Review: Amazon Kindle

[Trokair]

Thanks to Igor Skochinsky's hacking efforts, I was able to get UI screenshots for all of the things I want to show you guys today. In case you haven't heard, the Kindle is Amazon.com's electronic book reader. It's using an 800x600 electronic ink screen that only requires power to refresh (can maintain a screen image indefinitely with no power draw) and looks almost identical to paper (there's no backlight). The device has around 200MB of storage built-in, and there's an SD slot you can use to expand that storage if you need more room. It works just fine with the $10 2GB Kingston card I picked up the other day. The other awesome component is the CMDA cell radio (attached to Sprint) in the device, which allows wireless browsing and purchasing of books, automatic subscription deliveries for blogs, magazines, and newspapers, access to a basic web browser, and the Ask Kindle NowNow service (which I'll cover later). For starters, let's have a look at the unit itself.

This is the Kindle in its "off state." You'll notice it's sporting a retro-80s look. The bar-shaped buttons on the left side are your page-back and page-forward buttons, and the right side is dominated by a huge page-forward button and the back button. The weird looking bar next to the screen and the wheel underneath it are your navigation implements. Since electronic ink screens refresh very slowly, the separate 'cursor' bar allows you to highlight and select navigation elements and sections of the book you are reading without having to redraw the screen. It's an interesting workaround considering the limits of the e-ink. Below all of this, there's the keyboard. Why have a keyboard? You can not only search the Kindle store and your reading materials for words with it, but you have access to Wikipedia and a a rather large English dictionary as reference materials. The keyboard is also useful for doing basic text browsing.

The bottom sports a standard stereo headphone jack for listening to music or audiobooks, a USB port for transfering converted documents, audiobooks, or backing up your books, the charging port with indicator light, and the volume up/down buttons. Note that the Kindle is wedge-shaped with most of the weight on the left-hand side. I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of it yet, but I've read two books on the unit already and the shape hasn't been an issue.

The back has the Kindle's cover removed here to show you the battery and SD slots. Up top there you'll see two silver switches that allow you to power off the wireless radio and the unit separately. A word on that; I recommend keeping the unit on in sleep mode and the wireless off when you're not using the device. The wireless drains battery power quickly, and a sleeping Kindle draws virtually no power. It also "wakes up" a lot faster than it can cold boot, so just keep it slept. You'll also avoid hitting the page turning buttons on the side in sleep mode. Another word on that...although I don't see how it would be possible to relocate the page turning bars (and they're in a great place for reading), I find myself wanting to grab the side of the Kindle when I reach for it. I'm training myself to grab from the bottom as to not hit the buttons, but this could be a major annoyance if you forget to sleep your Kindle before you go running around with it in a bag. Lose your page, anyone?

Other than that, it's actually surprisingly comfortable to hold!

The UI shots here were taken with an undocumented screenshot shortcut (Alt-Shift-G on the unit), so you won't see the unit in any of these shots. I used Flickr to squish them a bit, in case they look a little off, but they're crisp on the Kindle's screen. To anyone who's seen a Sony Reader, the Kindle shares the same e-ink screen. First up is the Kindle home screen!

The home screen is pretty basic. It's essentially a list of all of the reading materials on my Kindle, be they blogs, newspapers, books, or magazines. Reading something is as easy as selecting it with the scroll wheel and pressing inwards on the wheel itself, then moving between pages with the Next and Previous page buttons. Down at the bottom there, you'll see a 1 of 1 indicator which tells me how many pages of books and such I have. Eventually, that list there spills over onto multiple pages, since electronic ink screens cannot scroll. To the right of those are the battery indicator, the wireless strength monitor, and the menu.

If I click in on the menu, you'll see I have a few options. I can shop in the Kindle Store if my wireless is on and I have my Kindle linked to an Amazon.com account. I can check for new items if I've purchased something for my Kindle on my PC and haven't had the wireless on in awhile. There's also a settings menu (I'll show you later), the Content Manager (which lets you delete and shuffle books and such around from main memory to the SD card), and the awesome-sounding Experimental section (which I'll also show you later).

I have Max Brook's "The Complete Zombie Survival Guide" open here. Note the little dog ear in the upper right? Kindle saves your spot in any open book automatically, but if you want to tag a page for future reference, you can scroll up to the corner and dog ear the page. It'll keep track of your tagged pages in each book's annotations file.

If I want to save the page I'm reading for future reference, I just open the menu and hit "Save Page As Clipping"...

And look what's popped up on the home screen! A My Clippings section!

You'll get a readout on where each clipping comes from and when you clipped it in addition to the contents of the clippings themselves.

This is the front page of Amazon's Kindle store! Looks familiar, doesn't it? You'll see some basic navigation elements at the top of the page, followed by easy-access links to bestsellers and new content. A brief summary of the Kindle Blog's daily post shows up here as well, along with a distilled "Recommended for You" section that only lists books you can actually buy at the Kindle Store. You can also search the store at any time by typing your search term out on the Kindle's keyboard and hitting "Go" with the scroll wheel. It's pretty easy to get around.

This is what happens when you tap into a category off of the main page. Now, what if I wanted to buy "You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty"? I just select it...

And I get a details page on the book I just selected! You can search for more books by the same author, read or write a review, add the book to your "Save for Later" wish list (very useful), try a sample (which is usually the first chapter or so), or buy the book. If you buy something, you have the option to immediately cancel the order right afterwards, so don't fret if you accidentally purchase something you don't want.

The Settings menu is fairly spartan. You can link/unlink the Amazon.com account the Kindle is tied to, edit the device's name, put in some personal info in case the unit is ever lost, change your primary dictionary should you purchase another, backup any annotations you make while reading, and get a picture of how much storage you have remaining on your device.

This is where the fun stuff goes. Amazon's Kindle team appears to be working on a lot of prototype features for the Kindle. In addition to the Basic Web (handles text really well, not so much images) and Music Player (MP3s only, random play only), there's the Ask Kindle NowNow service. This works like a sort of less-efficient AskMetafilter. You can email the NowNow research team any question you like, and in about ten minutes you'll start receiving responses with answers. I tried asking for a non-alcoholic eggnog recipe and received a steady stream of delicious ideas in eight minutes. Any additional answers past the first get added into a "question folder" on your Home screen. There's a few undocumented features as well, including a Picture Viewer (ALT-Z, drop images into a subdirectory of the pictures folder on the Kindle first), Minesweeper (ALT-SHIFT-M), and CMDA triangulation GPS access (which you can plug into Google Maps to get a rough fix on your current location; press ALT-1 inside the basic browser with the radio powered on).

Just for fun, here is what my roommate's blog looks like in the Kindle's browser in "Basic Mode."

So there you have it! Not only is the Kindle a pleasure to read on, it has some really nifty features on it that blow the Sony Reader out of the water. Now if only they could find a way to bring down that $399 price tag...

(cross-posted from my personal blog over at n1zyy.com)

[JohnMarsten]

good review, cheers

[AndyD]

How does the journal look on there?

[gigapixels Veteran]

Oh man, if it were at most half the price I would buy it in a second... Hopefully the price will come down eventually.

[+StevoFC MVC]

I wanted to get one of those for my gf because she reads all the time. But considering she's a librarian, she has access to so many books at all times that I don't think she would really make use of something like this.

If i ever read books I'd consider it. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

[Digitalx]

don't mean to be harsh but just reminds me of old blockey original PDA with windows 3.11 monochrome like UI lmao

[gigapixels Veteran]

don't mean to be harsh but just reminds me of old blockey original PDA with windows 3.11 monochrome like UI lmao

Well that's the point really... It replicates how paper books look almost exactly, so it doesn't need a special or complex UI.

[MrKuro]

I'll get a future version of it, if they make it a little more compact and nicer to hold.. I wouldn't mind if it looked like this concept model

[Digitalx]

Well that's the point really... It replicates how paper books look almost exactly, so it doesn't need a special or complex UI.

At least they could have put segoeUI font but not </3 lol

i mean at the end of the day the only thing this is actually changing is the hassle of pages thats about it kinda besides that it doesn't really offer anything that pc's or current mobile devices can't do sufficiently

[Rappy Veteran]

I always wondered if someone had bought one, good review :)

[StevoJD]

Really can't imagine myself spending $400 on an eBook reader. It looks great for what it is, but way overpriced. Something like this should only cost about $100.

[AndyD]

Oh man, if it were at most half the price I would buy it in a second... Hopefully the price will come down eventually.

I feel the same way. $400 is a bit pricey I think

How does the journal look on there?

I meant Wall Street Journal :)

[Trokair]

How does the journal look on there?

My free subscription for the Journal is up, but here's a shot of the Boston Globe. Most of the newspapers look pretty similar.

-Kyle

[HTF]

very good idea, but like everyone else is saying, don't see it being worth $400. if they could bring it down i would consider getting it