With multi-touch, the
Amazon Kindle makes e-book reading an even more comfortable exercise.
The slightly smaller footprint, because the keyboard has been removed,
makes it comfortable to hold. If you are thinking of upgrading from a
previous gen Kindle, the upgrade isn't enticing enough. If however, this
is your first Kindle, or you are adding to the e-book reader armory,
then this is the one to consider.
- Slim and light
- Good touchscreen response
Cons
- Accidental page turns are quite common
The Kindle
has shed the buttons, and seems to be handling this facet of its
personality very comfortably. While it is still not officially available
in India, you can order it from Amazon or any of the shopping websites
that allow global shopping. Amazon accounts work seamlessly across
devices - be it the Kindle app for the PC, iPad, Android or the Kindle
Reader itself. Buying books will not be a problem either.
Look & Feel
The Kindle Touch is slightly heavier than the Kindle (the plain-Jane edition), but is considerably less bulky than the one with the keyboard. Since the Kindle Keyboard wasn’t considered heavy or uncomfortable to hold and read on for long durations, this one certainly isn't either! It is slightly thicker than the Kindle and the Kindle Touch, because of the touchscreen.
The Kindle Touch is slightly heavier than the Kindle (the plain-Jane edition), but is considerably less bulky than the one with the keyboard. Since the Kindle Keyboard wasn’t considered heavy or uncomfortable to hold and read on for long durations, this one certainly isn't either! It is slightly thicker than the Kindle and the Kindle Touch, because of the touchscreen.
The bottom of the Kindle Touch has the
standby/power button, and the micro USB slot for charging and data
transfer. Press the power button for 7 seconds and that’ll put the
Kindle in sleep more. Press it once and it goes into stand-by mode. For
the version with the advertisements, it’ll show an advert, and pending
any gesture, will turn off after 10 minutes.
Features
The Kindle Touch has a 6-inch display with multi-touch capabilities. The device has 4GB on-board storage - Amazon says that is good for about 3000 books. You can also email yourself ebooks (PDFs, MOBI and txt files) using the email address that gets created for you when you register the Kindle for the first time.
The Kindle Touch has a 6-inch display with multi-touch capabilities. The device has 4GB on-board storage - Amazon says that is good for about 3000 books. You can also email yourself ebooks (PDFs, MOBI and txt files) using the email address that gets created for you when you register the Kindle for the first time.
On-board is an experimental web
browser, and “experimental” for a good reason. Some flash heavy websites
do not render properly, but most sites have no such issues.
The Kindle Touch has a 3.5mm jack and
built-in speakers to feed the audio books, text to speech and the
built-in MP3 player functions. The speaker isn't great, quite expected.
Amazon doesn’t ship any earphones with the Touch, but the audiobooks and
MP3s do sound a lot better if you have a decent pair of headphones in
play.
Performance
It looks extremely unassuming. On the front is the 6-inch e-ink display with multi-touch, and is accompanied by one hardware button. With all the Kindle devices till now, you had to press a hardware button to flip pages - something that turned off a lot of book lovers who missed the feel of actually turning a page. The Kindle Touch brings that back, to a huge extent. Amazon have divided the fields on the display very well - tapping anywhere in the wide margin on the right side to flip to the next page, or tap anywhere in the thin left margin will flip to the previous page. Alternatively, you can just swipe on the screen like you would swipe a page in a book. Tap on the very top of the display to open the menu bar.
It looks extremely unassuming. On the front is the 6-inch e-ink display with multi-touch, and is accompanied by one hardware button. With all the Kindle devices till now, you had to press a hardware button to flip pages - something that turned off a lot of book lovers who missed the feel of actually turning a page. The Kindle Touch brings that back, to a huge extent. Amazon have divided the fields on the display very well - tapping anywhere in the wide margin on the right side to flip to the next page, or tap anywhere in the thin left margin will flip to the previous page. Alternatively, you can just swipe on the screen like you would swipe a page in a book. Tap on the very top of the display to open the menu bar.
You can access Kindle Store from within
the reader, but you need to access the Amazon Account from via a PC and
register the Kindle there. This is a one-time process, and any
purchases you make will be automatically sent to your Kindle, and any
other linked devices.
The screen refresh capability also has
two settings here - every page or every sixth page. If you set it to
every page, the text is perceptibly crisper and better to read, but
there is a flash of black every time you flip a page. If you choose the
latter setting, the text quality does degrade slightly, but page turn is
quicker and smoother. The Kindle Touch is set to refresh the display
with every page, by default.
While reading a book, you can press and
hold on any work or phrase, and after a couple of seconds, a pop up
menu will open. This is where you can get the meanings, as well as
social network integration - post to Facebook and/or Twitter.
Tapping on the top of the display opens
up the menu bar - store access, search, change font size etc. to change
font sizes though, you can just use the pinch-zoom gesture and the text
size can be increased or decreased with every gesture. When you are
doing that, a small pop up indicates what size it is now on, from a list
of pre-set font sizes.
Amazon claims a battery life of about 2
months, with an hour of reading daily. We still haven’t been able to
drain the battery on our Kindle Touch! It has been with us for two
weeks, and despite a couple of hours of reading daily, the battery is
slightly less above 50%. It had come out of the box with about 60%, and
we haven’t charged it even once. Nothing suggests we should not believe
what Amazon claims about the battery life.
Our Take
The Kindle Touch brings back the fun of flipping pages to an e-book reader. It isn't officially available in India, but Amazon ships it here, and so do websites like ebay Global EasyBuy and Shop Your World. For someone who already has a Kindle, the Touch isn't an enticing enough upgrade. But for someone who is looking to buy their first e-book reader, or want to gift someone one, then the Touch is the smartest choice at the moment.
The Kindle Touch brings back the fun of flipping pages to an e-book reader. It isn't officially available in India, but Amazon ships it here, and so do websites like ebay Global EasyBuy and Shop Your World. For someone who already has a Kindle, the Touch isn't an enticing enough upgrade. But for someone who is looking to buy their first e-book reader, or want to gift someone one, then the Touch is the smartest choice at the moment.
Price: US$ 99 (Wi-Fi only, with special offers)plus shipping etc.
Specs: E-book reader, 6-inch
E-ink display, capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch, Wi-Fi (3G
optional), experimental web browser, music player, access to Kindle
Store
Ratings
Features: 7.5
Performance: 8
Build: 8.5
Value: 8.5
Overall: 8.5
Features: 7.5
Performance: 8
Build: 8.5
Value: 8.5
Overall: 8.5
Contact: Amazon Global
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