Amazon's Kindle 3

I bought 'Kindle 3' wi-fi only edition for myself a month ago and have been using it since then. Even though many TE members own Kindle, I thought it would be nice to write a brief review on Kindle which could be reference to others seeking insight.

About Kindle:

Kindle is an e-reader and a flagship product from Amazon.com.
Kindle sold by Amazon at present is it's 3rd hardware/software revision. Hence named 'Kindle 3'.

Kindle's Brotherhood & Specs:

Amazon is proud mom of three viz:
Kindle 3 with Wi-Fi , comes in graphite color only
Kinlde 3 with Wi-Fi & 3G comes in graphite & white color
Kindle DX comes in graphite.

Kindle supports - Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

Kindle Comparison:

Category Kindle Wi-Fi Kindle Wi-Fi+3G Kindle DX
Display Size 6" diagonal 6" diagonal 9.7" diagonal
Display Type E Ink Pearl E Ink Pearl E Ink Pearl
Display Type E Ink Pearl E Ink Pearl E Ink Pearl
Size 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335" 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335" 10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38"
Weight 8.5 ounces 8.7 ounces 18.9 ounces
Storage 3,500 books 3,500 books 3,500 books
Battery Life (Wireless Off) 1 month 1 month 2-3 weeks
Battery Life (Wireless On) 3 weeks 10 days 7 days
Books in 60 Seconds Kindle Wi-Fi has Books in 60 Seconds Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Books in 60 Seconds Kindle DX has Books in 60 Seconds
Free 3G Wireless Kindle Wi-Fi does not have Free 3G Wireless Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Free 3G Wireless Kindle DX has Free 3G Wireless
Global Wireless Coverage 100 countries and territories 100 countries and territories
Wi-Fi Kindle Wi-Fi has Wi-Fi Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Wi-Fi Kindle DX does not have Wi-Fi
Native PDF Support Kindle Wi-Fi has Native PDF Support Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Native PDF Support Kindle DX has Native PDF Support
Whispersync Kindle Wi-Fi has Whispersync Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Whispersync Kindle DX has Whispersync
Worry-Free Archive Kindle Wi-Fi has Worry-Free Archive Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Worry-Free Archive Kindle DX has Worry-Free Archive
Text-to-Speech Kindle Wi-Fi has Text-to-Speech Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi has Text-to-Speech Kindle DX has Text-to-Speech
Price $139.00 $189.00 $379.00

Unboxing Kindle:


Look & Feel:

The Screen:


Kindle 3 has 21% smaller form factor then it's predecessor Kindle 2 but retains 6"
the screen size by organizing the buttons better and loosing the not so required ones.
Compared to my colleague's Kindle 2 difference in contrast is visually evident(better) in Kindle 3. Amazon claims 50% improved contrast, I've no means to verify that. 'Pearl' technology is the soul of Kindle 3 E-Ink black & White display.

The Keypad:



Kindle 3 sports a full qwerty key pad and D-pad for on screen cursor navigation.
Numeric keys are stripped down from keyboard and have been included as part of 'Sym'(Symbols) key menu.
'Aa' font key to adjust the text and orientation of the screen.
'Menu' key enables us to configure wireless connectivity, On the Go book shop from Kindle store, Book management on device etc.
'Home', 'Back', 'Del' keys does exactly what their name entails.

The Back:



Kindle 3 has rubber finish at back giving one a better grip while reading and making device more scratch resistant. Kindle comes with 2 integrated stereo speaker at the top right and left corner of it's back. Speakers are not good if used in noisy neighborhood but the 3.5 audio jack comes to rescue in such situations.

Connectivity & Switches:



Power key, 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB 2.0, mic, volume controller are at the bottom of the device.
Keeping left and right hand users page forward and back button are well placed on both side of device. Page forward key has been made slightly longer than the back key in current Kindle revision.
If you are a late night reader but don't want to bother your partner, for you on the left side of device two small power-out jacks are provided to attach external mini reading lights.

As an E-Reader:



Awesome is the word for the device, text display is clear, sharp and crisp. Reading experience is as good as reading from paper. Anti glaring E-Ink display is feast for eyes and enables prolonged reading without any/minimal stress on eyes.
Kindle has a battery life more than a month with wi-fi turned off so we don't have to bother about charging it frequently. I've charged Kindle only once but still more than 60% battery is available. Kindle 3 comes with 4GB inbuilt storage, sufficient enough to accommodate most of ours book collection.

Kindle 3 has support for native pdf, but my personal experience with pdf reading on Kindle is not as good as Kindle books, but still pdf support is a plus in Kindle feature and I am sure Amazon will keep improving on it's readability. I tried converting PDF to Kindle format but there were few alignment issues, though not a big turn-off as such.


Final Words:

With an unmatched books library of ~700,000, strikingly near to paper like display Kindle is best value for money e-reader available at the moment. I love reading on Kindle.

My Rating 4/5
 
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^Even I was in same situation. But I am buying Nook Color :)

if you want a just reader, get Kindle. Nothing can beat it's e-ink display. But rest everything sucks :( On other side, Nook Color can be turned into a tablet, but it is not good as Kindle in reading.
 
I've just started getting into ebooks stuff after I got my Dell Streak. Amazon Kindle for Android devices is a cool thing. Downloaded few free books from amazon and the experience is not so bad on the 5 inch screen.

Kindle's one month battery thing is terrific and places it miles ahead. And with the current pricing, this thing looks even better.

Great review brother.
 
alekhkhanna said:
Nice unboxing pics. Kinda on a fence between this & Nook Color. Any recommendations ?
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well, both are way apart. nook color is a kinda tablet without much of the flexibility of the tablet. I would rather get a full fleged tablet by paying a bit more than nook colour.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a book reader, then well, nook doesnt make even the remotest sense. You will get pretty low battery life, along with a backlit screen both of which are exactly the thing you dont want in a bookreader.

Kindle like any e ink reader is a niche market product, but it does what it does well. Nook colour, I really doubt is either a very good tablet or a very good bookreader. If I wanted a backlit screen, most of times, a laptop would even satisfy me.
 
The_Falcon said:
Can one upload PDFs from your PC onto the Kindle OR is it that you can only buy books from Amazon ?
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you can, but pdf is best avoided in kindle. it doenst support reflow, you if you intend to use kindle, you will have to convert your books to mobi/prc. You can load any documents to kindle though directly using usb.
 
Very nice review.... repped..

And, intacto, you can extract a cbr file into multiple jpeg files and put them on kindle instead. It will give you a better experience. I dont think cbr/cbz are natively supported but I can be wrong.
 
kinda :p

Wanted to know how this device can perform in other departments :)

and I am gonna check kindle this weekend by myself, wanted know.
 
avi said:
kinda :p

Wanted to know how this device can perform in other departments :)

and I am gonna check kindle this weekend by myself, wanted know.
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I thinks you've got the kindle confused with a PMP.. Kindle is only for E-books at the most you could listen to some mp3's on it but not videos lol!!
 
This is a good device to read Non-Kindle books?

Basically, I am looking for a device to read up Product Documentation,Technical manuals, obscure ebooks. kind of stuff that is NOT available as books but its so long that it kills your eyes to read on standard screen. the data formats are mostly html,plain text,pdf, wiki,doc etc.

Lastly, do mention how much it costed you in INR

Thanks
 
Gaurish said:
This is a good device to read Non-Kindle books?

Basically, I am looking for a device to read up Product Documentation,Technical manuals, obscure ebooks. kind of stuff that is NOT available as books but its so long that it kills your eyes to read on standard screen. the data formats are mostly html,plain text,pdf, wiki,doc etc.

Lastly, do mention how much it costed you in INR

Thanks
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You can always convert one format to other,but usually pdf output will not be good as pdf is basically fixed print oriented format and doesnt reflow well.

So if you are going to read documentations and stuff, in pdf most will be designed with a a4 layout in mind. so this would not be a ideal thing to buy for that. Instead look at the kindle dx which should be better due to the increased screen size.

Other formats like epub/html/txt are easily converted to kindle format, so there wont be much of issues.

When i got it in early September from amazon, I ordered kindle and the standard amazon cover. This item was marked as gift, but still you have to intially pay the deposit for customs. Paid was 12.6k intially. Then, in December, I got a refund of about 2.3k, taking the total cost to about 10.3k
 
As per i found from what I've read in forums and on the Amazon Kindle site, they will transform your pdf, doc and/or html files for a fee of 10 cents per file. You e-mail them the file and they send it back changed into a file the Kindle can read, I think they are .amz files.
 
DC books is launching its own pdf reader in india with feature specially developed for the indian market. The softwre is being provided by California software company, a chennai based company with considerable expertise in software.The e book will be approx. of the size 185mm X 125mm x 11mm weighing upto 200 gms.The basic model works thru the internet and the high end model has an inbuilt sim card , similar to that of a mobile phone. Can store upto 1000 books and has multi language facility and can convert text to speech.
 
Good review.
Looking only for a bookreader. So is this kindle-3 the go?
My requirment:
* Only to read
* Supports most of the document reader formats (doc, pdf, rtf etc)
* Also some jpeg's, gif's (if it supports other image formats too)

Kind of use it for a teacher/lecturer to carry ebooks/notes in book reader.

As per your early posting, kindle-3 does not suit for converted pdf's/pdf's. Can i scan the books (schools/college) and import it to kindle-3 (As such there are no or very less school/college boooks available in e-format)? What format (doc, txt - if so i loose images) needs to be done?
Please suggest one.
 
kochukhwa said:
As per i found from what I've read in forums and on the Amazon Kindle site, they will transform your pdf, doc and/or html files for a fee of 10 cents per file. You e-mail them the file and they send it back changed into a file the Kindle can read, I think they are .amz files.
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you dont need to do that. simply download calibre and you are all set. but in most cases, there will be issue with the output in case of pdf. Amazon service will also be similar processing, so there also, two column book/books with images in general will have horrid formatting. This happens only in case of pdf. If you have a html page, then you will get a perfect ebook

Kindle supports prc/mobi files and the azw format

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kenkanya said:
Good review.

Looking only for a bookreader. So is this kindle-3 the go?

My requirment:

* Only to read

* Supports most of the document reader formats (doc, pdf, rtf etc)

* Also some jpeg's, gif's (if it supports other image formats too)

Kind of use it for a teacher/lecturer to carry ebooks/notes in book reader.

As per your early posting, kindle-3 does not suit for converted pdf's/pdf's. Can i scan the books (schools/college) and import it to kindle-3 (As such there are no or very less school/college boooks available in e-format)? What format (doc, txt - if so i loose images) needs to be done?

Please suggest one.
Click to expand...
well, kindle has a very very small format support in mobi/prc or pdf. pdf will look perectly horrible.

if you want to scan, then i would rather recommend the kindle dx with the bigger display. the scans will be basically be images and that will look ok on dx. other digital file formats you can convert to mobi.

Barnes and Noble's Nook is far more open, but even that wont support doc format. you will have to convert again.
 
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