This is just a copy of the review I posted over at my blog,
Bookaholic Does Blogging. I thought my review might be useful to some here as well!
Kindle 3 (Wi-Fi Only)Sold by: Amazon.com
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 StarsI did a post on
my first impression of my new Kindle, but I figured now that I've played around with it quite a bit, read a couple books, and have more or less figured out the ins and outs of it, I would do an official review. I've created a few categories that I will rate with stars, like my books, with 1 star being very poor and 5 stars being very good.
E-Ink Screen: 5 out of 5After some extensive playing around, I have to say this screen is amazing. The ink is flawless and at times I have to remind myself this is not a physical book. I was worried the Kindle wouldn't feel the same when I read on it, but much to my pleasure it feels nearly identical to reading a paper book and a lot of that has to to with the great quality of the e-ink screen.
Text Options: 5 out of 5I adore all the text options that come with this Kindle. It would be hard to displease any user in this category. There are three font choices, eight font size choices, three options for line spacing, and three options for words per line. Not to mention four different ways you can rotate the screen if you so choose. I don't think text options can get any better than that.
Overall Design: 4 out of 5I love the overall design of the Kindle. Mine (as pictured above) I got in graphite. It looks sleek, feels great in my hand, and is overall very appealing. I do have to be careful that my hands are clean when I use it (which I would anyway) because even the smallest bit of grease or grim will show finger prints on the Kindle. The only other thing that I didn't love is the page turn buttons. I find I'll accidentally hit them from time to time because they are dead center on the side of the device. I would have liked them to be a bit higher so I can hold more of the bottom of the Kindle without pushing buttons on accident.
Battery Life: 5 out of 5This is probably the only category that I probably can't rate entirely fairly given I haven't really used the Kindle long enough to know the true extent of the battery life. I know for the first week, I rarely turned the Kindle off and the battery was still 90% full, which I was impressed with.
Storage: 5 out of 5Let's not be silly. 3,500 books is way more than I'll ever probably accumulate. Even if I have this Kindle my whole life. I love to read, but 3,500 is a lot of books.
Bookmarks and Annotations: 5 out of 5This is another category where I'm not real experienced with the use of this feature, but so far so good. I love that it automatically bookmarks where you are, but still allows you to add additional bookmarks if you so desire. I've only experimented with the annotations, but so far I like them. The full keyboard makes writing the annotations quick and easy.
Text-to-Speech: 4 out of 5I love having this option for my commutes. I've only used it briefly thus far, but found it to be pretty enjoyable. Obviously, it's not an audio book by any means, but if it saves me $20 by not having to buy a second version of the book, I'm in! I've also noticed the female voice sounds A LOT better than the male voice. I have no idea why this is, but the female's reading just flows better and sounds more human to me.
Screen Savers: 2 out of 5This is the only complaint I have about my Kindle: the crappy screen savers. There are roughly two that I actually like, but the Kindle cycles through all of screen savers and there is no way to change this. I know there are hacks you can perform so you can have custom screen savers, but I really don't want to void my Terms of Use Agreement with Amazon, so I will not be doing this. I feel like it would be simple enough to at least let the user choose which ones they want to use, even if you can't add custom ones, but sadly, I can't even do that.
Web Browser: 3 out of 5I dislike using the web browser on my Kindle. It's fine for using the Kindle store, but aside from that I will not be utilizing this feature. I imagine this is why the web browser is still experimental because, frankly, it needs work.
Organization: 4 out of 5I love using the categories to organize. It could not be easier to do! I would like, however, if I could set up all my categories on my computer and having them sync to my Kindle, but that doesn't seem to be a possibility.
Why not 3G?I opted for the Wi-Fi only Kindle because I literally have wi-fi everywhere I go: my house, work, school, my fiance's house, all our relative's houses, etc. etc. The only time I would conceivably need the 3G is on vacation or on the road. I figure for such little use, I can simply make sure I have books ready to go and save $50. So that's what I'll do.
I could go on and on about features and keep rating different categories, but I think those are really the major ones, at least for me. As you can probably tell, I am incredibly happy with my new Kindle. Looking at the other models out there, having now owned and used the Kindle, I can't imagine buying another one that would work better for me than my Kindle does. When it's love, you just know it, right? =)
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