Opinions - Even at $250, the Kindle tablet needs to offer something special

[HEXUS]

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[cheesemp]

Its the screen that'll make or break this. Plenty of cheap dual core tablets for this price but always let down by the screen and lets face it - for a tablet - its all about the screen.

[TheAnimus]

Hmm the touchpads, even at $200 were still selling out completely.....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Color Nook reached sales of 3 million in six months by the end of March 2011 in the US.

I mentioned some details about the Amazon tablet in my thread yesterday:

http://forums.hexus.net/mobile-phone...ml#post2119085

The 7" Amazon tablet is being priced to compete against the Color Nook as I had predicted. The 7" IPS panel in the Color Nook is considered by Anandtech to be as good as the one in the iPad2:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4302/b...s-galaxy-tab/7

[Saracen]

I always thought the Nook to be a bit confused. Personally, as an e-reader, there's no way I'd buy a device with a backlit IPS screen. For me, the critical features of an e-reader are the length of battery life, and absolutely the lack of glare from e-ink screens. Not that an e-reader has to have an e-ink screen, but it must have the readability in extended use that e-ink offers, and backlit screens, at least for me, simply do not. Colour would be nice if it doesn't compromise that.

For a tablet, that screen tech works fine for me, but not for an e-reader, which is one reason I'd never buy the Nook, or anything else with an "emissive" screen, as an e-reader. If the Kindle tablet is targeted as an e-reader alternative, it'll have to conquer that problem or I'm not interested.

[Myss_tree]

I would have stuck with exactly the same form factor - think of it like a giant Blackberry minus the the phone component.
A colour e-ink display as well?
No chance of Apple sueing you unless they want to claim the patent for inventing colour.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The thing it seems many people bought the Nook as a cheap tablet. It has a built jn media player,picture viewer and a web browser. It also has an app store. Since it runs Android anyway it can be rooted relatively easily. The Nook 2 has also been announced too.

[crossy]

Hmm, if $250 = £200 (ish) then I predict that Amazon will sell these by the bucketload. As to the 7" form factor, I think they've been pretty clever - I've got a 7" and a 10" tablet and the smaller one is definitely more comfortable to use for an extended period - especially because it's about the weight of a hardback novel.

Personally, I don't like the idea of a (heavily?) customized Android, but I suspect that the good folks at xda-devs will have the Kindle Color singing and dancing within a few hours of it going on sale. Got to agree with ScottB - Amazon have learned the lesson from HP's debacle, and not tried to slap a "premium" price on it. I still think that the Touchpad would have been a lot better received if it'd been cheaper - say £100 less. Ah well, water under the bridge now...

I always thought the Nook to be a bit confused. Personally, as an e-reader, there's no way I'd buy a device with a backlit IPS screen. For me, the critical features of an e-reader are the length of battery life, and absolutely the lack of glare from e-ink screens. Not that an e-reader has to have an e-ink screen, but it must have the readability in extended use that e-ink offers, and backlit screens, at least for me, simply do not. Colour would be nice if it doesn't compromise that. For a tablet, that screen tech works fine for me, but not fore an e-reader, which is one reason I'd never buy the Nook, or anything else with an "emissive" screen, as an e-reader. If the Kindle tablet is targeted as an e-reader alternative, it'll have to conquer that problem or I'm not interested.

Sorry, but I'm going to very politely disagree - there's folks (me included) - who find the "flickering" of an eInk screen when it refreshes quite disagreeable. In fact, I know one guy who actually claims that 5 minutes with a Kindle makes him nauseous to an uncomfortable degree (hint ). But I would obviously agree that battery life is the major factor here - maybe Amazon have been clever by only going for a single core (plus a big battery?). Coincidentally I also much prefer a multifunction device, but that tally's with your statement about the suitability of eInk for devices that are only eReaders. Remember that Nook was primarily an eReader, but B&N were also at pains to point out the other stuff it could do.

I suppose that there's also a distinction to be made between folks who want an eReader for the train/bus/beach just to read novels and those (again like me) who wanted it more for technical publications (O'Reilly's deals on eBooks are too good to miss).

[Biscuit]

If i am reading any extended articles on my PC, i tend to switch it to high contrast so its white text on a back blackground, that way its not like staring into a lightbulb all evening. Its working well so far however im not sure you can do it easily on android/kindle app. I quite like the e-ink stuff and i have been tempted by a kindle repeatedly but still not taken the plunge.

Either way i wont be buying this, got my heart set on the Asus Tranformer 2

[Hicks12]

Ive just got my kindle (£65 from amazon, WOO) and im impressed, e-ink is just so much better, yes the refresh of the screen is noticeable but its only if you are flicking through a picture book, its far from annoying in my opinion as its less than turn a page on a real book (close your eyes for a split second if its that bad?).


Compared to reading on my dell u2311h and on my lg optimus 2x(both with solid ips panels) i much prefer e-ink, no strain and so easy to read during the day.

Still trying to work out the use of a tablet, my phone is using the same chipsets (tegra 2) and is just as powerful and just had a smaller form factor (i.e it fits in my pocket), has around the same batterylife really, mine even can mirror to a display via hdmi so for me tablets are useless as they are overpriced and oversized phones, ofc this is just my opinion .

Kindle has it right as its damn easy to read and you can make notes on books etc with the qwerty keyboard, mp3 support, audio book support and has a microphone which is disabled via software for future use.

If anyone can make the tablet work (apart from apple...) then its amazon, they just have the sheer force to do it so i hope they succeed as they are genuinely an epic company, support is second to none (rang up regarding kindle and emailed them other things) accepting my ram back after 60 days !.

Brilliance

[crossy]

If i am reading any extended articles on my PC, i tend to switch it to high contrast so its white text on a back blackground, that way its not like staring into a lightbulb all evening. Its working well so far however im not sure you can do it easily on android/kindle app. I quite like the e-ink stuff and i have been tempted by a kindle repeatedly but still not taken the plunge.

Yes, that is dead easy to setup on Kindle-for-Android. Merely get up an eBook, click/tap somewhere in the middle and an menu will appear at the top right. This menu has four items - the leftmost of which is colour rendition - this gives choices of black-text-on-white; black-text-on-'sepia' (sort of milky coffee colour); and white-text-on-black. The last of these is the one that I use - mainly because I find it easy to read, like you I find black-text-on-white a bit glaring. I actually got a screen shot (from my Asus Transformer) showing this

(It's easier to see at https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink) Speaking of the Transformer, it comes with a pretty good reader for .epub and .mobi files - shame that the Kindle Color presumably won't support these file types too.

Either way i wont be buying this, got my heart set on the Asus Tranformer 2

Should be quite good (although I'll bet hideously expensive) The padfone (assuming that Apple don't try and sue) also looks pretty good - one of the few devices I'll have on the shortlist to replace my current SE X10 next year.

[scaryjim]

... i tend to switch it to ... white text on a back blackground, ... not sure you can do it easily on android/kindle app. ...

Don't know about the kindle android app, but Aldiko has a "night mode" which does exactly this.

[Saracen]

....

Sorry, but I'm going to very politely disagree - there's folks (me included) - who find the "flickering" of an eInk screen when it refreshes quite disagreeable. In fact, I know one guy who actually claims that 5 minutes with a Kindle makes him nauseous to an uncomfortable degree (hint ). But I would obviously agree that battery life is the major factor here - maybe Amazon have been clever by only going for a single core (plus a big battery?). Coincidentally I also much prefer a multifunction device, but that tally's with your statement about the suitability of eInk for devices that are only eReaders. Remember that Nook was primarily an eReader, but B&N were also at pains to point out the other stuff it could do.

I suppose that there's also a distinction to be made between folks who want an eReader for the train/bus/beach just to read novels and those (again like me) who wanted it more for technical publications (O'Reilly's deals on eBooks are too good to miss).

On the last sentence, absolutely agree.

As for the screen flicker, I found it irritating initially, but then it dawned on me that it was less irritating, and faster, than turning a page in a book. Page turning in a book now irritates me, and the e-ink flicker doesn't, I guess because I'm used to it.

On the subject of nausea, well, if it has that effect on your mate, then it does. Clearly, it's not for him. I've not heard of that being a common reaction, though, and of everyone I know with one (including those that bought one having played with mine), none have had that.

As for technical publications, well, that's complex. One friend bought a tablet because he wanted colour in books, mainly cookery books, and felt the Kindle wouldn't work for him. Quite a bit of what I use it for is technical manuals, mainly in PDF form, but they're almost exclusively mono, so colour doesn't matter.

What does matter for me is that too much time with a screen, be it CRT or LCD give me a headache. Or rather, makes the one I suffer from pretty much 24/7/365 worse. The Kindle does not. I can read a Kindle for a lot longer than I can actually read a paper book, these days. With a laptop, for instance, I can read a book for maybe half an hour. With the Kindle, I can, and often do, read for hours at a time. So I guess your mate's nausea and my headaches cancel each other out .... except that I've come across a lot of people that love Kindles (or e-ink sscre3ens, anyway) because of the absence of glare, and the lack of eye-strain that results.

Each to his own, I guess. For a tablet, or a laptop, I want colour. For an e-reader, that lack of eye-strain is a red-liner issue for me, and if that's absent, the device is useless to me. I think it's all in the nature of usage. I can use a PC or a laptop for hours, because the way I use it is not constant staring at words on a screen. It's partly typing, partly mouse, partly looking at paper (like invoices), partly web browsing, partly talking on the phone, and so on. With an e-reader, though, I'm likely to be there hours at a time doing nothing other than reading line after line of text. I simply cannot do that with any emissive screen tech I've yet used - I'd end up in bed for two days with a migraine.

So, for me, colour in an e-reader would be nice provided :-

- it doesn't compromise my ability to read for extended periods
- it doesn't kill battery life
- it doesn't jack the price too much.

Ideally, I'd like a fast, full-colour machine, powerful enough to run voice recognition software, that's a practical replacement for a laptop, and an e-reader, all in one compact, easy to carry and reasonably-priced package, with good battery life. I charge my Kindle about every three weeks. And I think we'll get there. But not quite yet. Until then, I'm going to need two devices, each of which does what it does really well, rather than a combined device that's too compromised to suit me well for either. But that's just me, and maybe isn't typical of the mass market.

[Saracen]

....

I quite like the e-ink stuff and i have been tempted by a kindle repeatedly but still not taken the plunge.

....

Been there, done that. I wavered for ages, partly due to price. But once it came down, I took the plunge. I have to say I think the attractiveness of the (current) Kindle depends entirely on what you'd use it for. If you're a heavy reader (and I am) and if you're often are away from home and want a decent selection of reading material without lugging a second suitcase full of books (and I am and do), then the Kindle is a God-send. It is, in my view, a fairly specialised device that does one thing extremely well, and a few others moderately okay, but is NOT a general purpose device. So it's desirability depends entirely on how much you'd use it for what it's really good at.

[crossy]

So, for me, colour in an e-reader would be nice provided :-

- it doesn't compromise my ability to read for extended periods
- it doesn't kill battery life
- it doesn't jack the price too much.

Ideally, I'd like a fast, full-colour machine, powerful enough to run voice recognition software, that's a practical replacement for a laptop, and an e-reader, all in one compact, easy to carry and reasonably-priced package, with good battery life. I charge my Kindle about every three weeks. And I think we'll get there. But not quite yet. Until then, I'm going to need two devices, each of which does what it does really well, rather than a combined device that's too compromised to suit me well for either. But that's just me, and maybe isn't typical of the mass market.

Agree, that list of three points above is pretty much what I'd say defines an eReader. In which case, I'm not 100% convinced that this latest Amazon device is a Kindle family member - after all it fails on just about all of the three rules.

7" is fine for an eReader (imho), but I'm not sure whether the kind of content that needs colour would necessarily be usable on that size of screen - 10" would be far superior. Although, I wouldn't put it past Amazon to have enough clout in the market for a new breed of eMagazines spring up designed for that size of screen. At the moment, having to pan around a page to be able to view it on a 7"er is a big "fail" as far as I'm concerned.

I've looked at electronic-only delivery of my various magazines and fortunately most seem to rely on PDF (which is a big plus to me - cross-platform is great), but one or
two are stuck in Zinio, which I'm very unsure of. Interesting that a lot of publishers apparently think that we punters need interactive magazines - personally I'd prefer something that just limited it's "interaction" to being able to click URL's in the magazine.

Apologies if that digression into eMagazines was a bit off topic...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Of course Amazon are going to call their tablet a Kindle. People already trust and also know the Kindle brand so there is really no point for Amazon to brand it anything else ATM.