Amazon Kindle 3 Review

In the video below Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Discusses Kindle Keyboard, don’t forget to turn on your speakers.

Amazon Kindle 3 has finally been released with two different versions – Kindle WiFi, and Kindle WiFi with 3G capabilities.

For people who need a sub-$150 eReader or don’t require 3G access, a WiFi version is just as good at the 3G version. The Kindle Wi-Fi is capable of crushing the competition, thanks to its thin design, ergonomics, clearer text, and larger storage capacity, Selling at an affordable $139, the Kindle WiFi is a very appealing product.

The Kindle WiFi has been completely redesigned by Amazon. People will most often see the smaller form before noticing any other changes. Amazon has eliminated almost 21% of useless space, which has cut down the size of the Kindle considerably. A tighter, sleeker look is the result.

The measurements of the Kindle 2 are 8 x 5.3 x 0.36 inches. To compare, the dimensions of the Kindle WiFi are only 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.34 inches. This doesn’t sound important, however when you pick up the device, you will notice a great difference: it has a lighter feel, it’s slimmer and a lot easier to carry with one hand.

To accommodate a smaller frame, Amazon also deleted the tier of numbers button and re-sized the buttons used to turn pages to a mere 1/3 of an inch wide. The navigation buttons have been re-arranged to make them easier to use. Underneath the screen next to the QWERTY keyboard are the Menu, 5 way buttons, as well as the Back and Home buttons.

Entering keystrokes has been made much faster by the curved keyboard buttons that are located in close proximity to each other. It has thin, rocker-style buttons for turning the pages without making a sound. There are no word labels on the page turn buttons, as they are been replaced with arrows like these < and >.

One of the biggest changes is the huge improvement Amazon has made in the Kindle WiFi’s screen appearance. The new screen has a contrast feature that is 50% above the previous models. It has also improved the speed, making the pages turn 20% quicker. Its massive 4GB of onboard storage is twice the amount provided by the Kindle 2, making it possible to store up to 3500 titles. Battery life might last an entire month now that it has been doubled.

Amazon offers some great new features, such as adjustable line spacing and three different typefaces. There are several language options (including Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, Chinese) available on this device.

With Kindle WiFi, customers can enjoy AT&T networks for free. Graphite is the only color option.

Amazon kindle 3 Review Positives: 
• Thinner, smaller design than older models; • Better display with finer contrast and quicker page turns; native PDF support; • Huge library of hundreds of thousands of e-books, periodicals, and blogs on Amazon.com; • Wi-Fi access to Amazon.com; • Built-in keyboard to write notes; • 4GB (3.3 usable) of internal memory, it stores a whopping 3,500 e-books; • Eight fonts, two of which are extra-large; • Superior battery life; • Displays images, and plays MP3 and AAC audio.

Amazon kindle 3 Review Negatives: 
• You cannot add memory; • EPUB book files are not supported; • It does not come with a carrying case; • You cannot remove or replace the battery.

Amazon kindle 3 Review Bottom Line 
Amazon is hard to match when it comes to hardware, book choices, customer service and cost. At an incredible low price of $139, the Amazon Kindle 3 with WiFi is an excellent reader.

We only have one major complaint – you cannot download books from other bookstores or from the library, since there is no ePUB support. However, if you are not planning to tap into library books, and you are happy keeping within Amazon’s cozy world, you can’t do any better than the Kindle 3 at this point in time.

Things may stir up a bit when Sony comes through with their new touch screen E-Ink readers that they have promised will have excellent contrast and clarity.

Design: 
The Amazon Kindle 3 is one of the slimmest eBook readers available, sporting a state-of-the-art design. Its dimensions are 0.335 inches in depth, 4.8 inches wide, and 7.5 inches in height. The Kindle 3 Wi-Fi is remarkably lightweight, weighing only 8.5 ounces, as well as being small and compact.

The eBook reader is very lightweight when you hold it and it feels like you are carrying a light notebook rather than the numerous books you would really be carrying around if you had physical versions rather than the e-version.

The Amazon Kindle 3 is priced competitively while offering a higher quality eBook reader and more features than are found in many other e-readers currently on the market.

Despite its lack of a touch screen, the Amazon Kindle 3 E-Ink display offers such great contrast you feel like you are holding an actual printed page.

The screen is created to decrease glare, so you can see the words whether you are inside or outside, and you don’t have to be concerned with the lighting. The screen size makes it similar to a book in size and allows it to be held comfortably.

The Kindle’s ease of use and navigation is fantastic. It only took a few minutes until we were comfortably using the Kindle without any errors. The “on-off” switch can be found on the bottom of the Kindle, and you can turn it on or off by sliding the button.

When you turn off your Kindle, or put it in sleep mode, you will have more than 50 different screen savers to choose from. Besides the cover of a book, the screen saver was usually the picture of a popular author.

Amazon Kindle 3 keyboard is conveniently located at the base, making it simple for you to look up names of books or writers. It has four-way navigation along with buttons that you use to select, navigate home or move to the previous step, go to the menu, and offer viewing options.

A push of a button switches you from letters to numbers and symbols. You can use the two buttons on each side of the screen to scroll pages back and forth.

Content: 
There are many things available to be read on the Kindle including books, magazines, newspaper, and blogs that are offered by the Kindle 3. Similar to other popular options, this eBook reader offers people a connection to a store that provides materials.

The Amazon Kindle 3 includes a link to the Kindle Store, the place to buy books, newspapers and magazines to download to your individual device.

Amazon takes pride in boasting to its customers that they can buy and start reading a book in less than a minute, definitely among the fastest downloads we found in eBook readers.

Amazon Kindle 3 technology makes it easy for you to organize your titles so that you can open them quickly and readily. This feature that allows you to organize your content has been called “Collections”.

Memory/Battery Life: 
Kindle 3’s battery life is superior to all other eReaders; with the Wi-Fi shut down, it stays strong for 30 days without needing a recharge.

Even with the Wi-Fi feature enabled, the battery life is three weeks, which is remarkably longer than the length of time most other eBook readers’ batteries last. A USB cable is used to charge the Amazon Kindle 3, which will charge completely in under five hours.

You are limited to utilizing 3GB of the Kindle’s internal memory, although it contains 4GB. Although, that is plenty for storing up to 3,500 books. Do you think you’d ever be able to lug more than 3000 books wherever you go? You could never do that! Now you will be able to, using the Kindle.

Kindle users will find more that 700,000 downloadable books on its site alone! If you are uncertain about a book, you have the capability of downloading a free trial of a book, which allows you to peruse several chapters of a book before you commit to buying it.

There are also more than 1 million free books provided by Amazon for users to download and read. All of your linked titles remain in storage at Amazon, so you can download a new copy for free if you should happen to delete a file and then need it again.

Extras: 
We really liked the fact that you can select 16 different gray tones on Amazon Kindle 3 E-Ink display. Although we were hoping this top-of-the-line e-reader would offer a color display, we quickly got over it because the Kindle 3 outshines all other e-readers in its fine detail and screen contrast.

While Amazon Kindle 3 Wi-Fi is a bit slow, it is hard to beat the free internet feature. With the Kindle 3, Wi-Fi services are at your fingertips nationwide, while other e-readers either don’t offer Wi-Fi, make you pay extra for it, or offer limited Internet access.

Wi-Fi is available through AT&T hotspots, and while the web is available throughout the U.S., there are still places where it isn’t possible to get a connection. We have had the ability to connect to the Internet every single place that we have attempted.

Using the Main Menu on the Amazon Kindle 3, you can utilize the prototypes that Amazon is currently testing. Three options are presented by the Experimental Menu and measured by Amazon for user usefulness. There will be a message from Amazon that will display when you open this menu, which says to inform Amazon if you like these features and would like them to continue working on them.

When you access Amazon’s Experimental Menu, the first selection you will find is a web browser that you can use to access the Internet. It also sports an MP3 player, for your listening pleasure. MP3 files that are stored in the Music folder on your Kindle 3 are available to you even when you have a book file open.

Another innovation Amazon is giving users is the Text-to-Speech function, which makes it possible to change over to audio from anywhere in a book, not just from page one. We like these features and we also like the idea that Amazon asks its users what they are looking for and tries to provide it.