It was back in back in September that Amazon finally unveiled the Kindle Fire , its long awaited entry into the budget space. The whole-color, multimedia slate hit the sweet spot, price-wise, sliding in at a hair under $200 and setting the tech world abuzz. The corporate made it clear, however, that it still had a horse within the standalone e-reader race — three horses, in truth. That very same event also saw the disclosing of the fourth-generation Kindle and the Kindle Touch , two new devices that take slightly different approaches to the post-keyboard world of e-readers. And, to play it safe, Amazon announced that it’d be keeping the Kindle 3 around — albeit, rebranded because the Kindle Keyboard.
At $79 for the ad-supported version, the Kindle 4 carved out a complete new price point for e-readers. The Kindle Touch meanwhile, marked a belated entrance into touchscreen e-ink devices — a market that had already been populated by several high-profile competitors: Barnes & Noble’s Nook , Kobo and Sony . Why did Amazon hold off goodbye? In keeping with the corporate, it was “waiting to get touch right.” Without spoiling this review an excessive amount of, there are indeed some features of this new device that suggest the wait could was worth it.
But are these elements enough to dethrone the Nook Simple Touch because the best devoted e-reader available in the market, especially on account that the Nook, too, recently got a refresh of its own? Does Amazon still have what it takes to stay the clear market reader in e-books? And is the $20 premium well worth the step up from the fantastically affordable fourth-gen Kindle? The reply to all of this and more are available after the break.
0 Hardware
Amazon didn’t do a heck of loads to differentiate the Touch from the fourth-gen Kindle. If truth be told, the sole immediate difference between the 2 readers is the bezel below the screen. The toggle switch and row of buttons at the fourth gen have been traded in for a single home button, constituted of four small horizontal bars. It is not the best looking option in the market, however it gets the job done.
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The best other button is power, located at the bottom fringe of the device, next to the micro-USB port and headphone jack, which had disappeared between the third and fourth generations. The return of the headphone jack marks the return of the device’s MP3 player, text-to-speech functionality and the flexibility to play audio books from Audible. Sound is additionally handled by two small speaker grills located along the ground of the device’s rear. Between these are two small metal tabs, that are used to assist power Amazon’s excellent 4 Kindle Lighted Leather Cover 4 .
The Touch is likewise a little larger than the fourth-generation model in only about every respect, save for the screen, that’s the industry-standard six inches. The reader adds a fragment of an inch to each dimension, measuring 6.8 x 4.7 x 0.40 inches and about an oz. and a half, weighing in at 7.5 ounces (the 3G version weighs 7.8). Even the bezels are somewhat larger, however Amazon opted to drop the page turn buttons entirely, instead relying solely at the touchscreen for that sort of navigation. We will not say we’re thrilled in regards to the lack of those buttons — the Nook Simple Touch, for one, kept them despite its new touch functionality. And while it’s definitely possible to take advantage of the reader single-handed, physical buttons could be convenient, particularly in those instances when the touchscreen acts up a piece — which, in our experience, happens to all of those devices every now and then.
2 The Touch also measures a little taller than the most recent Nook and Kobo e-readers. That said, Amazon’s managed to shed a little height and width from the third-generation model, due to the lack of the keyboard. Just like the fourth-gen version, the Touch should slip pretty easily into your pants pocket — it’s really a terrific size for this sort of devices. The device fits nicely within the hand, never really feeling awkward if you find yourself looking to read. The Nook Simple Touch is less complicated to grip owing to its concave back, which conforms nicely to the hand. Otherwise, though, we won’t offer up too many complaints in that department.
As per usual, Amazon’s not revealing many specifics at the processor front. The corporate gave us the usual, “As a question of company policy we do not disclose details of our vendors/parts” line. Speed-wise, however, the reader seems on-par with the contest. As for storage, we’re observing 4GB — similar to the third-gen and twice that of the budget fourth-gen. As always, the reader is missing the microSD slot present in the Kobo and Nook. Amazon needless to say means that such additional storage isn’t necessary, and the corporate has some extent, given its estimated capacity of “as much as” 3,000 books — let alone, the truth that you could store your content within the cloud. That said, expandable memory would had been a welcome feature, but it’s hard to look Amazon ever really budging on that front, especially given the truth that it is not even an option with the the upper-end, multimedia-ready Fire.
3 The Kindle remains one of many few readers around that serves up optional 3G — a pleasant little feature for Platinum Status frequent fliers. WiFi isn’t particularly easy to return by at the road — though planning ahead along with your downloads is a simple strategy to that problem. The feature will run you one other $50, though, as with past Kindles, that entails a one-time charge. The corporate actually foots the bill for data, a indisputable fact that for sure has a good amount to do with most users’ modest download rates — this is not a multimedia device, in any case. You are not going to take advantage of this thing to observe movies or stream music.
Display
4 Aked why it had taken see you later to give up a touchscreen reader, Amazon countered that it was waiting to “get the technology right.”
The screen specs will look pretty familiar to anyone who’s frolicked with e-readers previously year: 600 x 800 resolution, 16-level gray scale Pearl E Ink — same because the Kindle 3 and four. E Ink’s Pearl screen have been adopted by all the big names inside the space: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo. And it’s pretty clear why: it’s crisp and straightforward at the eyes (and, certainly, relatively inexpensive to supply). In case you are expecting to read a whole lot on a tool, it is definitely the route you must go. The page turn rate here’s also on-par with the most recent readers, with a flicking full-page refresh every six pages or so. The flip rate did suffer somewhat going up against the straightforward Touch’s 5 recent refresh 5 , which managed to render another page or so a section faster, though the variation will likely prove fairly negligible for many users.
An important distinction between the Touch and the hot fourth-gen Kindle is — you guessed it — that touchscreen. It is a feature the Kindle 4 sacrificed for price, and it was person who was sorely missed — a toggle wheel will not be a great way to engage with device like this. When asked why it had taken goodbye to provide up a touchscreen reader, Amazon countered that it was waiting to “get the technology right.” For sure, a press release like that means, among other things, that other companies (namely, Barnes & Noble and Kobo) did not achieve this, though their devices admittedly made it to market months earlier.
So, were the Nook and Kobo readers released too early? Nope. Both displays were removed from perfect — but then, so is the Kindle Touch’s. Touchscreen E Ink displays have some distance to move before they’re nearly as usable because the variety of smooth multi-touch screens we’ve come to expect in our smartphones and tablets. That said, Amazon does offer some fairly notable improvements over those readers. For starters, there’s the inclusion of twin-touch technology, a feature also seen at the recent Sony Reader WiFi. Amazon told us that while the technology inside the Touch isn’t quite identical, it’s “similar.” And it is a pleasing feature, letting users pinch to zoom, which is useful when you are availing yourself of the built-in browser and PDF reader.
Typing at the virtual keyboard — one of many the largest shortcomings with past touchscreen e-ink devices — have been improved. Again, it’s still imperfect, but there is a bit less of that incredibly frustrating lag we have seen with other devices — which Amazon chalks as much as divvying the screen into touch panels. Interestingly, the corporate has also sectioned off the touch sectors differently while reading, devoting three quarters of the screen to paging forward with a faucet and only the left margin to paging back. The reasoning this is that nearly all of the time you will be flipping forward. Is smart to us. It is a nice little change that other reader producers may result borrowing from in future generations.
As with the Kindles 3 and four, Amazon’s offering up a horny significant savings at the Touch, do you have to opt in to 6 Special Offers 6 , the company’s friendly euphemism for “ad-supported.” We’ve yet to look the corporate deliver on those “beautiful” ads which are virtually indistinguishable from screensavers, and it kind of feels unlikely that too many users prefer the ad-supported versions for the entire sweet deals it offers up; individuals are opting into this version because it’s cheaper. And $40 is a tangible difference that we’re talking about here. The ads themselves aren’t particularly intrusive — they’re limited to screensavers in sleep mode and a banner ad at the home screen — but as Barnes & Noble rightly talked about in its recent Nook event, giant ads may bring down the products’ cache as a vacation gift.
Software
5 As with the hardware, there are various surface UI similarities between the Kindles 4 and Touch. The house pages are nearly identical, with an inventory of books (and other documents like PDFs) sorted by default in accordance with what you read most recently (it’s also possible to sort by title, author or collections). Swiping up or to the left will advance the gathering to the following page. Along the ground of the ad-supported version is a small banner ad. Lining the head is a bar that incorporates your battery life, the time and your connectivity status (i.e., 3G or WiFi).
Just under that may be a tool bar not found at the Kindle 4, which features buttons
for back, menu and launching the Kindle store. There’s also a search field, which allows you to search your reader using the Kindle Store, the built-in New Oxford American Dictionary and Wikipedia, that’s by now a typical feature on WiFi-connected readers.
The elemental reading experience also looks much like what the fourth-generation Kindle has to provide, with the majority of the page monopolized by text, save for the black bar from the homepage up top and a few small text on the bottom letting you know the way far along you’re in a given text. Here’s where that dual-touch functionality starts to come back in handy: you are able to pinch to zoom inside and outside. The text automatically adjusts and the reader offers up a window with the eight different possible font sizes, if you’d wish to go that route.
6 Holding down on a word will cause a window with the hot Oxford American Dictionary definition to open. From this screen you may also highlight text, add a note or share the choice through Facebook or Twitter. It really is really the level of the product’s social networking functionality, unlike the Nook and Kobo devices, which might be a chunk more heavily invested within the concept of social reading. For the majority of readers, this may occasionally be enough — actually, there appears to be a fantastic chance that when the newness of the feature wears off, it’ll go largely unused. Tapping the head of the screen makes the reader’s search functionality pop up, and selecting the book will offer up a listing of the entire passages wherein a given word appears.
The brand new X-ray feature takes things a step further. Clicking on it’s going to raise an inventory of proper names, including characters, historical figures and places. It brings up a timeline illustration letting you understand how often the name appears within the book viewable by page, chapter and the whole text. Clicking on a personality name will offer up a biography. Clicking on, say, the name of a historical figure, however, will pull up its Wikipedia entry. The entries, interestingly, aren’t accessible over wireless, but are instead located in a facet file that’s downloads while you buy the book. It is a pretty neat little feature and person who may convince a smattering of pirating users to get their books through more legitimate means (i.e. the Kindle Store).
You are able to add PDFs to touch by simply dragging and dropping them into the reader’s Documents folder when it’s plugged into the pc. Again, just like the 7 Sony WiFi 7 , the Kindle Touch has a unique advantage over every other touchscreen readers in terms of dual-touch. Here, users can pinch to zoom in documents. As with Sony’s reader, the feature is a section clunky in practice, with pages taking a few second to render, flashing several times before achieving the specified size. Once you’ve zoomed in, a swipe allows you to pan around the image. Zoomed out, you swipe to advance to the following page. This is not the correct approach to read PDFs, but when you are looking for a loyal e-reader with that functionality, this or the Sony WiFi are probably your best bets.
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While these companies have paid some attention to web-browsing, they are not exactly flaunting it with these readers.
The Kindle Store, meanwhile, looks an awful lot just like the one offered up at the Kindle 4, though certain features, reminiscent of the power to enlarge thumbnails of recommended titles at the home screen, were optimized for touch. Corresponding to most other readers, the Touch has a built-in web browser, though, as with the fourth-gen Kindle and Nook Simple Touch, it’s hidden away. While these companies have paid some attention to web-browsing, they don’t seem to be exactly flaunting it with these readers. They know in addition to anyone that this is not the perfect strategy to surf the net. To access the browser, you’ll want to click Experimental within the menu at the homepage (how a straightforward browser on an e-reader still qualifies as experimental is a section beyond us). Amazon has refreshed the browser to deal with its touch technology, but as with the PDF viewer, this can be hardly the right device on which to achieve that task.
an effortless toolbar is found up top, in conjunction with a field for URLs and reload and menu buttons. You could navigate throughout the grayscale pages with the swipe of a finger and click links by touching them. Pinch to zoom works here to boot, but again, it’s kind of choppy. It’s going to be noted, too, that the internet browser can only be accessed via WiFi — to be reiterate, Amazon is purely footing the 3G bill in your book downloads. It doesn’t wish to pay your web browsing fees, too.
The MP3 player will also be accessed during the Experimental section. It’s an especially basic player, offering up the name of the track being played, track forward and back arrows, a volume meter, play / pause and an off button. Once turned on, the music will continue to play as you utilize other features, a nice bonus for those who like to listen to some Chopin while reading the latest Twilight book. The speakers at the rear of the device get surprisingly loud, but the sound quality is, unsurprisingly, less than ideal. You’d best stick with headphones whenever possible.
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2 If you like, you can enable speech-to-text via the menu in a given title. The feature only works on books where Amazon was able to negotiate the rights; long story short, some publishers remain a bit wary. The voice is, as you might expect, pretty robotic. This is hardly a replacement for audio books, but certain users, particularly those with vision problems, will no doubt get ample use out of this feature. A few alterations can also be made to the voice, including changing its gender or speeding up and slowing down the reading, but it never loses that mechanical voice.
Wrap-up
3 Despite apocalyptic conclusions predicting the death of dedicated e-readers in the face of competition from tablets, the battle is as heated as ever. Amazon alone is currently offering three such devices: the fourth-generation Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Keyboard. So, does the Touch manage to stand head and shoulders above the rest? In a word, “naw.” There’s a lot to like here, including a dual-touch display, X-Ray search feature, audio functionality and a 3G option, but there’s nothing here that would make us want to dump our Nook, Sony WiFi reader, Kobo or even Kindle Keyboard. The Kindle Touch is as good as any touch reader out there, but there’s nothing particularly exceptional about it — including pricing.
Those looking for a truly entry-level device should take a look at the fourth-generation Kindle, so long as you don’t mind losing features desire touch and audio playback. The Touch starts at $99 — the same prices as the Nook Simple Touch. But keep in mind, that price is for the ad-supported, WiFi-only version. And with the Nook’s recent software upgrade, the reader is still a heck of a competitor this holiday season. Prices go up from there, of course — without Special Offers, you’ll be paying $139. Add 3G and the reader runs you $149 with ads and $189 without. It really is all still quite affordable, in fact, due to the entire revenue the corporate is pulling in from content sales, but ultimately the Kindle Touch is not the steal apparently to be on paper.
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