UK Best Price & Read Reviews on Discount Kitchen Appliances for Sale

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Paul S. Ell (NI, UK) –

  

  

  

I didn’t expect to receive my Kindle before the official release date. I ordered mine on the day it was announced and initially dispatch was confirmed for 12 October but in an e-mail yesterday Amazon said it was being sent early and it arrived this morning.

The screen remains unchanged and is excellent, most significantly in sunlight. The most striking difference is the size of the Kindle – significantly smaller than the keyboard version and now looking more like the Sony eReader range. I don’t need a keyboard – although you have access to a virtual one on the Kindle screen but only can only slooooowly select keys using the 5-way control on the front of the Kindle. I much prefer this compact, very light, form. The finish is also better in my opinion. I prefer the silver casing to black, and certainly the white available in US earlier-generation Kindles. Another flagged improvement is the speed of `virtually’ turning the page. There is a minimal improvement but it’s still not possible to repeatedly press the next page button without the Kindle quickly falling behind.

Lower specs, excluding the keyboard which I think is a plus, is the anticipated time before the Kindle needs to be recharged – one month instead of two. One month is fine for me. The storage is also reduced but Amazon archives all your purchases in the Cloud so when you have Wi-Fi access you can download them just in case you’re running out of storage space. As the Kindle will hold more than 1,000 books this is not likely to be an issue. Further, listening to music and audio books is no longer an option on the Kindle (which has no speaker) so the storage won’t be clogged with large sound files. Storage space is not critical therefore. I also find that with Wi-Fi pretty ubiquitous these days that the loss of a 3G is fine. Where you’re likely to struggle finding a Wi-Fi access point you’re also likely not to be in a 3G area but can still rely on a slower GPRS or Edge mobile download. It is possible to connect the Kindle to a PC and move e-books to it via the USB cable so the Wi-Fi less have a work around (but you need Wi-Fi at least once to activate it on receipt).

Overall this is a refreshing update of the Kindle focussed on the key features of an e-reader – a good screen/size ratio, lightweight form, ease of downloading new books, and an excellent screen. And thanks to the focus on core features it’s cheaper than earlier versions. Recommended.

Update: I’ve uploaded a picture showing the back of the Kindle with its metal frame which improves the built quality and strength of the device.

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D. Jones (UK) –

  

  

Customer Video Review Length:: 4:45 Mins

I already have the original Kindle with the keyboard and have been extremely pleased with it. As soon as I saw this smaller, lighter version of the Kindle I thought I would get it to carry around with me when I go to work and in my handbag.

It has the same functionality that is available on the original Kindle, it just doesn’t have a physical keyboard. If like me you didn’t use the keyboard much then it is worth losing it to gain a smaller reading device. There is an on-screen keyboard available for inputting data which is controlled by the four way selector button. It is more time consuming to use than the physical keyboard but I didn’t find it to be too much of an issue.

This Kindle is significantly smaller in size and lighter in weight than the older version. This means that it is much more comfortable to hold for long periods of time without making your wrists ache from holding it. Despite being lighter it still feels sturdy, solid and well made.

The front of the Kindle has the four way controller button which is used for much of the functionality and making selections. There is still a home button which takes you as you would expect, back to the home page of the Kindle. This is where your downloaded books and collections are stored. There is a keyboard button that brings up the onscreen keyboard and a back button that takes you back to the previous screen. The final button is the menu button that contains most of the functionality and options you will need to manage your Kindle.

On the right and left hand side of the Kindle you have the forward and backward buttons that allow you to change pages. By being on both sides of the device it means that you can use your preferred hand to turn the pages. The buttons are less prominent than on the original device but they seem just as easy to access and turn pages with.

The Kindle comes with a USB charger which will enable you to charge it directly from a computer, laptop, netbook etc. Note that this Kindle does NOT come with the plug adaptor for mains charging – this option needs to be purchased separately.

After charging and switching the Kindle on the screen and e-ink looked sharp, it was easy to read the words on the screen – a good contrast between them. Also, your eyes won’t get as tired if you read for long periods of time as there is no backlight – something many other e-reader devices use.

This newer Kindle has less storage space than the original one, you can store around 1,000 books instead of 3,000 but this isn’t a problem as you can remove books after reading them. Amazon store all the books that you have purchased and you can redownload any book you have removed within a few seconds.

The battery life is also lower than the original Kindle. I normally had to charge my original device up once a month – it seemed to go on forever. So even if this one needs charging every three weeks, so what? You can extend your battery life by turning off the wireless option once you have downloaded your books.

As someone who had virtually stopped reading books before purchasing a Kindle it has made a huge difference to me. I am never without my device and generally get through a book every one to two days. If you enjoy reading books and you haven’t already bought yourself a Kindle then I would highly recommend treating yourself to one.

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Seren Ade (UK) –

  

I’ve been playing with my partner’s shiny new Kindle and I’m impressed. It’s a good bit smaller and noticeably lighter than the Kindle Keyboard and the silver colour is, to my mind, more attractive than the graphite KK. The e-ink and screen are precisely as in the KK and provide really crisp, clear text in a good-sized format. Can’t say that I’ve really noticed the faster page turn associated with this newer model, but it is such a minute timing difference that that isn’t entirely astonishing. The reduced ‘flash’ on page turns is, however, quite noticeable and a distinct improvement. Functions-wise most of the buttons work precisely the same way as those on the KK – the familiar 5-way controller now pleasingly centred, with two buttons on either side (a new feature ‘keyboard’ button and ‘back’ on the left, ‘menu’ and ‘home’ to the right). The page turn buttons continue to be located on both sides of the screen. They’re the same length, but are now narrower and more sloped, saving space on the device. I prefer the new neater design to the ones on my KK – they’re slightly harder to press and I don’t find myself accidentally flicking through pages without intending to.

As I expected, I’m not a fan of scrolling around the virtual keyboard using the 5-way controller. This is rather laborious (if you didn’t like the keyboard, you probably aren’t going to like using this either) and I can’t imagine wanting to use this to access the Kindle store. To be fair, if you didn’t like the keyboard there’s a good chance you didn’t use it at all and won’t make use of the virtual keyboards either – leaving you to simply enjoy the advantage of the new Kindle’s smaller size.

Price-wise, the entry level Kindle seems reasonable in view of its quality and features. There continue to be a number of low scoring reviews in which the Kindle is slated for costing more in the UK than the USA. However, the comparisons made tend to wrongly contrast a $79 subsidised Kindle which displays third party adverts on the screensaver and home page (this deal isn’t yet offered outside the US, presumably at least in part due to constraints imposed by the advertisers) with the unsubsidised version – which costs $109 – and is the version available in the UK. The prices shown on the US site do not include sales tax – as this varies by state, and (where applicable) is added at checkout, the UK price of £89 DOES include VAT at 20% – so we get no nasty surprises at checkout!

If you don’t use the keyboard, aren’t worried by the lower storage space and reduced battery life (there’s still enough for 1,500 books on the kindle itself, to say nothing of Amazon’s backup storage, and at half an hour a day usage, a month’s battery life), are interested in core functions rather than experimental audio features and web browsing, and don’t need a mains charger, this could well be the Kindle for you. In fact, if you do decide you need a mains charger, since introducing the new Kindle Amazon have put their own brand mains power supply on offer at half price and as Kindle takes the same size charger as the KK then there are a number of unbranded versions available. Indeed, a mains charger comes bundled with Duragadget’s new range of cases.

Having tried the new Kindle, I won’t be giving up my much-loved KK3G for one of these. I like it a lot – but still want the physical keyboard. My partner’s user habits are different from mine and he’s going to love it, as it’s retained the features he loved from the KK and dropped those he didn’t.

***

Edit: I was right, one very chuffed other half has been crooning over his ‘precious’ like a gollum. He doesn’t agree with me about using the 5-way controller to work the virtual keyboard (says it’s easy and points out that in fact there’s more than one virtual kb to select from: upper and lower case alphabet + numbers; symbols; international characters in upper and lower case). But I’m not convinced. I hate having to use the 5-way controller to input data from just the symbols menu on my KK3G, so I can’t see this growing on me, and I really don’t like having to fiddle round switching between lower and upper case keyboards every time I need a capital letter.

Having had a good chance to use this now, there is one respect in which I think the new Kindle could be slightly disappointing: and that is in regard to font sizing. What could be done at the press of a button on the KK, is now buried under the menu functions – which makes the new Kindle less accessible to those with sight problems. Combine this with the loss of text-to-speech and the KK seems like a clear frontrunner for those with poor/impaired eyesight.

Overall this is an excellent product, but so are the Keyboard versions: it all comes down to your budget/user preferences.

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