I've owned every model of the Kindle (minus the comically large DX) - it's been fun to watch them iterate and refine this device. It really is a great product and the price point is always within my "insta-splurge" budget. I read roughly 10-20 books a year on the Kindle.
The Kindle Voyager fixes the biggest complaint I have with the Paperwhite: page turning via touching the screen is worse than the physical buttons on older-gen Kindles. And the auto-brightness sensor means there is one less thing for me to fiddle with. Higher DPI and thinner (flush bezel looks sexy!) are just icing on the cake.
It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much - and why I've owned every model - but something just feels right to me about reading with it. It's modern but familiar and so much more convenient for me (click Buy Now on amazon.com and the book is loaded by the time I walk over to pick it up from the shelf).
FYI: I always buy the models "With special offers" (ads shown on the lock screen - but usually Amazon does a free giftcard offer during the first few weeks so free $$) and "WiFi" (I've rarely used the 3G - and you can always just tether to most phones nowadays anyway).
>It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much
i feel the same way. I've never really loved any piece of tech the way i love my kindle(s). An iPad or a Phone is just a tool, but i've got a totally irrational emotional attachment to my kindle. It's kind of like the irrational emotional attachment proponents of paper books talk about when explaining why they could never buy an e-reader.
I have given my iPad(s) away to family, even bought a few for family, but I never keep one. All I need is my phone and my kindle. I even take it when I take the bicycle out for a ride.
I have probably read more books in the few years I have owned a Kindle than in the forty preceding it.
Now I have found difficulty getting my niece and nephew to read on it, they seem very much at that stage of "its not color its old". So when they get e ink to color maybe that will help.
I am a little disappointed in the price jumps for the e ink models, it seems like there is a model missing.
I got the DX because I read a lot of PDFs and Word documents that don't fit on a small screen. It ended up being my favorite ereader ever. The big screen lets you pick a big font, which makes for a super-easy reading experience. The battery is a problem, though, yeah.
Same thing. I have the DX and love it. I can't complain about the battery, it lasts at least 3 weeks of 1 to 2 hours of reading every single night with the 3G off.
The only thing that pisses me off is that I could not find a decent reading light to accompany it until today.
I ended up using my IPhone a reading light which is not ideal.
I bought DX years ago and it is still among the most used devices, second only to iPhone. I wish Amazon would make it bigger, but now they don't even produce it any more. Let's hope someone would come in and fill the void.
> Aside from the probably-negligible battery use, what use case is it breaking aside from pet-peeve?
I just hate the look of the PW's backlight. The color is a sort of sickly blue, and I actually hate the evenness of it, it loses any sense of being a reflective matte surface which is one of eink's great strengths.
At absolute minimum setting, the PW's light is basically dim enough to be acceptable, but the Voyager's press descriptions, which are emphasizing the brighter light intensity etc, are making me nervous that Amazon is doubling-down on backlighting (er, "frontlighting") and giving up on the idea of a good-contrast reflective display...
[I certainly recognize that in many cases, a light is very useful, but I really want it to be an option that I can turn on when it's handy, and turn off when it's not. I don't want eink to become just yet another light-emitting display tech...]
> The Kindle Voyager fixes the biggest complaint I have with the Paperwhite: page turning via touching the screen is worse than the physical buttons on older-gen Kindles
I agree. This makes the upgrade to the voyager an immediate purchase for me. As soon as they decide to make it available in Canada :(
I have a Paperwhite. It's not that bad--still less effort than turning a real page, and the screen doesn't show fingerprints much. Still, this will be better.
I've owned every model of the Kindle (minus the comically large DX)
Funny, I would buy something like the DX ("like", as in price and battery life) for reading PDFs of the textbooks, magazines, journal articles, and so on, that are my ordinary reading material, if the screen weren't so comically small.
I've had a DX for around four years, and absolutely love it for reading PDF's (mostly of academic papers). It's light, the screen is clear, and it works well with all of the PDF's I've thrown at it. (This includes PDF's that are scans of 40 year old papers.) My one complaint is that it doesn't have a lighted screen for night time reading.
(I also have a Kindle Paperwhite 2 that I use for books. I've tried PDF's on on the paperwhite, and it doesn't work nearly as well as on the DX.)
Legit question: why buy each version? Is it just for fun, or is it because the new versions have a feature you craved? Or is it because something went wrong with your current version? I have a three year old Kindle and, as far as readers go, it's good. I'm trying to think what would make me upgrade and I'm just not seeing a compelling reason in these new versions. Mostly the new features seem to add things I don't want/care about: touch, GoodReads integration, etc.
I had the very first version. I upgraded to the last version before paperwhite because the screen was much better. I upgraded to paperwhite because I saw the integrated light and it's much comfortable than other solutions (and luminosity was an issue eg in planes on older kindle). I may upgrade to the voyage one because it's smaller and i miss the change page button of the older kindles which this one seems to mimic.
So for me it's not that the one I had at each time was too old, or for fun, but because the new version adds something that genuinely improve my reading comfort, while being cheap enough that I don't need to think much about that expense.
Sounds like my upgrade path. I went launch Kindle (for $400!) to Kindle 3 (before it was renamed to Kindle Keyboard) and then to the Paperwhite.
For me, the reasons went: "new," "screen contrast + first-party lighted case," "built-in light + size" in that order.
I've pre-ordered a Voyage. That's in part because of increased clarity and even thinner form factor, and in part because it frees up my PW for my gf, who honestly uses e-paper Kindles more than I do.
I have a 3 year old kindle as well. I might upgrade to Kindle voyage because of the high PPI. Hopefully they have improved the refresh rate of the display as well. In the older kindles you have to make a choice between refresh every page (slow) or artefacts. I don't know why they didn't make the refresh every n page configurable (6 by default I think)
I bought one model (4th gen I think) because it was much lighter and I noticed my wrist got a bit sore during long reading stretches. I bought the first model with the touchscreen because navigating the store on the device was annoying with the directional keypad thing. I bought the Paperwhite because of the built-in light - I mostly read in bed so this was a big win.
I like having at least one "backup" to lend to family members on vacation. I also bought a cheap waterproof-case (it's essentially a double-sealed Ziploc bag) so I just toss an older model in that and float around the pool and read worry free.
I also like supporting the product line with my wallet - and it's fun to get new toys every year or two :)
I've been waiting for the new Kindle to be released. I lost mine in the seat pocket of a plane last November. I read some rumor article that said Amazon would be releasing a new Kindle Q1 of this year. Obviously that never happened.
I track all my read through Goodreads and have for a few years. By this point last year I had 30 books read. So far this year, 13.
I cannot wait to finally replace my Kindle.
I'm in roughly the same boat as you, with my household having owned so many Kindles that the names are something like "8th Kindle." I go with special offers as well because I usually run with the antenna off for long periods anyway, so the device eventually switches to a default simple background.
I completely agree that the removal of the hard-buttons for page turning was the biggest deficiency with the touch-screen models. I'm so happy to see hard-buttons return. The Voyage looks a bit pricey compared to the last few I've bought, but I'm willing to pick one up.
Here's something I've wanted for a while, though: a small bluetooth page-advance button for bedroom reading. Maybe some day.
I often wish Amazon would focus on the Kindle e-readers since their tablets and phones seem a distraction.
> It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much.
For me it's a great example of a device that does one thing and does it well. Yes there are compromises (buying from Amazon is frictionless, from anyone else requires side loading for instance) but it what you want to do is read books, it does that really, really well - way better than any other device I've owned.
as soon as i turn it on to get my newspaper it last a couple days.
and there is no "turn on to update now and then back to off" option. when you manually update it turns on and you have to remember to go to options and turn off. which i never remember.
That's the one thing I find annoying about the newer Kindle software. It seems to really want you to leave WiFi on all the time, but that drops the battery life to a couple of days from a couple of weeks. I haven't had any trouble remembering to turn it back off after I let it sync, though.
As someone who doesn't own an e reader but rather the kindle fire (cyanogfen 11 nightly) and a nexus 4, I can't understand why someone would complain abnoiut a battery that lasts over a week.
A regular Kindle (paper-white) lasts for about a month with regular usage (few hours a day). Even with critical battery charge you can skip a day or two until you get around to charge it. Once you get used to that behavior charge time of once a week becomes very annoying. Tablets/Phones and eBook readers are completely different device categories when it comes to battery life.
i'm complaining because the UI tricks me into "couple days" mode by not turning off radio when i tell it to update my library while the radio was off.
it would be perfect if radio off, i press update, it turns radio, update, turns radio off again.
i would get my journals and week long battery.
as it is, if i wont watch it update to the end (which is slow as hell, couple minutes often) and do the boring procedure to turn radio off manually again (menu > options > etc) i will have a few days instead of a couple weeks.
I'm on the same bandwagon as everyone in this thread. Love the long battery life (i've read at least three books while being in the woods for 10 days). Pseudo-disconnect from a internet-alive device (no distractions from social media or websites) that allows me to relax with a book.
I have been Kindle user since they had Kindle 3. I love K3 but I wish it had backlight. I bought Kindle Touch but gave it away, cuz touch screen was clumsy to use for page turning. There were so many times where I tapped a link accidentally while turning a page. However, I liked touch for quickly tapping word to look it up in dictionary.
This Kindle Voyage with dedicate page turn buttons, backlight, and touch screen might just be perfect..
If only it had "Text to Speech." I guess not many people like to hear books in monotone. But I use it to listen to old classics, blogs, or other fiction while walking on treadmill, driving, or when I just too tired.
I had a long drive to do, so downloaded an audiobook from the internet and burned it to CD (well about 10 cds). Listened to some music for the first hour, then decided to open the audiobook. To my disappointment, it wasn't someone reading it, but a computer generated Steve Hawking like voice.
The thing is, the first 10 - 20 minutes were a bit annoying, but after that you get used to it and hardly notice.
I write mobile apps for a living. My desk is littered with iPads, Android phablets, etc. I've tried them all.
You can drag the e-ink display Kindle from my cold dead hands. Nothing is better for serious book reading. It's the only screen my wife and I allow in our bedroom, it's the only electronic device I'm bringing to the beach. I'm very happy to see Amazon continuing to refine them.
I come from a different country (Brazil) but I am addicted to eReaders. I had a couple Kindles, they were always rock solid. Page sync was the most useful feature for me because I kept my Kindle in my home and read on the go with a phone.
The main pain point for me was the lack of Epub support in it. I wanted to buy the paperwhite but in an effort to not support DRM based solutions I started buying my technical books directly on the publishers website with non-DRM formats.
Then Kobo released the Kobo mini and that was the perfect pocketable size for me. I jumped in. All my Kindle notions and impressions were out of the door. The Kobo was a much better device in my opinion. The "Reading Life" feature was awesome and the UX and font selection great. Stopped using the Kindle.
Then I missed a light. I tend to read on the dark hours and something like the paperwhite became a need. eReaders are not cheap here in Brazil. A Kindle Paperwhite with cost you USD 200+. Since I was a fan of Kobo, I decided to check out the Kobo Aura HD. Heck the thing was the price of a laptop.
In the end a major book retailer here in Brazil decided to ship their own eReader called Lev. It had a version with light, it could read Epubs and other formats and it fit my budget. Also it had a killer feature the both Kindle and Kobo lacked: PDF Reflow. This small simple eReader can reflow text on a PDF to fit the screen and it works pretty well. I was sold. I am pretty happy with my Lev eReader now, I have all the features I could want from the competitors plus the ability to read old LISP book PDFs as if they were meant for that screen.
Moral of the story: Instead of jumping in and buying the new thing from gigantic retailer, shop around and see what the small guys are doing in your region. There might be an eReader there that fits your needs much better than the Kindle. (Still miss page sync though)
Unless you're specifically trying to support small business, I'd go even further to say that you could just use eReading apps. This assumes that you have a smartphone or tablet in the first place. One less piece of tech to carry around that gives you the same functionality is always a plus in my book.
I wouldn't mind reading a book in the tub with a $50-$100 eReader, but I would certainly not read a book on a relatively expensive tablet or smartphone.
That, and battery capacity suffers noticeably (at least on a smartphone).
Oh yes, Calibre is the swiss army knife from the digital book world. In this case, I am voting with my wallet to put my money in companies that support open standards. The Lev can use that horrible Adobe DRM or open formats. The Kindle Format 8 with DRM is not something that I'd like to support even though its technically good.
The Lev is a rebranded/reworked Bookeen Odissey Frontlight which you can learn more here https://www.bookeen.com/en/cybook-odyssey-frontlight looking at the pics, I think there are some cosmetical changes in the software side. You can probably get it on the U.S. :-)
PS: I don't know how far the differences go. The Lev might just be the exact same thing but translated or there might be some software differences. Looking at the screenshots I can see that the menu has different borders which in itself doesn't mean anything
Here's hoping that the roughly quadrupling of resolution (167dpi to 300dpi) will make reading journal PDFs tolerable over the current generation of Kindles, where it's obnoxiously cumbersome (it requires rotating the screen and viewing 1/4 a page at a time). The DX had a 1200x824 screen, but only at 150 ppi. This is better, and has a less expensive launch price.
PDFs look gorgeous on a hi-rez color screen; ebooks look dumbed-down. Compare a full-color calculus textbook or news magazine in PDF format vs. ebook format, and which would you rather have?
The problem is that US letter paper or A4 are both roughly 14" diagonal, and textbooks and magazines are often a bit larger, so you need something like a borderless 15" diagonal display with at least 300px/in resolution. I'm hoping that within a few years we'll see reasonably-priced tablets with displays like this and with serious battery life (say, 24 hours or so, because thinner isn't everyone's first priority).
"Compare a full-color calculus textbook or news magazine in PDF format vs. ebook format, and which would you rather have?"
The ebook format, because it doesn't make archaic assumptions about "paper size", and I can therefore read it on anything from a phone to a wall-sized projector screen.
I usually simply copy paste the text from PDF and read is as pure text. Of course you'll lose graphics in this case. But that's life. If I need graphics, I might use ebook converter. Anyway, graphics isn't optimal on Kindle usually, so I don't bother too often to do that.
I have both a DX and a Paperwhite. The resolution on the DX isn't perfect, but I find that it works quite well for PDF's of academic papers. (Mostly formatted with LaTeX, with some occasional scans of older typewritten papers.)
The paperwhite, however, is terrible for papers, and I don't think the higher resolution screen would be helpful. At least for my eyes, cramming a full letter sized page into the small screen wouldn't work... so I'd still be left with a view of a subset of the page.
A little increase in size would be nice too. I want to be able to read real books and papers with schematics, illustrations, tables, graphs, equations etc.
The Kindle Voyage[1] doesn't state whether it supports Amazon's etextbook format. As an example, the Kindle Probabilistic Graphical Models[2] textbook is only available on PC or Kindle Fire, which is a bummer if still true since the Voyage looks like it should be able to handle this now, but no actual mention of this in the product description nor in the pull-down hover label "Available only on these devices".
I think the more than competitive offer of amazon is not really surprising, thinking that they always reduce their own margin significantly to offer such awesome products. Well done, well done!
What I am wondering though is, why they post a picture instead of text on the website - not only for SEO. It results in everyday problems: eg I can't copy and paste the text and post it into skype to inform my dad about that. Yeah, sure, I could post the link, but this is what I consider as a really bad practice. Compare the beautifully crafted privacy statement of apple, even the text in the charts is "text". Just my 2 cents...
I've heard a rumor that it's a directive straight from Jeff Bezos because he wants reporters to have to actually write their own articles rather than copying and pasting.
That would be a hilarious reversal of how PR is usually approached: the goal of everything you do is to make it easy for reporters to write about you, in the best case by giving them a text they can just copy, paste and publish with as few changes as possible.
To this end press releases are specifically written and structured like news articles. They are (supposed to be) published in a format that’s easy to copy.
It’s a favorite PR tactic because it works, even without any bribes or coercion. Newsrooms have been shrinking, money has been tight, reporters have less and less time, so if they get something they could as well publish it’s very easy to sway them, especially if it’s just boring news.
However, this is also a weird way to treat respectable journalists who would take the time to write about this. One common sense PR approach is to treat the press nicely, so annoying them by not allowing them to copy something (which might be perfectly legitimate, even when writing your own in-depth article about something) is just weird.
I'd kind of be a dick move to screw over people who can't read the images (people who use screen readers for instance), so the alt-text allows that. But what reporter knows how to copy it?
I have a Kindle Paperwhite, and one thing that has puzzled me is the light. The light setting has a slider to set the brightness, and the labels recommend a low setting for dark rooms and a high setting for bright rooms.
What puzzles me is that in bright rooms (e.g., all my daytime reading if the window blinds are open) I turn the light all the way off [1]. One of the points of eInk is that you don't need any extra light when you are in a bright room.
Why does Amazon want me to turn the light up, which eats up the battery? I realize it does make the screen look whiter to have the light on in a bright room, but as far as I can see it does not make a noticeable difference in readability.
The new high end eInk Kindle features automatic light adjustment based on a light sensor. If that means that in bright rooms it is going to crank up the light, I would not be happy. Does it do that? If so, can it be overridden?
[1] well, not quite...the light cannot be turned all the way off on the Paperwhite while reading. It only goes all the way off when you put it to sleep.
The Verge has a first look at the new high-end Kindle Voyager [0] and it sounds like the increased resolution (300dpi) really makes a difference. I'm also excited that the screen is now glass. The old plastic ones were very easy to scratch.
$80 more for the higher-DPI Kindle Voyage seems a bit steep. Usually each generation of e-Ink Kindles were roughly the same price but with incremental improvements. I don't see much improvement in the Voyage to justify a big price increase. Plus I wish they'd bring back the physical page-turn buttons. Touch screens and "haptic" responses can't beat old-fashioned buttons.
Although you don't get the high res screen, there are incremental improvements in the base $79 model. More storage, faster processor, touch screen...
If I were betting, I'd bet that the high res screen component isn't yet available in large enough quantities and/or cheaply enough to make it feasible to use in the low-end model. That will no doubt change.
"For the first time, you and your family can access and easily share not only your own Kindle books, but also books from the Amazon account of a spouse or partner"
This seems like a really nice feature that was somewhat buried in the Kindle Voyage description.
Wait, what? It's $200 dollars? I spent a good five minutes trying to find the mistake that was showing me that price. Did Amazon learn nothing from the Kindle Fire phone fiasco?
Kindle had always been a no-brainer purchase at a "don't think too hard about it" price point that made upgrading to each new model actually feasible. But two hundred for a higher resolution screen and a $2 dollar photo sensor module? Color me confused.
I clicked the link with every intention of buying after reading the comments here, but I can't believe no one mentioned the (hefty) price tag!
In a world where a lot of people get up in the middle of the night to order a $800+ smartphone I think there's plenty of room for a $200 premium ebook reader from the market leader. They still have a very affordable model for sale, after all.
Seeing how attached many people seem to be to their Kindle reinforces that position. I might just have to buy one to see what that's all about.
It could be that the point of pricing it much higher is to make the other one feel affordable and cheap by comparison? Also, this extracts more consumer surplus from the folks who are price agnostic and want the latest and greatest.
Exactly. I ordered the new Voyager model immediately, because my (until today, top-of-the-line) Paperwhite annoys the shit out of me (for one microsecond) every time I turn the page, and because I want a higher res screen while keeping the same awesome readability.
I'd bet a huge majority of purchasers of the Voyager are mostly-happy current Kindle users.
I'm a little bit sad to see the touchless base kindle go away.
I have both a kindle paperwhite and the previous base, touchless model, and the text is noticeably more recessed underneath the physical display on the paperwhite -- presumably to accomadate the touch sensor and the light.
So even though it's higher DPI, the actual reading experience feels more analog/physical-paper-like on the classic, touchless kindle.
That's interesting. I bought a Kindle for my dad, who is an avid reader (1 or 2 books a week), about 3 or 4 years ago. Last time I had checked he had moved to the Kindle app on an iPad (and not the mini) as his main reading device. He told me he doesn't use his Kindle at all any more.
Confirm the same - both my parents (avid readers) use iPads with Kindle app or iBooks to read, despite having access to my Kindle3.
From a elderly reader's standpoint, the iPad is like a Kindle DX but a) heavier, b) with color, and c) with tons of other apps. For whatever reason, eyestrain of an LCD doesn't bother them in the least.
I wonder if it also depends on what kind of reader you are. My Kindle is great for linear reading, but I tend to skip around books absentmindedly, and turning pages on the iPad feels so much better.
My dad prefers his full size iPad to the Kindle too. For him the backlit LCD is a feature, and the brightness and contrast on the LCD is better than the kindle display. My eyesight is better, so I prefer the Kindle for reading text.
I seriously don't get why people want buttons (including these side "buttons" with haptic feedback) to turn pages. It's so much more satisfying to turn a page on a Paperwhite with a flick of the finger sliding across the "page" (the screen) like you would do with a book. You can already tap the screen with your thumb (using the same hand to hold the device) to turn a page. Why on earth would you want these ugly lines and dots now on the side of the Voyager reader so you can turn your pages that way?
I had one of the earlier white Kindles with full keyboard, and the buttons is what I miss the most on the Paperwhite. It just feels awkward to move your thumb to the screen and touch, as your fingers get in the way of the screen. On the Keyboard Kindle you can keep staring at the screen while turning pages, with nothing getting into your focused field of vision and achieve a higher flow.
Still, the Paperwhite is good enough that it has been a good upgrade. Touching to define a word or to find out who this character in GoT really is, is very useful.
Alas, the new Kindle does not ship internationally just yet (or at all, until October 21st).
I bought Kindle Paperwhite for my granny. She wants to lie down and read books. However she has fat fingers, and often she would
1) have the holding hand accidentally touch the screen.
2) have the other hand tapped for too long and initiate dictionary mode.
So she gave up using Kindle.
Looks like a great upgrade to the Kindle Paperwhite, in particular the return of physical page turn buttons. But my biggest wish--native epub support--still isn't there :(
The day Amazon adds epub support for the Kindles is probably the day they give up on the Kindles. Given their business model, it makes lot of sense not to support epubs.
The only options you have is using Calibre (which I don't because I don't like toxic developers and ugly UI/code) or using a Jailbreak.
I'm doing the latter and am quite happy with my kerned and hyphenated epubs.
If that's true why do kindles have native support for other formats or containers like PDF and plain text?
I suppose the idea would have to be that there are significant non-commercial sources of pdf and text documents that someone might want to read on a kindle (think documentation, academic papers, a collection of notes, the kind of things that aren't available through amazon).
However, those same kinds of documents are increasingly distributed as epubs, because PDFs are horrible unless you target one specific output size and resolution (like physical paper), and text simply doesn't offer enough layout flexibility. Epub is the open standard, and anyone who wants layout flexibility uses it. Anything else, including a lot of kindle ebooks, are typically converted from an epub original.
It's not a technical challenge. KF8 is nearly isomorphic to epub.
> Anything else, including a lot of kindle ebooks, are typically converted from an epub original.
You won't find any epubs in the Amazon Store. That Amazon still allows to side-load other ebooks onto the Kindle is nice but you never known when that hole gets closed up.
It might not be a technical challenge for you but there many people out there for whom it is and those will go to the Amazon Store to get their ebooks there because it's easier to do. And voila, their in the walled garden of Amazon.
PDFs are targetting a different kind of ebooks, those that need to have an exact layout. Amazon is also not really supporting them well, the reading experience of a PDF on a Kindle is awful even though the Kindle DX would have a big enough display for displaying whole pages.
I think you misread/misinterpreted. I didn't say there were epubs in the kindle store, but that many of their ebooks were converted from epub format [to get them into the kindle store as kf8 or mobi]. To elaborate: You can't natively edit kf8 or mobi files (at least not with mainstream editors). kf8 and mobi ebooks therefore originate as html or epub (which are pretty much the same thing, ignoring that epubs are zipped, and ignoring simple extras like toc and cover page semantics). Kindle-supported kf8 format is generated using kindlegen operating on either a epub or html source (or some other formats, which aren't recommended because they lack formatting parity with epub/kf8). The point being, ebooks are basically in some quasi-html open format to begin with, Amazon requires converting them to a proprietary format (and kf8 is a very thin proprietary veneer over epub) to get them onto kindles... a conversion that serves no practical, functional purpose.
> Given their business model, it makes lot of sense not to support epubs
Which "business model" is that? Being monopolistic through their own proprietary format? Yeah, monopolies don't want to give up their monopoly power. Go figure. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be demanding that their power is reduced.
But they are using their proprietary format to promote their platform and as soon as you are in their walled garden, it's much more convenient to buy it from Amazon.
They are a content provider and they do anything that's legally possible to keep their customer and that includes a proprietary format.
Given that the Kindle is currently the best e-ink hardware that is out there and even by a big margin, they don't need to enforce anything (the Calibre plugin that removes the DRM from Kindle ebooks for ebooks) but I wonder what happens if a viable competitor turns up?
I'm glad that you didn't have bad experiences with Kovid Goyal but others weren't so lucky.
I didn't mention that I also don't need to use Calibre as I can load my epubs onto the device via wireless connection.
I also don't use Amazon's ereader software so that I'm able to read epubs without converting them and also having an UI interface on the Kindle that suits my habits better than the official one.
For these reasons I don't have a need for Calibre in the first place.
Voyager looks nice, but as a Paperwhite 2 owner, I'm not going to upgrade it. I don't really care much about the physical buttons on the side for page turning but the screens and the bezel having the same height and being on the same level sounds great.
Also, $79 regular Kindle doesn't have any kind of backlight (or whatever that's called in Kindles), which could be a deal breaker with some people. Not to mention its DPI is much lower than Paperwhite 2, probably even 1.
It's called Front Light. In Finland light is essential, because half of the year you're going to be in dark, when ever you aren't at work. I guess same rules apply to northern parts of Canada and US (Alaska) due to similar latitude.
The Kindle without Front Light are also non paperwhite, the screen is much darker overall and it's not that easy to find a "perfect position" in terms of light. Or at least, a lot harder than with Front Light.
Apparently they still sell the Paperwhite 2 (same price), so people in those countries would probably buy that. I think making Paperwhite 2 100 bucks without changing its specifications would have been a better choice than to create a new Kindle version all together. Light is, as you said, essential and not only in Finland. Most people read books in bed, and light is essential there too. I can't imagine using Kindle without the front light.
I'm the opposite, I can't really imagine needing the light very often. A Kindle without a light should be about as readable as a book without a built-in light, and I rarely find myself in a situation where I can't read a book for lack of light.
It might be useful if I'm out camping or if I share a hotel room with someone who wants to sleep while I read, but most of the time I have a light source available.
I always preferred the indented bezel (as in the Kindle Touch) because it allowed me to handle the device more liberally while reading -- even if my fingers strayed over the bezel, they would often hover over the screen than touch it. I want to be able to hold a device like an actual book while reading. And that means touching the screen area.
I initially loved my Paperwhite, but I was turned off by the lack of epub support. Whatever their rationale is, I object to not supporting an open format in principle. I have no trouble buying books from their store; 4 out of 5 times they have the lowest price anyway, and the purchasing process is smooth. But 1 out of 5 times they don't have the lowest price, or the formatting of a book I want to purchase is for some reason fubared (the last couple of books I got from Google Play specifically because of this), so I should be able to upload an epub painlessly. So the device starts to feel more like a vehicle to get you to buy into their Kindle ecosystem than anything else, even though the reading aspect of it is really nice.
This doesn't seem to bother most people, though.
I ended up getting a tablet, but I can't say it's an improvement in every regard. Tablets cost more (actually with the voyage at $200, not that much more), they weigh more, the batteries don't last nearly as long (although I get a good 1-2 days out of use), and good luck reading in the sun. But they also do more.
The Kindle app on Android is in some ways more feature-ful and easier to use than the Paperwhite's software. Taking notes (I read a lot of non-fiction) for example, is a cinch when I can use SwiftKey, where as the Kindle's native keyboard was a pain in terms of responsiveness, predicting words, and making corrections.
To each his or her own, though. But I'm definitely not in the "I don't need a tablet" crowd.
That said, I had no idea that I could jailbreak the Paperwhite, or that there was such a huge scene around it. Gonna check that out.
I had the original Kindle Fire which worked nicely, but had a pretty poor screen. Now I have the 7" Kindle Fire HDX which has been fantastic with a beautiful screen, except a few days ago I noticed a yellow blur irregularity in the top right corner, like a little streak stain that turns things a little bit yellow. I don't know, if Amazon Video were available on a real Android tablet I'd get that, but until then I'm using these Fire tablets.
Also, my opinion on the kids version of the Kindle Fire is don't get it. Get an iPad. The iPad ecosystem is so much better for kids. There are so many great learning apps, there is no question unless the price is really a deal killer that you should get an iPad for a child. Very few of these children apps are available on Android tablets, much less the Amazon app store. I say this as someone who owns a Galaxy S5 and loves Android. These products are great, but sometimes even frustrating for adults so for kids they are not so usable and have a poor choice of apps.
Oddly, from my end the kids version is ridiculously compelling. Especially if it really has a "no questions asked" replacement policy.
Of course, our non eink kindles spend the majority of their time in freetime for the kids. With "unlimited," I have a hard time warming up to any other offering.
My daughter has had an iPad available to her for 3 years now and she's never managed to break it, although we are careful with it. It's all about the apps. You can take a look in iTunes to see the many wonderful children apps, compare that with the Amazon App store before you decide. There's just no comparison in my opinion.
We've only broken one. And, at the cost it wasn't a huge deal to replace it. Still, is a nice lure.
And I've never actually browsed the Amazon App store. I have flipped through all of the apps available in Freetime Unlimited. To say there are a lot of apps there would be understating it. Sure, many are probably not that good. On the flip side, none of them have in app purchases.
I am curious if there are any that truly aren't in both ecosystems.
> I don't know, if Amazon Video were available on a real Android tablet I'd get that, but until then I'm using these Fire tablets.
It is. You just have to go to the Amazon Appstore and install the "phone" version of the Amazon app (the app is available in Google Play, but blocked for tablets there). Then that Amazon app can do the extra download of the Instant Video app/plugin and so on. It's working fine on my Nexus 7.
No, my paid videos also work. The only limitation (vs Amazon devices) I'm aware of is that you can't download videos to play later.
I've seen people claim that there are SD/HD issues, but I haven't noticed (though, to be fair, a lot of my usage has been watching an SD TV show, so...).
I forgot to say that I do agree with your assessment of Amazon Video being pretty vital. I'll confess I'm actually somewhat tempted to try and get their bloody phone so I can watch some things on the train. For now, I'm enjoying a stock Moto G, though. :)
They just recently released it for the phone. Go through their shopping app and it should prompt you to get it all set up. It's kind of janky, you have to use the shopping app to find the movie and then it kicks you into the standalone app, but it works.
As far as reading PDFs on Windows goes: evince (default on Ubuntu, I think) works really well - it's fast, remembers my position in various PDFs, and in general works really well.
A million times this. In fact, even as a windows user, preview on OS X is the best PDF reader there is.
I'm note sure it's the format over the technology to start with as it's quite complicated to lay out technical material effectively so it requires some human intervention to a standard which doesn't make you want to poke your eyes out. PDF is just paper on a screen which takes the layout engine and automation out the back and shoots it.
Depends on the book. The Kindle isn't great at pictures, graphs, or complex diagrams, and examples with code might lose formatting via smaller dimensions.
However, it's still convenient to not have to lug around a giant text book to read somewhere - any of them. Having a Kindle is like having your entire library with you at all times.
I've been reading technical books on it for a year now. Currently reading through a few Haskell and Scala books for fun (all pdfs). I wouldn't recommend picture heavy textbook, for example something on Biology, but for Comp. Sci. books it does the trick imo.
I'm a bit disappointed that they haven't upgraded to a proper line-breaking algorithm. The high resolution display is probably great, but look at that inter-word spacing! How can they state this is "passionately crafted for readers" when the typesetting is worse than in Microsoft Word?
It feels somewhat sad to see them take away the physical keyboard. I find myself regularly using the keyboard on my current Kindle to annotate books as I read them. Even if it is more efficient to have an on-screen keyboard, physical keyboards symbolically imply that one could potentially be an active critic and participant rather than only a passive consumer of media. For the same reason I have always preferred computer to console video games, and I have never completely warmed up to the iPad even though I own one. Then again, my physical paper books always seemed to become filled with sticky notes and (erasable, penciled-in) annotations, too.
See I'm totally the opposite. I don't ever annotate books and losing the keyboard just meant more screen space for me. But if I did use it a lot it would be really obnoxious, their on-screen keyboard is pretty laggy and bad.
I love my Kindle because it got ultimate display compared to any other media device. It's just delighting experience to read in full sunshine. If you try your iDevice(s), you can't see a thing in those conditions. Another great features are of course the battery life and weight. Many manufacturers advertise light tablets, but most of those aren't light. I'll always have my Kindle with me, and it allows me to read tons of stuff during the year. I'm using it more than one hour / day.
Why is there no web browser on the tablets without backlight?
I have wanted a laptop or tablet without backlight for years. The backlight not only makes it harder to get to sleep at night, but it also makes it harder to concentrate. A laptop where you didn't have to stare at a backlight would make it easier to get shit done. I can't just dim the screen on my MBP. It is even some research that suggests there is a hypnotic effect of staring into a bright lit TV or computer screen.
I've never owned a Kindle before, but I want one and I can't decide if I should go for the standard Kindle or the Voyage. What are your thoughts, is the upgrade worth it on a tight student budget?
I'd be upgrading from paper books, so I'm not entirely sold on the idea that I particularly need a front light. Is the readability significantly better even in a well-lit room?
There are only two things to consider:
1) Buttons;
2) Front light;
For me any buttons at all are priority 1, light - priority 2.
I have Kindle 3 and occasionally use paperwhite. About 90% of all time you will read not in the dark, so light is not an issue. Other 10% may be a deal breaker, but personally I just use a phone with Kindle app.
You get the most important feature of the Vogage (the light - I leave it on all the time as reading on white is so much nicer than gray of the low end Kindle.) At the mid price point on your budget.
The new HD tablets might finally be the first tablets to make it into my in-laws' house. The first tablet I've seen that's basically guaranteed to be of a certain quality, that isn't expensive, and is by a company they've heard of. I think this could be bigger than it looks from a tech point of view.
They seem to have fixed (1) in the latest model, but I still need to check if it's as heavy as the paperwhite and whether they improved they way text is displayed.
I left my Kindle on the Caltrain about 2 weeks ago (side note: if you found a Kindle on the Caltrain about 2 weeks ago please let me know!). I guess I picked a pretty good time to need to buy a new one - not totally sure if I can justify the $200 price tag for the voyager just yet.
The Kindle for Kids is very interesting, does anyone know if it's still possible to install arbitrary .apk on it? I know it doesn't have Google Play (only access to Amazon's store) but if I can install .apk files from the Play store manually, then it's an instant buy.
It's a personal taste matter, of course, but //for me// the resolution on a Kindle has never been a problem, and I've been using them since the second-generation model. If you view a lot of PDFs or images on them, it might be an issue, but I just read ebooks.
The biggest factor, I think, is whether you want buttons for page turning or not. If you get a Paperwhite, the only way to turn the page is to tap (or swipe) the screen. If you get the Voyage that'll still work, but there are now sensors on the edge as well with some sort of haptic feedback.
If neither of these things sound important to you, get the Paperwhite and save $100. It's a great e-reader.
I'd buy the Paperwhite. I have one and it's great.
Apart from the resolution upgrade, the changes on the the Voyage seem a bit of disappointment to me to be honest.
The higher DPI should be an upgrade to the Paperwhite and the page turn buttons are unnecessary. I thought I missed them when I upgraded from a Kindle 3 to the Paperwhite but touching the screen became natural after using it for a short time.
The flush bezel is nice but no big deal and I leave the light on my Paperwhite at 100% all the time, so I don't want it to 'Adapt'.
I never understood the appeal of touchscreen son Kindles. They have a really nice screen, why get greasy finger marks all over it? These ones don't appear to have the side buttons that my basic kindle has, which implies that I would need to hands to switch page.
The screen isn't glossy like a phone. It's matte, so you don't get noticeable fingerprints on it. The touchscreen is good because it saves putting buttons on the case, meaning the screen can be bigger. However the Paperwhite isn't all that responsive so the touchscreen can be a little frustrating.
It lets you type notes without having to waste a huge portion of the device with a keyboard. Also, the matte surface of the Kindle does not really show grease or smudges.
I'm impressed that they aren't hyping up the profiles stuff more. Especially the feature where you can link multiple accounts to it. Not that it is that big of a deal, but it is rather comical on what they think I want to read/watch nowdays.
also 100 for a kindle is idiotic since its useless for anything but buying amazon books.
pdf are a pain. you still get to scroll sideways for each portion of each line you are reading. its obviously done so you dont read pdfs or images there.
any other ebook or doc format that they promise worry free conversion. just send them via email. yeah right. i managed to convert exactly zero out of 100s i tried.
they should be giving those out almost for free as it is. microsoft did it with xbox and then penny and dimed their customers with great success.
It's actually a pretty good reader even if you don't load Amazon books onto it. Now, 2/3 of the books are actually ones I buy through Amazon, but Calibre is happy to load any other non-DRMed ebook I should happen to have onto it and that's pretty important when I get something I want to read from drivethroughrpg or the Hugo packet or whatever.
> "non-DRMed ebook" you mean the 4 or 5 that exists and is not RPG or fanfic?
The Pragmatic Programmer's ebooks, from their site, are all non-DRM, on the technical side (I think a number of other big technical publishers do non-DRM on direct-from-publisher ebooks).
(On the fiction side, I know Baen has included CDs of DRM-free ebooks -- mostly the all-but-most-recent books in major series -- with hardbacks, and also allowed them to distributed on the web.)
I've never really understood the complaints on their site being bad. I can't remember the last time it really frustrated me. Actually, I can. Trying to find ram for my laptop. Somewhat obnoxious. Of course, trying to find the same product on the laptop manufacturer's site was also bloody painful.
Regardless, I can't understand the criticism. Their site works remarkably well for what it is. A shopping site.
The $100 Kindle is the multimedia one. So... with Prime it actually has replaced Netflix for us. And Spotify, oddly enough.
I do agree the $200 one seems excessive in price. Though, I still wouldn't mind upgrading my paperwhite. Which I absolutely love.
RAM is a good example of where Amazon's design falls down a bit. For items like RAM, where you know the exact specs you need, NewEgg is hard to beat. Their power search lets you drill down to precisely what you need.
I like Amazon when I don't know quite what I want. That's where the reviews come in.
For me, I didn't know the exact specs I needed. I just wanted whatever worked in my laptop. Oddly, they have this down pretty well for cars. Whenever I am looking at automotive parts, it lets me know if it works for my vehicle.
If I recall, I wound up buying straight from crucial. They were the first site where I could type in what laptop I had and it would give me options for ram to buy.
It's a shame Newegg is rarely the place to go for actually good prices these days. I find I'm buying something like 80% of my computer parts from Amazon now as they consistently beat Newegg on the price of nearly everything barring some extremely rare (and randomly timed) substantial sale on Newegg.
>
Regardless, I can't understand the criticism. Their site works remarkably well for what it is. A shopping site.
Go tontheir site and search for "microwave oven", the. Sort by price. You'll have hu dreds of items that are not microwave ovens but accessories for ovens. You'll also get items that are not mocrowVes or useful for microwaves.
Go to their site and search for, eg, sansa fuze+, the. Sort by price. You'll have several thousand cases and screen protectors.
In both cases I would have made a purchase if Amazon had returned a product.
You're not supposed to use search. You're supposed to ise the menu system to drill down through the site to find the product.
Search for microwave oven and you get a very sensible list of popular microwave ovens, including one they refer to as the #1 best seller. Before you can even sort by price, they ask you to select a product category, selecting which switches to a sort by relevance by default.
If you insist in sorting by price, you do get garbage results (or rather, you get exactly what you insisted on asking for: literally everything in the category containing the words sorted by price). But it's easy to limit the results to just actual ovens by filtering to something oven specific, like the power output. Which ends up giving you essentially the same results as you get when you initially search for microwave oven in the first place.
Search for sansa fuze+ and you get a similarly helpful list. I don't know why you'd ever want to sort by price here: you're searching for a specific family of products and you get there, immediately. In the unlikely case that you want a screen protector instead of the player, there's ways to get there.
Based on those two examples they're doing a pretty good job. And using -- what, exclusively? -- the category menu to find a product sounds excruciating. Starting with a search query is much faster, the category system is available as a filter in step two, at least for popular categories such as microwave ovens.
Fire HD 6 - Quad Core but they seem kinda silent about the memory. And for a good reason, it has 1GB of RAM. That is way too little for Android. Wouldn't buy, no matter the price. Note how they also call "storage" as "memory".
Turns out it DOESN'T change the worst thing about the paperwhite, because it's new buttons PLUS the touchscreen page turning 'zones'. You can't disable touch to turn pages.
Accidental page turns will be as big a disaster as ever.
It depends on your definition of gimped. As this is Amazon's "Android Light", you're stuck in their app store with no Play Store, Google Maps, Chrome, Firefox, etc. If you want to consume Amazon-purchased media and play a few games, it's great.
It's too bad that none of the e-ink Kindles has audio anymore. I really liked being able to read on a device, then seamlessly (on the same device) switch to listening while driving / flying / working out.
I got a Paperwhite about 3 weeks ago. I've kept it in the packaging, anticipating a new release was coming. I was not anticipating such a huge bump in price though. Guess I'm keeping the Paperwhite.
They probably have stupid regional licensing agreements with publishers. I guess that without the books to release for the Kindle, Amazon doesn't think releasing the Kindles to be worth it in these countries. I don't know, that's just my guess.
Here in Turkey, there are folks buying from US and selling with a small premium ($50ish), worked well for my son's Paperwhite 2 (with ads). You can tell Amazon that you don't live in US and they disable ads instantly [1]. Sometimes, you need to change your country in the Amazon profile to buy a book from US store and back, but I can live with that.
The Kindle Voyage looks really nice but at £169 (a £60 increase over the Paperwhite) there is no way I will be getting one. That is a lot of money for just an ereader to me.
I think of it as $20 less without the power adapter. Most people probably already have a USB-capable power adapter. No reason for the Kindle to cost extra for a redundant accessory.
The Kindle Voyager fixes the biggest complaint I have with the Paperwhite: page turning via touching the screen is worse than the physical buttons on older-gen Kindles. And the auto-brightness sensor means there is one less thing for me to fiddle with. Higher DPI and thinner (flush bezel looks sexy!) are just icing on the cake.
It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much - and why I've owned every model - but something just feels right to me about reading with it. It's modern but familiar and so much more convenient for me (click Buy Now on amazon.com and the book is loaded by the time I walk over to pick it up from the shelf).
FYI: I always buy the models "With special offers" (ads shown on the lock screen - but usually Amazon does a free giftcard offer during the first few weeks so free $$) and "WiFi" (I've rarely used the 3G - and you can always just tether to most phones nowadays anyway).