Kindle Touch Review
November 27th, 2011, 5:32pm by Mike
It’s been a while since I’ve done a gadget review — since it’s been a while that I’ve gotten a gadget worthy of putting up here! But last week I got a Kindle Touch, and so far, it’s great.
While I love my iPad, it’s not the best for all situations — the big, bright screen and long battery life come at a price, namely, size and weight. While I’ll definitely continue to travel with it, and use it as my main leisure computer, it’s a little big to whip out on the train every day to read news or a book. On the other hand, the iPhone, while completely portable, is not optimal for reading, but isn’t bad for a train ride. Looking around, I noticed that most people had solved this “problem” with a Kindle — it’s super-light, there’s always light to read by, and the screen is great for reading.
So I got the Kindle Touch, wifi only, with special offers. It was $99, and I also got a $10 power adapter (which I wouldn’t have gotten if I’d realized it was just an outlet to USB adapter — I already have a ton of those.
A few first impressions:
- It’s super-light. And since it’s relatively cheap ($100), I feel like I don’t have to be as careful with it as the iPad. I have a pocket on my computer bag that’s perfect for it, so probably won’t even buy a case, keeping it that much smaller.
- The e-ink screen probably is easier on the eyes than the LCD screen of the iPad or phone. I’m guessing that it’ll be nicer to read in the evening, rather than staring at a bright screen in bed (though, of course, you have to have a light on). There have been studies saying that looking at LCDs late at night makes it harder to go to sleep, but I’m not sure I believe those studies, having fallen asleep in front of the computer, or with phone in hand, plenty of times.
- The battery life is phenomenal. It shipped about half charged. After 4 and a half days of playing with it quite a bit (and wifi on the whole time), I’ve depleted it to about 25%, and haven’t had to charge it yet.
- I actually don’t mind the special offers — in fact, I kinda like them. They appear as the screensaver, and at the bottom of the home screen — never while reading. I think it’s the equivalent of throwing a magazine in your bag with it folded back to a page with an ad — you never really get bothered by them, and occasionally you see something interesting. The first ad I saw (genius by Amazon) was for 50% off a Kindle case, but you had to click on the offer the day you registered your Kindle. It’s a great way to persuade people to click on a link and see what happens, and that it’s really not intrusive. It mailed me a coupon code that’s good for a month.
My plan is to use it mainly for library books, brief news, and pharma industry RSS feeds to read on the train. Library books work great (I’d already been borrowing Kindle library books on the iPad/iPhone). For news, I got a free trial subscription to The Guardian ($10/month after trial) — it was nice, but it’s a little much to read (while I love the Guardian on the iPad, where they have a phenomenal app (with a 3-month free trial), it’s tough to read a whole paper on the Kindle, I think). I also got a free trial to Reuters ($10/month after trial), and actually like it better — there’s more relevant news.
For work RSS feeds, I’m running Calibre on my server, and getting sending news to my Kindle every day, for free (as long as you’re on wifi, delivery to Kindle is free, and I only have wifi). As such, I’ll probably also use this to replace Reuters’ paid service and just use RSS. Like everything else when you’re running your own server, it probably causes as many problems as it solves, but it’s fun, and so far, it’s working pretty well.
So far, the only problem is that you can’t view mailed items in the Kindle’s “periodical view,” which makes it easy to navigate things with a sections/articles format (including RSS). This is a quirk of the Kindle Touch and Fire — the basic Kindle 4 works fine on this. I’m guessing there will be a tweak for this down the road, or that Amazon will add this back in with a software update. But even if not, it’s fairly minor I think.
What do you guys think of the Kindle? I think I’m about the last one to get one (I know Jake and Serena both have them, right?).
December 6th, 2011 at 7:28 am
Decided to return the Kindle Touch for a standard Kindle. There really isn’t a huge advantage of the touchscreen (in fact, it makes one-handed operation a little harder), and the periodical formatting thing is more important to me than I originally thought.