Amazon Kindle 2 - Review

Hey you guys, Jon Rettinger here with the review for you of the Amazon Kindle 2. So during my software overview for the Amazon Kindle 2, I walked you through the software, I even showed you some tips and tricks. So this review is mostly going to be me talking about the device and the features that I like and don’t like about it. To help—I’ll be putting some picture behind me which is to help show you guys what I'm talking about. So first let's get to reading. This is an eBook reader meaning meant to be able to read off of. The screen is actually quite nice and very easy to read from. I tried reading side by side to this to a standard hardcover book and we noticed little to no difference. So reading is very easy on the eyes, they're non-reflective screen but it’s also not backlit so I don’t think you're going to be able to read this at night without the use of a light. Think of it as just an electronic book, anything you can do with a book, you can do with this, anything you can’t do with the book most likely you're not going to be able to do with this device. I'm going to keep in mind the backlight will also be a drain on batteries since we’re on top of the battery power let me tell you how I did on battery. Well they were full charged and with Sprint’s 3G Whispernet on all the time, I got 10 days of battery life out of it, that’s a pretty heavy reading and I was actually impressed. I still have more battery life when I started charging it but I was going on a trip, I wanted to go with a full charge. Battery life is stupendous on this device and I have to go to Amazon and the engineers put this together because it’s absolutely fantastic. Navigation, some of the issues that people have with the first Amazon Kindle was that the next page button was too large. So you pick up the book, you try to hold it, you'll definitely going to hit the next page. That has been fixed for this version. So when you hold the book, you actually hands rest very nicely and you don’t accidentally push the page. One thing of note that I really like what Amazon did was you can’t click the next page of button by hitting the outside of it you have to push the inside nor the click. Projection is very nice so you can rest your hand here without worries of pushing the next page. So that’s something that I was very happy to see. So one kind of core they have at the device is the issue of navigation. I realized primarily on this five way D-pad. You can scroll up, down, left, right and the push it in for that fifth direction. I think the Kindle would have really benefited from a scroll ball, similar to what's found in most Blackberries. They used a wheel in the previous version but I think a ball would have made it for much more fluid navigation. Pushing up and down on this little joystick can be cumbersome sometimes and it does have a relatively slow refresh rate. So you push it and oftentimes you're left waiting for a notification to show that you actually have made a change from what you're looking and do. I think a ball would have made it much more fluid you get to scroll down the way you it to be and then wait for it to refresh, something definitely to keep in mind. So, the next thing that I want to talk about is the screen size. So look the Kindle 2, you know, there's a lot of real estate on down here, a lot of it is taken up by the keyboard. If I've ever seen a device crying out for touch screen, it’s the Kindle 2. This is well over a quarter, probably a third if I take out the full QWERTY quarter keyboard which is very nice to have when you're searching but 90%, 95% of the time you're not searching spending your time just with reading. So really is that poor use of space I think. I like to see the next version. The Kindle 3 make use of some touch screen ED technologies that we’ve seen from companies like Sony, comfortably utilizing some sort of on-screen keyboard really make the whole front of this device up here in the—and that would make the reading a lot easier and also less next page about this, certainly is something that I would look forward to, something that I would certainly recommend Amazon do. So one of the big question that I've got about the Kindle is why is the color is hard to read non-color color and actually I prefer it in black and white and I think that’s one of the reason Amazon designed it, most people I think are on the same mindset as me, let me explain why. First of all you're reading a book and reading a book, it’s black and white prints. Color is nice for pictures. This is not meant to show pictures. Well, it certainly does show illustrations in the book. It does show in just black and white in 16 shades of grey. Color also takes more batteries. You're going to sacrifice a lot of battery life to have color really when you're just reading black and white text, there's not much of reasons for it. So I'm okay with not having a colored screen but again a touch screen really would augment this device I think quite perfectly. It’s also a very cool looking device and since this is only released in the US, a lot of people haven’t seen anything like this. I was recently in Canada for a friend’s wedding and I brought this on the airplane with me and about four or five people as I'm reading this said, “What is that?” “That’s some sort—they didn’t know what it was, they’ve never seen an eBook reader before. I know there have been previous generations released like so in other companies, they never been that popular that people have seen them. So they were very curious about what it was and what it did and that was actually very kind of cool to show it off and say here's what an eReader does, here is what it looks like, you know check it out, you try it for yourself. People were very impressed, at least the Canadians did and they were looking for something like this that would work on one of their self networks. So it was something that I was shocked at figuring most people knew what an eReader was and definitely I was mistaken. So the next thing I want to talk about is the Kindle store and I got to say the Kindle Store is what makes this device, it’s what makes it worth in my mind the $359.00 which is a very steep asking price. I was traveling and while I was traveling I was sitting there and thinking I was little bit bored, my flight was delayed an hour. I kind of get reading a book I had on the Kindle but I want to read something different. So, I went on to Kindle store, I download the newest issue of Newsweek and the newest issue of the LA Times, I was able to read them right on the device and almost instantaneously. And things are so much cheaper so you can get a newspaper issue for $0.25 or you can subscribes to the full month of it for just a $1.49 to $2.00 which is actually really nice and the same price scheme actually translates over the magazines as well. Since the magazine aren’t paying for the paper and the shipping and packaging of these magazines you only pay for the content, you actually get it for a much cheaper price. And that same thing also is sure with books. All new releases that usually might cost you to $25.00 to $30.00 in the regular bookstore generally run $9.99 here. It’s actually quite nice, so if you're a heavy reader you can now set the really big asking price of the device on the cost of books, something to keep in mind. It does have a rudimentary web browser that I showed you guys during the software overview but it’s nothing fantastic. It’s just something that’s there for a cool experimental feature they call it. So you can do experimental features, text the speech function is a novelty at best. It’s nice to have I suppose I would never use it and certainly never going to replace an audio book for me, it's that mechanical voice that keeps talking. And that’s something I would think I would ever use. But if you do use it, you take advantage of the 3.5--millimeter headset jack on the top of the device. So one other thing that I'm talking about as I'm showing you this, you’ll notice that I've showing you with the Kindle cover. The Kindle 2 no longer ships with a cover and since the screen has no protection, this is the actually the E-Ink itself, to cover something is a must-have, factory neck with $30.00 for your purchase if you are looking at the Kindle 2. Size wise it’s actually fantastic I slip this right in the backpack and see what I have, six books, two magazines and a newspaper all on it right inside and it was really nice and very thin to have them. I actually really enjoy reading from it. And speaking of enjoy reading from it also kind of makes reading fun, you know, you guys that you're still some reading but also doing it on a device kind of is cool and high-tech, definitely add the new dimension to it. So if this possible to make reading fun and more enjoyable for you, I think the Kindle definitely accomplishes that, so it’s definitely something else to keep in mind. So overall I've been very happy with the device, built quality strong, it is exactly what I've expected it to do. I wasn’t disappointed at any area. I did my research beforehand. I knew what it did and what it didn’t do. Definitely if you're looking to buy the Kindle, make sure you do your homework and you know what it does so you're not disappointed. That being said out of five stars I really give the Kindle a solid four and a quarter stars. A touch screen really would have put it over to five but I think it would have been the perfect device. It makes use of it’s two gigabytes of memory very nicely and easily. You can store—I think they claim over 1500 books. You can view PDF files and it actually has an MP3 player as well. It also actually can view word documents. You can send them to a Kindle email address or convert it and will put it right on the document for a charge of $0.10 or put it right on the device rather. So I'm very happy with it, I'm enjoying it, I'm going to keep enjoying it and it makes a very nice way to read. I hope you guys enjoyed. This is Jon Rettinger, be sure to follow me on Twitter, Twitter.com/jon4Lakers with exclusive context and I will see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye.