Kindle 3 Impressions 1 comment
I’ve been using the newest generation 6-inch Kindle ereader — known to everyone except Amazon as the Kindle 3 — for about a week and a half now. I have to say that I’m quite impressed. As you know by now, the Kindle 3 is faster, smaller, lighter and comes with a display that has much better contrast.
Kindle 3 — Faster, Smaller and Lighter
The Kindle 3 is faster, both faster than the Kindle 2
and faster than much of the competition. The speed bump is apparent both with page turns and when navigating the menus and your library. Compared to the Kindle 3, just moving the cursor around the screen and selecting text to lookup, highlight, etc. is just plain clunky on many other ereaders.
The smaller size comes from newer electronics as well as a bezel and button redesign by Amazon. The page buttons are smaller than the Kindle 2, and Amazon has elected to ditch the row of number keys from the keyboard. You now access the number keys by tapping the symbol key and then using the 5-way controller to select the number you want. While this is more time consuming, usually we don’t have to enter a lot of numbers, so I think the trade-off is a good choice.
The keys of the keyboard are also now slightly closer together than those on the Kindle 2, so it may be more difficult to use for those with larger fingers. My hands are pretty large though, and I adapted to it pretty quick. My biggest complaint with the new keyboard is that it seems hard to read the keycaps in lower light conditions. While the screen of the Kindle 3 has improved contrast, the labeling of the keyboard keys on the graphite model needs more.
The page turning buttons are narrower (and silent – compared to the small click of the Kindle 2 buttons), and until you get used to them you will probably make a few unintentional page turns, but again, it is just a matter of getting used to the new layout.
In the above picture the Kindle 3 is on the left.
The 5-way controller has been changed, and I like the new style better as I find that it feels better and less distractive than the old model. The 5-way, along with the Menu and Back buttons are now integrated in the keyboard.
A few other button positions have changed from the Kindle 2: the power button is now on the bottom, the Home button has been moved from above the right page turn to the keyboard, and you now have two back page turning buttons — one on each side.
Smaller size means lighter, and to further lighten the Kindle Amazon has jettisoned the metal back panel of the Kindle 2 for an all plastic design. The Kindle 3 still feels well constructed even though it is all plastic now.
So how does all of the new lightness and smallness feel in your hands? For me the Kindle 3 is very comfortable to hold and use one-handed in either hand. Because of its light weight it is very easy to hold for long periods of time. Kindle 3 does an even better job of disappearing and letting you become immersed in your reading than the prior models.
Other Kindle 3 Improvements
Like the Kindle DX2, the Kindle 3 ereader also makes use of the new Pearl display from E Ink Holdings. This screen brings a big improvement — contrast is improved by 50 percent.
The background of the new Pearl display has less gray. Blacks are blacker 
and everything looks crisper. The text seems to jump out of the screen. The new display is also easier to read in lower light conditions. When viewing pictures it seems as though there are more shades between white and black.
In addition to the improved contrast of the display, Amazon has optimized the text with their proprietary technology. Text is much clearer than on the Kindle 2. There are also now three different fonts to choose from: regular or condensed Caecilia and a sans serif font. Personally I prefer the regular font, but the other two are there if you want them. You can also now adjust the line spacing. I like this as I prefer the lines with less spacing than the Kindle 2 came with.
Battery life has been pretty much doubled over the Kindle 2. So far mine seems to be living up to Amazon’s claim of one month between charges with wireless off.
You still cannot increase the memory of the Kindle 3, but the internal memory has been doubled so that you should be able to store around 3,500 ebooks in this ereader.
I made do with the Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 as I have a wireless network at home and my mobile phone can generate a Wi-Fi hotspot. I also feel no great need to help support AT&T’s Reign of Disappointment & Disconnection. I’ve had no problems with either connecting to or with staying connected to my Wi-Fi network.
The Kindle 3 now uses a WebKit-based Internet browser. Browsing the web on the Kindle 3 is still not the ideal way to do so (as is true with all e-ink displays), and Amazon still classifies it as “experimental,” but I do find it better than on the Kindle 2.
There is now an “Article Mode” that is much better for reading text on a website. This new feature removes some graphics and reformats the text to fit nicely on the Kindle 3’s screen and eliminates the need for panning around and zooming. If you want to see any missing graphics while in the Article Mode just hit the back button to go back to the normal web page view.
In the picture above the left pane shows an article at the NYT in regular browser mode. You can see the pan and zoom box in the left central part of the page. The right pane shows the same article in Article Mode.
There are more improvements, such as better PDF handling, better Text-to-Speech (TTS), Voice Guide — TTS enabled menus, and support for new characters (Cyrillic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese), but I’ll cover those in separate posts later.
One thing that I especially admire about the way in which Amazon has built the Kindle ereading platform is that it can be as simple or as complex as you want or need it to be. You can happily start using your new Kindle 3 straight out of the box with little attention paid to the user manual. Well, OK, you can do this with most ereaders — using one is not rocket science after all. Just figure out the power button and page-turning buttons and you are pretty much good to go.
Where the Kindle ereaders differ is in offering more intricacy that scales to your wants and needs. You don’t need to learn all of the tweaks, tricks, shortcuts and “hidden features” of your Kindle to use it, but they are there waiting under the hood if you want them.
What other ebook readers out there have spawned an aftermarket in how-to-use-your-new-ereader books? There are a number of such books for the Kindles, and not because you need to read one to understand how to use Amazon’s ereaders, but because the Kindle platform is so rich and has such depth.
I like this scalability, and to my mind it is technology well done.
With the most features for immersive reading, access to the most ebooks, the lowest price of the major models and backed by Amazon’s great customer service, I think the Kindle 3 is hands down the best ereader choice out there at the moment. At $139 for the Wi-Fi and $189 for the Wi-Fi + 3G (£109 & £149 UK) nothing else comes close in my opinion.
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