the pages turn quickly.
Overall, the new Kindle swung me back on to the side of e-readers in this never-ending debate about multifunction (think iPad) vs. mostly single function devices (e-readers). The latest Kindle (in white and graphite) is a handy extra gadget to carry around. For me, the e-reader vs. iPad debate doesn’t necessarily apply since it’s not a zero sum affair. There will be iPad/Kindle households depending on the family.
It seemed as light as my phone. For giggles, I compared a few weights. The first Motorola Droid weighs 6 ounces and change. Droid X weighs 5.44 ounces. The iPhone 4 weighs 4.8 ounces. Overall, the latest Kindle is 15 percent lighter than its previous version, but feels less since the body around the 6-inch screen is smaller. But the real comparison for the latest Kindle is the Nook, which feels downright heavy at 11.6 ounces (the Wi-Fi only version), and the iPad, at 1.5 pounds.
Relative to the Nook, the Kindle page turns are blistering. Amazon treats page turns the way the NFL views 40-yard dash times—you just can’t be too fast.
The Kindle’s case—sold separately for a pricey $59.99—taps into the device’s batter when needed to provide a built in light for nighttime reading. Looks handy, but the cover costs nearly half as much as the Wi-Fi-only Kindle.
For education, the Kindle makes sense for history and English majors—based on physical book consolidation—but the lack of color would rule it out for science and engineering majors who would have to rely heavily on graphics.
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Washington Post: Hands On With Amazon’s Zippy, Alluring Kindle:
For the first time, I could comfortably hold a Kindle e-reader in one hand. At 8.7 ounces, the Kindle is not the lightest such device on the market–the Kobo eReader, which also has a 6-inch display, is nearly one ounce lighter; and the Bookeen Cybook Opus is lighter still, at 5.3 ounces. But the Kindle is lighter than Barnes & Noble’s Nook (11.6 ounces for Nook Wi-Fi, 12.1 ounces for Nook Wi-Fi + 3G)…..I could immediately tell that using the third-generation Kindle would be a more pleasing experience than with earlier models. The unit felt very balanced in the hand, and the buttons felt like they were in convenient, ergonomic places (more on that in a moment).
To achieve this smaller design, Amazon has essentially trimmed the white space around the bezels, so that the device is now dominated by its 6-inch screen, although there’s still enough room around the edges for your fingers to comfortably rest. The keyboard has been tightened, with the keys slightly closer, the row of numbers removed (to get to numbers, you now have to press the symbol button, much as you do on a touchscreen cell phone’s keyboard). The navigation buttons have been clustered together and rearranged; and more notably, the page-forward and -back buttons have shrunk dramatically, to just one-quarter of an inch wide.
One of the things I disliked about the Kindle 2 was that the page-forward and -back buttons depressed inward, into the screen. The much slimmer buttons for this third-generation Kindle now depress away from the screen, like a rocker-style button that melds into the edge of the device. I prefer this approach, as my finger didn’t need to hover in a single place to turn the page; instead, I could mix up my hand location, and still turn the page with my palm heel, or even the length of my thumb–a vastly superior experience.
The keyboard buttons are more rounded, and as they’re closer together, I found this keyboard easier to type on than that of the Kindle 2, and typing was more akin to what I’m used to on a physical cell phone keyboard.
The Home button has moved to the bottom of the keyboard, and the joystick navigation cluster of the Kindle 2 has been replaced by a D-pad-like approach with a five-way navigation square, with an oval Menu button above it and a Back button beneath it. In my limited use of the new unit, I found this organization easy to adapt to, and certainly better than the comparatively stiff joystick.
In my limited hands-on time with the new Kindle, this gadget made an unusually quick, and positive, impression. While I need to spend more time with it to confirm my initial impressions, the new Kindle’s solid build quality, improved design, integrated store, and cross-platform transportability (books are usable on any Kindle reader app, including iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and PC) all add up to a winner poised to top the pack.
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Pocket-Lint: PHOTOS: Amazon Kindle Wi-Fi hands-on: Visit the site to view a lot of pictures.
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