Amazon Kindle (4)

The Kindle is available directly from Amazon:


Amazon is hoping to make a big impact in Europe with its fourth generation Kindle e-book reader.  At £89, it's cheaper than many of its rivals, but offers just the bare minimum, without support for 3G, no sound and no touchscreen interface.  It's still an attractive proposition, with a WiFi connection to Amazon's wide catalogue. 

Design

A mobile device needs to be compact, of course, but it's even better if it's light too.  The latest Kindle manages to meet both criteria with room for a six-inch, 600 x 800 pixel display.  It's slim, and at 170 g, doesn't weigh much more than a large smartphone.  A single paperback can easily weigh 380 g, so you can clearly move a lot more content around on a Kindle.


The design hasn't changed much, apart from a rubber finish at the back which is a treat to hold, we really can't complain about the top quality manufacturing of the product overall.


The display uses the famous e-Ink Pearl technology, which has sixteen different shades of grey and has enough contrast to be easy to read as long as you have enough background light.  It isn't, however, quite as good as displays that use the e-Ink Pearl HD technology.  There's a slight hint of ghosting when you turn the pages, with a trace of the previous page still just about visible on the next.

The fourth version of the Kindle has 2 GB of internal memory, which is enough for 1400 e-books.  Unlike the Sony PRS-T1, there's no way to expand that by adding an SD card.

We like the buttons for turning the page on each side of the screen, making the latest Kindle suitable for both left- and right-handed readers.  It's very easy to use.

Interface

Kindle's relatively simple interface is very intuitive, and it's easy to find your way around the menus.  It's certainly not the sexiest user experience we've ever seen, and is clearly beginning to show its age, but it is clear and simple for everybody.  The library stores your books and can sort them by author or by the order in which you read them.  The handy Whispersync service syncs all of your bookmarks and annotations as well as the last page you read.



One of the things we're disappointed by is the virtual keyboard which replaces the physical keyboard found on other versions.  If you want to take a lot of notes on your e-books, then using the arrow buttons to select each letter takes a little getting used to, and even then every note can take quite a while.


Pages still don't load instantly, but the new Kindle is faster than earlier generations.  

Several dictionaries are included, and all you have to do is hover over a word to see its definition.



The Kindle supports the AZW (Kindle) format, as well as TXT, PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP files.  It's  a shame that it doesn't support the ePub format, either with or without DRM, even though this format is becoming increasingly common, especially on sites that offer free e-book versions of older books that are no longer in copyright.  If you want to use an ePub book, then you need to convert it using a programme like Calibre first.  We're not complaining that much--it is pretty easy after all--but it would be easier still if Amazon just added native ePub support.

The Kindle does have a browser, but it's hardly an ideal choice for hours of surfing.  If you're caught out and need to check something online, it will probably do the job.  You can also share quotes from your e-books directly on Facebook or Twitter.

Amazon boasts a battery life of one month if you read for half an hour a day, and up to three weeks if you leave WiFi turned on.  That's pretty good and perfectly average for the current generation of e-book readers.