92
8.0
final rating

reviewed on
this review has been viewed 516 times

Criteria Comments Rating
  • Display / readability Distracting blue tint and terrible dark splotches instead of "even, white lighting" promised by Amazon. poor
  • Battery life No comments great!
  • Store and selection of titles No comments great!
  • Ease of use No comments great!
  • Document support No comments so-so
  • Storage capacity No comments good
  • Durability No comments good
  • Design and form factor No comments good
  • Portability (size / weight) No comments great!
Detailed review
Briefly, this is a better product than the Nook competition available today.. It's not, however, the user experienced promised all over Amazon's product description page.

For starters the screen has a distractingly-noticeable blue tint unless you're reading in sunlight or under tungsten bulbs. It should be PAPER white in a dark room, just like Amazon advertises.

Secondly, there are SEVERE dark splotches at the bottom of the screen (goo.gl­/2CB7O). The combination of blue tint and these splotches (for me) severely distract from reading. So much so, that I'll be returning a product I otherwise like very much.

I don't know if it's a design flaw or a lack of manufacturing quality consistency, but either way the big feature was "paper-white lighting that's evenly distributed over the entire surface" and that is NOT what you get with this device.

If you can overlook these flaws, you'll be happy with this new Kindle. But if, like me, you cannot then consider keeping your existing Kindle until the 2.0 version of Amazon's new back-lighting technology is released.

Comments (2) subscribe to this review's comments

alfarmer

Following up, here's an image of the full screen:goo.gl­/yHtwz

As you can see the discoloration/darkening bleeds most of the way up the screen even though it lessens towards the top.
RedHatMatt

I assume the blue/shadow problem is only when the LED lights are on? "White" LEDs look blue. Without the lights is it okay?