Kindle 3 review

Thanks to Amazon I now have a gleaming new Kindle in my sweaty hands - and after road testing it I can say that it is not for nothing is the Kindle considered the best eReader on the market. It's a pity the device still doesn't support the ePub format, but given the strength of the Amazon store I am willing to overlook this small niggle.

The single most important thing with any eReader is the display screen, and the Kindle's is quite brilliant. The eInk Pearl screen really does look like paper. The background in a nice clean white and the text standing out clearly- you can also increase the size of the text, which makes reading as comfortable as a traditional book.

The controls are quite straight forward, though I did find that having the pages forward and back controls on the same side of the device a little clunky, but when you get used to this it becomes second nature. It is also a nice touch to be able to reorientate the display to landscape. Pictures are reproduced with clarity, though only, as with most dedicated eReaders, in black and white.

The Kindle also supports a nifty option that allows the device to read out loud to you, obviously the computerised voice (male or female can be selected )  is not really any good for fiction it is useful for newspapers, blogs and documents- though the onboard speakers are a little hollow sounding, this is quite brilliant through headphones. In short the Kindle is easy to operate and after a hour or so's use the user will more or less know what he or she can do with the machine.


Now the biggest strength of the Kindle is the Amazon store and whilst the sheer popularity of the device may mean that one day Amazon will rule the world, it ties the user to the Amazon store to buy books, it is a pleasure to use. You can access it via your computer or with the Kindle device itself. And with one click a selected newspaper, blog, eBook or audio book is delivered almost instantly to the Kindle. You don't even need to use a computer to enjoy the Kindle since all aspects of the store can be accessed via the device itself. It really is quite amazing how well the device interacts with the store.


Bad points - all I can really complain about is the way the device doesn't number pages - you have read 30% of this title. This does make things seem slightly artificial. You really do forget you are not reading a traditional book with the Kindle but one glance down at the % screen reminds you. However a forthcoming update, again delivered seamlessly to the device, will remedy this and the Kindle will display page numbers.


Yep, the Kindle is king - but please support ePub sometime soon.