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Amazon Kindle 4th-gen
9.0
final rating

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Criteria Comments Rating
  • Display / readability As long as you have a good external light source, the display is excellent for text. It is not so great for images. Easy on the eyes. great!
  • Battery life Read at least 16 hours without needing a recharge. great!
  • Store and selection of titles One still wishes that more titles were available, but Amazon's ebook store is the best. great!
  • Ease of use The side controls for page turning is near perfect in my opinion. However, setup and book selection is a little clumsy. The excellence with page turning is key. good
  • Document support Amazon is making a mistake by not supporting ePub as a secondary book format, but I'm sure supporting two DRM schemes would increase cost. so-so
  • Storage capacity Adequate for books. good
  • Durability Early days, but the body seems very rugged in comparison to my Nook. good
  • Design and form factor Side controls are well placed and sized. The controls along the bottom of the unit are less worthy of praise. More about this in the detailed review. good
  • Portability (size / weight) While I'm sure that there are even thinner designs to come, the bezel size is just right for the screen size. great!
Detailed review
This is the ereader that many have been waiting for. In comparison to traditional books, I think the benefits now outweigh the drawbacks by a good margin. The size and weight are better than many paperbacks. The cost is reasonable, and the storage space is more than sufficient for my needs. Whispersync makes tag-teaming books day/night with an iPad a great solution for the compulsive reader. This is clearly a next generation design when placed next to my original Nook. Smaller. Lighter. Better. I think it is more attractive than the new Nook.

The controls along the bottom of the unit are the weak point. I wish there was a toggle or something to disable them completely when I'm reading. It is too easy to disrupt one's reading with an errant button press. In contrast, the side controls work perfectly for page turning.