Amazon Kindle for Christmas: My personal product review
The Amazon Kindle was the #1 gift on Amazon this year, and, as a complete suprise gift from my wife, I was one of the many lucky recipients of the item. Here’s my personal, initial take on the product now that I’ve had some time to use it.
Very slick product design
The Amazon Kindle is super thin– 1/3 inch to be exact. In overall size it’s less weight and less bulky than pretty much any book you will ever own, including paperbacks.
Screen quality is impressive
The Kindle uses Electronic Paper Display (EPD) technology. To us regular folk, what does this mean? The screen does not have a lit display, and also reflects natural light like a piece of paper would. Its contrast ratio is equal or better than that of a newspaper, and it has a PPI (pixel per inch) ratio of 167. To put things into perspective, a standard LCD computer monitor display is around 85-100 ppi (printed materials are at least 300). All of this adds up to a screen that is easy on the eyes and extremely close to the experience of reading printed materials.
Power and battery life
The Kindle consumes next to no energy. It can be used for up to a week at a time without recharging. Once its battery is spent, a full charge takes only 2 hours and can be done via the included USB/AC Adapter combo cable. This means you can charge it on your computer or anything else with a USB cable, or via a standard outlet. Pretty convenient.
Free 3G wireless access
This was sort of interesting once I figured out what was happening. The Kindle utilizes 3G wireless technology courtesy of the Sprint network to allow users to download new books, read blogs, etc. from anywhere. This wireless access is provided by Amazon and requires no setup/configuration. They basically foot the bill to Sprint and make your life as easy as can be.
Coolest feature so far: built-in dictionary
The feature I’ve stumbled upon that is most useful so far is the built-in English dictionary. While reading, you can move a cursor next to any word and it will display the full definition of the word on screen. If you’re like me you often find yourself wondering what a word means, but are too lazy to go get a dictionary to look it up or Google it from your phone. The built-in dictionary solves this problem brilliantly and is a simple but powerful feature. And it might even improve my vocabulary.
I’m sure I’ll find things about the Kindle I don’t enjoy as I use it more. But as it stands it’s a very practical device that makes reading enjoyable while solving lots of problems associated with reading a real book (carrying them around, buying new books, bookmarking pages, looking up words, making personal notes).
Further reading
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