E-Reader Reviews

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I absolutely love my Kindle DX. I have a friend who ordered the 2nd generation Kindle and, after seeing it, I know I would have been OK with that purchase as well. But, the fact that you can use the DX in any orientation (portrait or landscape) along with the larger screen is a big plus. I love to read and wondered if I’d miss the feel of a book and the answer is NO.

The only criticism is that there is no way to organize my books. I’d like to be able to create folders and keep my authors organized that way. Not a problem now because I don’t have all that many titles but in a year it could be cumbersome.

But, on the whole – A+

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Value for money

Wow! Yet another geekoid device to further distance ones self from social interaction. No need to go to the book store, library or news stand. Huddle in yet another cubicle of self induced isolation, paranoia and human disconnection. In addition, any individual who often uses the ubiquitous noun “love” to quantify their use of an inanimate electronic device is in need of therapy. BTW, Sony now has two new readers that out-spec the newest-g kindle. However, the socio-opine applies to any such device.

Overall
Usability
Design
Value for money

I am a first time e-book reader who has not sampled Kindle 1 or Kindle 2, so I’ll try to give a fresh perspective on the Kindle DX. I purchased this device mostly because I’m a self proclaimed gadget geek, but also because I have limited bookshelf space and loved the concept of downloading a book at a moment’s notice. So, with a grain of salt, I decided to take the rather pricey plunge and splurged for the DX. Here are my impressions:

Firstly, the display on the Kindle is beautiful. There was a screen message to charge my Kindle when I unpacked it that I assumed was pre-printed. I kept looking for the plastic cover to peel off when I realized this was the actual screen ink! I can see why long-time Kindle users praise the unit for allowing them to enjoy reading with excellent clarity and minimal eye strain.

I looked at the Sony E-reader as a possible purchase, but what did it for me was the convenience with which the user can download a book. I’ve found a decent assortment of books that cannot yet be ordered in Kindle format, but for the most part, the Kindle Store has a good selection across the board. I also appreciate the cost savings per book (although I would probably have to purchase 100+ books to come out ahead!) Kudos to Amazon for supplying its own Whispernet network, that does not obligate the user to find a Wifi hotspot to download a book. The notion of impulsively downloading a book to read while on vacation was very tempting to me. By contrast, the Sony reader requires you to download books directly from the internet.

Amazon has done a lot of good things with their second gen reader. The button layout is simple and effective. There’s an oversized button for page turns, a smaller one for previous page, and a home button for showing all your downloads. Below this, there’s a menu button, a back button, and a five way joystick/button interface for navigation. Below the screeen, there’s a full qwerty keyboard. When you read a book, the Kindle remembers your spot when you return, so no problems juggling multiple books you’re reading at the same time. It’s also reassuring to know that all books are saved to Amazon’s server, and can be re-downloaded for free at any time.

Any book you read can be adjusted for font size. As someone who may need glasses in the near future, I preferred to increase font size one notch above the default. Also a cool addition to the DX is the ability to expand the left and right margins of the screen, so less words are visible per line. On any page, you can bookmark it in entirety, highlight a portion of it, or make note annotations. All your bookmarks and annotations can be quickly referenced from the menu.

Native PDF support is a nice option. Plugging your kindle into your computer, and feeding it PDF files is a pretty straightforward copy/paste procedure. However, there’s some drawbacks to viewing PDF files on the Kindle. First, it does not allow you to adjust text size. I downloaded a PDF of my car’s user manual, and the text was very tiny. You can get around this by turning the Kindle sideways, but I noticed that if I continually paged through from this perspective, the Kindle started to include partial pages of the PDF. So for example, portions of page 7 & 8 were displayed at the same time.

Also, speaking of screen rotation, I must say that the Kindle is not always good at recognizing a rotation. As an ipod touch user, the screen rotation recognition on the ipod is considerably more responsive. Quite a few times, I had to rotate the Kindle back and forth to get it to recognize the correct perspective.

Here’s some additional grievances: while I probably won’t be doing a considerable amount of typing, the keyboard itself does not have very good tactile feedback. Also, it’s a bit of an inconvenience to hold down the “alt” key or “shift” key whenever you wish to type numbers or caps.

I also wish the general responsiveness of the Kindle was a bit quicker. Page turns have a bit of lag; not a dealbreaker, but still a bit of a pause. Also, when scrolling through links in the Kindle Store, or highlighting text, the cursor is often very slow to respond. Maybe Amazon could have devoted more memory to the operating system’s zippiness, because it needs to lay off the decaf and get caffeinated.

Some DX owners have complained about the lack of a left side button layout. While this doesn’t bother me that much (I’m right handed), I don’t see why Amazon removed the left side of buttons present on both sides of the Kindle 2. Yeah, you can rotate it 180 degrees if you’re a lefty, but are you supposed to type upside down? Additionally, considering the hefty price, there’s some innovations that have been left on the cutting room floor that need to be implemented. A color display for one. Even more so, why not include a backlight as an option? You should be able to read your Kindle in a dimly lit room, period. If the backlight contributes to eye strain like Amazon says, make it a toggle option. For these scenarios, I’ll be using my ipod touch with Kindle app, as it has a backlight.

All in all, I’m satisfied with my first e-book reader. The Kindle DX could benefit from a bit of refinement, but the core reading experience is quite good. Beautiful dark ink display, operating simplicity, super battery life, and downloading ease make this gadget a winner. Is it worth the price? Personally, I think $489 is a bit much, but it definitely has its audience: those that love to read, professionals that are exposed to a lot of document viewing, and students that don’t like heavy backpacks. Oh yeah, and gadget geeks like me.

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I wasn’t going to write a review since I got this as a gift for my husband. After reading most of the reviews I noticed a chief complaint was how heavy it is. It arrived today and as I was picking it up, I thought it was going to weigh a ton. It’s 18oz people! That’s a little more than 1 lb. Most books weigh more than that. The KDX is really lightweight. My husband has never owned a kindle1 or 2 and had more of an unbaised review. His only complaint so far is that reading with lamp light behind you, there’s a glare on the screen if you tilt the Kdx the wrong way. His other praises are what others have already written.

Overall
Usability
Design
Value for money

I purchased the Kindle DX to test it as a possible technical document reader for construction foremen in the field. I initially had difficulty getting the unit to be recognized by my laptop and the Kindle support team were tremendous in helping me resolve the issue.

I have sent documents to Kindle for delivery to my DX, used the drag & drop file transfer, and downloaded books from the Kindle bookstore. All work fast and well. I am very impressed with the wireless delivery of both books and documents. The documents I sent were in PDF format and could not be converted (I knew this already). PDF documents formatted as standard letter sized documents, fonts at 9 or larger, are very clear and sharp.

The DX is not ready to be used the way I want. The experimental PDF reader is too limited in capability to handle documents of different scales. Items prepared in sizes larger than standard letter are reduced and too small to read for my old eyes. File handling looks good when connected by USB to a computer with normal folder layout capability. When the files show up on the DX’s home page the files are no longer in folders. I currently have 154 pages of file listings with a total of 2452 documents loaded. The documents average 100 pages each. I have 2.73 of 2.74 GB loaded.

The Kindle DX is an excellent reader. It does everything advertised very well and I will use it that way. As a business document reader it is not yet ready. Improvements to the PDF reader software are needed before it will serve my needs.

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I had been disappointed that the Kindle automatically goes to sleep after 5 minutes because if you are using the Kindle for reading patterns or music, it times out on you while you are still “working” on a page. However, Amazon come out with a new firmware release… the Kindle DX now stays on for 20 minutes before going into screen saver mode which is a big improvement.

In addition, with the new firmware, you have the option of converting your PDFs to Kindle format — which should address the lack of “zoom” and “annotation” features — at least there is a workaround for now.

UPDATE as of 06.16.2009: The Kindle may have just literally saved my career and saved my “backend”. I had an interview yesterday and thought I knew where I was going. I’m one of the last dinosaurs not to have a Garmin and got lost. After circling around for awhile and getting more and more uptight about missing my interview, I remembered the Browser on the Kindle.

On the K2, the browser was basically unusable because of the size. However, with the DX, I was able to go to Google Maps, look up the address and had my directions in just a couple of seconds. The map was rendered beautifully and the turn-by-turn directions could be bookmarked and even if my DX fell asleep, it awoke still displaying the directions. THANK YOU KINDLE!!!

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Value for money

don’t generally write reviews, but I hope this one will be useful for other scientists who are contemplating a Kindle DX. My use for the DX will be different from most of the users who have posted reviews. I maintain a library of nearly 4,000 PDF manuscripts/grants/documents. I probably have minimal use for eBooks from the Kindle Store. The number of PDFs is constantly growing as new research manuscripts are published (and downloaded to my computer). My principle reasons for purchasing a DX were to:

1) Carry the electronic equivalent of binders of PDFs with me when traveling. An iPod for PDFs. This is a metaphor that works for the way that I view an eReader, though it probably doesn’t apply equally well to everyone.

2) Have an easier way to read papers when traveling. Easier means not worrying about battery life, unfurling a laptop in a cramped airplane, or carrying a bag full of papers.

3) Reduce eye strain from staring at a computer screen by moving serious reading from the laptop screen to the DX.

From my preliminary use, I think the DX is a qualified success. Text in manuscripts looks great. Figures from manuscripts do not render well in portrait mode if there is a lot of detail; switching to landscape mode helps substantially. Zoom into individual images/sections of PDFs would be welcome.

Navigating large numbers of PDFs from the home screen is currently clumsy. Lack of directory support to organize large numbers of files is an issue. I’ve read about users using complex naming conventions to use ‘search’ as an indirect way to find files. Renaming hundreds (or thousands) of files to make them easier to find is not a great solution. I suspect this will improve in time, either through a firmware update to this device or in the next generation of hardware.

I’m also hoping against hope that one or more of the reference manager software providers (Bookends, I’m looking at you) realizes that their software is to the Kindle as iTunes is to the iPod. If I could manage the content of my Kindle through a reference manager, I would be thrilled. The idea of downloading a paper and syncing it in one step to the Kindle to take with me is really appealing. This wouldn’t completely overcome the problem with a flat file hierarchy once the papers are on the Kindle, but it would help organize getting content onto and off the device.

The biggest surprise to me is the functionality of the web browser. Yes, it is pokey to render pages. No, I wouldn’t want to use it to web surf. But if I had a destination web site that is heavy on content, I think reading on the Kindle will be vastly superior to reading on the iPhone or other mobile/tablet devices. I do doubt, however, that wireless data access will remain free on the Kindle long-term. I can’t imagine how Amazon will be able to continue subsidizing the data costs. I think that this is a feature that should be enjoyed while it lasts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes away at some point in the future.

Though it adds another $50 to the cost, I think the matching case is attractive, functional, and creates an easy-to-carry package.

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Great Kindle DX review, I was looking for an unbiased review for a long time and all I could find was the stuff on Amazon, which if course are not unbiased reviews of E-Readers.
Bought myself a Kindle DX now and the thing is great. I don’t care about the IPAD anymore (Although after the IPAD review I was considering it), the Kindle DX is the best by far!

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The new Kindle DX is by far the best reader out there, there is no question about it. I think it is awesome that they manageged to make it even lighter than before, that the fact that a non-white version is also very good news because of fingerprints (try eating chicken nuggets while reading…)
Totally recommendend!

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I had the old DX and bought the new 1 week ago, and I cannot believe what I got for my money. I also have an Ipad which I use instead of my Laptop, but the DX is the just the bomb when it comes to reading any type of longer-than-a-page document, which is why I alwys use the DX for work readong and for holidays. Also worth mentioning: Ipad battery time 10 hours, DX battery time 3 weeks! Simply amazing! If you buy yourself an eareader, buy the DX!

Kindle DX – On the price of this devise, there are several prices mentioned,$279, and $359, but I didn’t see what made the price difference. I saw the $300 for use, and the $269 for Refurbished. Why don’t you indicate whats wrong with all these devises to make these prices different.

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I love to read on my Kindle TX
However it does look really clear and easier on the eyes but its hard to in here. I think i am carrying a large Iphone… thanks for the great read