Amazon Kindle 3 review

Ever since Kindle eInk reader was introduced several years ago, it has been one of the best readers. Sony Reader and Nook didn't become as popular as Kindle. If you bought Kindle you know why. Amazon Kindle is easy to use, lightweight, has long battery life. And another advantage of Kindle is that it is supported by Amazon's massive library of books, newspapers and magazines. As a result, Kindle revolutionized reading and made readers to re-examine how they wanted to read.

Kindle 3 became thinner, lighter and faster. Lets review it and see what kind of pros and cons it has.

Main features of the Kindle 3:

* New E-Ink screen that is 50% brighter than old Kindles
* Holds up to 3,500 books
* Built-in Wi-Fi (3G version is also available)
* Books delivered via Wi-Fi in 60 seconds or less
* Book lending to other readers for 14 days
* Built-in browser
* Free ebook sample chapters before you buy


Pros:

* Slim Profile
Kindle is a small and lightweight device. Kindle 3 is 21% smaller than previous Kindles while keeping the 6" screen. The device is easy to hold and read for hours at a time.

* Invisible Reading Experience
Kindle offers a pretty fast page turning rate. Turning pages is not as attractive as on iPad, but an E-ink screen is much more friendly to your eyes (there is no glare that LCD and AMOLED screens have). Buttons for turning pages can be found on the left and right sides of the Kindle. You can read on Kindle 3 in direct sunlight or indoors.

* Easy To Use
Kindle is pretty intuitive. It is easy to turn pages and move to the next chapter. Kindle remembers the last page of every book that you read. But reading a user guide is highly recommended to learn how to use many options that it has.

* Huge Range of books, newspapers, magazines
Amazon is one of the largest booksellers in the world. It currently offers more than 3'000'000 titles that can be downloaded through its Kindle store. These include new releases, out of copyright books, bestsellers, blogs, and audiobooks, newspapers and magazines. Many of these items have sample chapters or trial subscriptions before you decide to purchase them, so you can make an educated purchase.

* Long Battery Life
With the Wi-Fi turned off, Kindle 3 allows to read for a month or more on a full battery charge. This is one of the best , which is excellent.

* Kindle Apps
Amazon opened its Kindle API, so anyone can write an application for Kindle. You can launch games like Crossword, Sudoku.

* Read not only from Kindle ereader
You can use Kindle App on computers, cell phones, tablets to read books from Amazon book store, thus you have your books at your fingertips.


Cons:

* English keyboard
If you want to read books in languages other than english, you can do it with Kindle 3. It supports many languages including spanish, german, russian,... The only problem is that Kindle has an enslish keyboard only and an english dictionary only, and they are mostly useless for users not speaking english.

* Few formats supported
Unlike many ereaders from China that support PDF, DjVu, fb2, epub, doc, rtf, txt and other formats, Amazon decided to support few formats. It supports DRM protected books from Amazon, but not much beside them. Third party software Calibre allows to solve the problem partially.

* DRM protection on Amazon books
DRM protection doesn't stop piracy, because you can use DRM removal tools, but puts many restrictions onto legal ebooks buyers. Not only it makes much more difficult to transfer your ebooks to your other reading devices, but also to your other Kindles.

* Unpredictable Book Fees
Books can be as low as $1 or as high as $40, without any explanation. Some ebooks on Amazon can cost more than their paper alternatives, which is ridiculous. And books that are in the public domain (so should be available for free) can cost several dollars.

* Not Expandable
Kindle doesn't have an expansion card slot like SD card slot.

* Difficult to manage large book collections
It is much easier to buy books using Kindle for PC, then transfer thenm to Kindle than manage 50+ books on your Kindle. Collections can improve the situation, but only slightly.

* Potential For Damage
Kindle doesn't come with a cover, so you need to purchase it separately.

* Small screen
Screen is too small to read many magazines or technical literature

* Poor browser
While you can surf the net with Kindle, the experience is pretty disappointing.


Bottom line

Kindle 3 is probably the best e-reader on the market. It is lightweight, easy to use, hold the battery for a long time. It is a very good reader and should work fine for you unless you need
- to read in languages other than english and using a keyboard is important,
- support of formats like DjVu, fb2, epub (unless you're willing to convert ... note that this can be very tedious or even impossible)

My verdict
Recommended