Kindle Touch

Customer Critiques

For my assessment, I'm going to focus it on the differences amongst the earlier Kindle Keyboard, Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display - consists of Special Presents Sponsored Screensavers (which I'll refer to as the K3), and the Kindle Touch (KT)
USE - As far as the reading experience, I really like the touch compared to the physical buttons on the previous generation. At first I was worried that I would regularly be turning the page from accidentally touching the screen, but this did not turn out to be substantially of an problem. The screen is broken up into mapped sections, so if you touch the far left side that covers about 1" of the left of the screen, it goes to the previous page. If you touch anyplace on the other 80% of the screen beside that, it goes forward. Touch the top 1" margin, and it will bring up the menu. There is also a physical button on the bottom of the touch that serves as the House button and will take you straight to the House menu. The location where I found the touch most helpful is the dictionary. Previously, if I wanted to look up the definition of a word, I had to use the clunky joystick to navigate by means of the text. If a word was at the highly bottom at the end of the sentence, oftentimes I'd frequently just ignore it rather than go by means of the difficulty of pressing that joystick 15 times. With the Touch, I can merely touch the word and hold it down for about 1.5 seconds (so it knows I'm not attempting to turn the page) to access the dictionary, which is extremely helpful and time-saving. Underlining phrases and highlighting works practically the similar way. You hold down the 1st word in the sentence, then after two-three seconds it will recognize what you are undertaking, and then you drag your finger across the rest. I never made use of to do this before but now I do it all the time. The Kindle Fire truly handles the dictionary search considerably improved. Though this is possibly one particular of the only points the Fire does superior than the Touch as far as ebooks. When you swipe your finger across the page or drag it down to alter, the page modifications just like it did with the Kindle Keyboard, in that it draws the next page. So there is a especially brief flash. It does not seamlessly and fluidly switch like it does with an iPad or what you would expect if you scrolled your mouse down a web website. This doesn't detract from it at all for me. There is a new X-Ray feature that you can click on to bring up extra tips and well-known features of the book, but it is apparently only out there on select titles and none of my books had it so I couldn't attempt it out. The Kindle Touch does not allow you to switch the display to landscape mode like the standard Kindle does. I have no notion why but I would be surprised if they did not resolve this in a future firmware update.
Form Factor - Even even though the changes are fairly little, they really feel significant. The KT is only .1" less width, and a small over half an inch shorter than the K3, but just after many hours of working with it, I really feel like I can hold it longer with one hand than with the K3. I consider the principal contributor to this is that this Kindle is one ounce lighter than the K3. This is a especially noticeable difference from the K3. One particular ounce adds up soon after hours of holding it in front of you with one hand. I under no circumstances had a real issue holding the previous version, but this a single seems even a lot easier.
Actual Page Numbers - the K3 only displayed a percentage of the book completed or some weird "place" setting that I never understood. The KT displays the actual page number, regardless of what zoom setting you have it on. This is a huge improvement for me, in particular just after I realized how troublesome it is for them to be able to do this. This does not work on each book, but most of the widely used books I have checked it with have it.
Book Lending - This is one other tremendous improvement and just a further reason to make the jump from normal books to a Kindle. You can lastly lend your books to other consumers with Kindles. You can lend a book only once, and only for 14 days. I am okay with that given that I recognize the want to curb piracy. My only predicament is that the book has to be eligible for this option and so far, most of the books in my collection are not.
Display - Exact same as prior to on the K3, with a handful of improvements. The brief flash that you get when turning the page (while I never definitely notice it) whilst the Kindle loads up the subsequent page, occurs much less regularly. This makes the Touch feel a lot a lot more like a real book. Even though the display is monochrome, the KT delivers particularly crisp black and white images, and renders photos and images really nicely. I have attempted out the Kindle Fire as well, but I nevertheless prefer the Kindle Touch due to E-Ink, which I feel looks significantly much better than backlit text, primarily considering that I like to read for 4-five hours at a time. Reading in the sunlight with E-Ink compared to a backlit screen is no contest. It is the distinction in between night and day (pun intended). Newspapers, magazines, and PDFs all look much better on the Fire even though (although with some limitations as you can see in my evaluation for that product). If your key objective of obtaining a Kindle is to read, I highly recommend the Kindle Touch over the Kindle Fire. Even although the E-ink on the touch is supposed to be enhanced more than the K3, it ought to be particularly slight, simply because I noticed just about no distinction. Even pictures appear quite considerably the same across both devices. I have uploaded quite a few photos into the image gallery so you can compare the two.
Wi-Fi - I originally ordered the 3G version of the Touch, then cancelled when I realized I nearly by no means employed it. If you travel a lot and are a voracious reader, it might be worth it. But if you have access to a computer it is so substantially easier to download a lot of books at when so you usually have one thing out there to read when you finish your existing book. You can save a lot of dollars by foregoing the 3G selection. If you do not have wireless, you can constantly transfer books through the USB. If you want to save even extra money, make positive to order the Kindle with Special Provides. Not only do you save $40, but most many people I have seen essentially prefer it. The delivers are rather unobtrusive, and right after a couple months with the standard Kindle, you will get sick of looking at that Agatha Christie screensaver more than and over. The provides are even fairly helpful and will pay for themselves. If Amazon added new screensavers every single handful of weeks or let you add your own, it may not be so poor, but they get genuinely boring after awhile. Trust me on this, and get the Unique Offers version.
Battery - Advertised as 2 months. Battery life appears on par with the K3, which also advertised as two months. Be warned that if you add a lighted cover such as the Kindle Touch Lighted Leather Cover, Black your battery life is going to be diminished due to the fact it draws power from the device, however it is nonetheless going to be overwhelmingly adequate for an electronic device. I use my Kindle Touch Lighted Leather Cover, Wine Purple in the course of most of my reading and only have to charge my Touch about every 3 weeks.
Storage - Same 4gb storage as on the K3, which will hold roughly 3,000 books. The average 500 page book is around 500kb. Thinking about this device also comes with access to Amazon's cloud storage for saving backups, I consider it is highly unlikely anybody would ever need to retailer even more than three,000 books. If your device is obtaining full, just back up your old books to the cloud, and they are there if you ever want them once more. 3,000 books on your Kindle makes factors rather challenging to manage unless you have every thing sorted into separate folders.
Text-to-Speech and Experimental Characteristics - The Text-to-Speech selection on the kindle is rather useless in my opinion. This is the identical functionality as on the K3, and it is fairly troublesome to listen to the automated (mainly) monotone voice reading your novels. I do not know several people who in fact use this feature. Audiobooks are far better, but I nevertheless feel they're just too costly for me. The experimental browser is nice to have in a pinch, but it is so slow and clunky to use (you can not certainly see anything unless you magnify certain sections of the screen), that I do not certainly see any person making use of it either. The touch feature does make it substantially less difficult to use than the prior version, which needed you to navigate through the links applying a cursor and joystick, but the browser is nonetheless too slow to be of any use. I will look items up with Wikipedia occasionally but you can not do any true extended web browsing with it. If you seriously want this feature, you must look into the Kindle Fire. The MP3 Payer is back, and much enhanced given that you can now see the artist and title of the song you're listening to on a visual display, though the Touch is certainly not to be confused with an actual music player. I use this feature oftentimes as background music while I'm reading or when I go to sleep, because it makes use of particularly small battery.
Touch Capability - This is exactly where the device shines. I originally believed it wouldn't be that a lot far better than the prior version, even so I have identified the touch function is so intuitive and significantly more useful than I would have thought. I like to use the embedded dictionary a lot, and it is a bit of a pain to use the joystick from the K3 to scroll down to the word I want and look it up. With the Touch, I can just touch the word and have it jump straight to the dictionary. This is a Fantastic feature. I have also discovered it beneficial when I read books like the ... Read more›

Length:: 9:09 Mins
Please watch my video evaluation here. Thanks for watching and I hope it aids.
General observations:
- Controlling/manipulating items on the screen is so significantly simpler with the touch screen-it's a lot even more intuitive!
- Athough I do not show it in the video, you can swipe instead of tap to turn pages. You might also use your left hand to page forward by tapping slightly far more in from the left edge. It functions fairly well.
- Looking up a word is as hassle-free as pressing on that word. No a lot more fumbling with a five-way controller. You can additionally highlight blocks of text really readily by just swiping over it.
- Kindle Touch also has the new X-Ray feature which is definitely neat. It can be exciting to see a summary listing of facts from a offered book about a person mentioned for instance. The Kindle Keyboard does not comprise of this feature.