The Amazon Kindle has reached our shores under a full head of steam - plenty of buzz and articles all over the press. It's the market leader in the USA, with a market share of more than 65% (ahead of Sony's Reader). Amazon's version of the e-book is certainly full of good ideas - after three weeks of use, here's what we feel are the pros and cons of the Kindle.

The Kindle looks fairly unassuming. Its white and brushed-aluminum finish is more rudimentary than the first Sony Reader. Nevertheless, the finish is good and inspires confidence. If the Kindle wants to be the book-world equivalent of the iPod however, it still needs that extra little design fillip to get consumers to choose it over another model.


The Kindle comes with a black cover, which adds a little to its total weight of 450 grams. The Kindle is recharged directly from the mains – watch out however as some are delivered without the local adaptor. If you don't have a travel adaptor, you can always recharge it via a USB port on your computer.


Navigation is sometimes a little illogical and could use some simplification. The plethora of physical buttons around the screen only contributes to this impression. The latest Sony Reader is much more pared-down. So your first steps with the Kindle will be less easy than with a Booken Cybook or a Reader. But the pages themselves are displayed quickly.


To enter a menu, select a word to look up in the built-in dictionary or a book in the Kindle Store, or mark a passage to set it aside to copy to your computer later, you use the little square joystick. It's effective and precise.

As regards reading comfort, the Kindle renders text as well as any e-book on the market that uses an electronic-ink system. The characters are perfectly legible, and you can choose the font size to suit your vision and avoid eyestrain.


A word on the "text to speech” function: when you select it, a voice reads your book to you. It's a nice gadget and it works well, though the voice is a little too "GPS" sounding (if a little more fluid). But all in all we prefer to read our books rather than listen to them.

You can also perform searches on Google or Wikipedia. This is a good idea that can come in handy for readers who don't have a smartphone with Web access. The information is fed back well enough, but again, the very simple user interface doesn't make for a very fancy effect. The access is there though, and it's not bad at all.



You can also transfer rights-free books, such as MobiPocket e-books, over from your computer.


What about the Kindle Store ?

The Kindle Store has over 200,000 books available in English, plus newspapers and magazines. Newly published books are available and priced at under 10 pounds.

The Store is easy to get the hang of. You shop around, choose a book by category or via the search tab by author's name or title, download it (your account has to be registered on Amazon.com), and, in around thirty seconds, the book is already in your Kindle's memory. That's THE feature that sets the Kindle apart, and that we'd like to eventually see on all e-books - you don't need to wait until you're home to get new books. We also like being able to get a free preview of sixty or so pages of a book before paying for it - much like what happens in a traditional bookstore.