Kindle Review

I know that Kindle’s have been out for a while now, but I received mine as a birthday present at the end of October and wanted to play around with it for a few weeks to let you know what I thought.

I initially asked for the original Kindle, now called Kindle Keyboard, for my birthday present before the new one came out. I have been umming and ahhing about e-readers for quite some time and finally decided to have a go. However when it came to my parents ordering it, they got me the new Kindle and I am so glad they did. 

I won’t bore you with the stats of the reader as they are easily available on the Amazon website. But I just wanted to let you know what I think of its features, and also what my friends and family have said about it when having a quick play.

The look and feel of the reader is lovely! It fits easily in one hand and is super light making it easy to read and hold. Whenever people have seen me using it they always go “is that a Kindle… its sooo small!” and it surprising how compact it really is.

In terms of usability it did take a little longer than I expected to really get to grips with all the controls. The 5 way controller works logically but it can be difficult to use the search features especially the keyboard. Having said this finding and downloading books was really fast, so it was not such a big issue. 

I have to mention here that I have never played with a Kindle before, I had simply read the specs, and heard a lot about them so as a big reader I decided I needed to have one! I found page turning buttons on the sides of the screen are really easy to use, and I picked up their function and how to use the without even thinking, yet when others pick it up and see then struggling to get to grips with the concept. 

Just a soft pull down on the keys turns the page, but nearly every person who has had a look at it attempts to push the button into the side of the kindle exclaiming “these buttons are a bit stiff” and “they don’t even work Marie – have you broken it already!”. A simple demo is all it takes to clear the confusion in 9/10 cases, yet my boyfriend still hasn’t got to grips with it! Whereas I think they are slightly too easy to use, with me accidently skipping pages whilst adjusting my position whilst reading!

The screen has to be my favourite part. It actually does read like paper. Super easy on the eyes I have found myself on more than one occasion reading for hours into the night seamlessly flicking pages. There is a small flash when the pages turn, but I didn’t notice after the first 2 pages. The background images are really cool too. If I didn’t know otherwise I would think they were pencil drawings – really showing of the screens quality. There is so many too! I have been using it every day for 2 weeks and I swear I have just seen one I haven’t seen before.

The paper like quality of the screen is not really
given justice in this photo! This extract is from
 Nick Spalding's 'The Conerstone'

The images appear to be randomly selected,
but this is my favourite one.

I haven’t been taking it out and about much of late; due to the case my brother kindly ordered me a case from Amazon, which was out of stock and has taken over a month to arrive. But I have to have everything in lime green and I hope it will be worth the wait! In the mean time I have been storing it in its box which is equally compact.

The sample feature is also been really good. I have been able to download the first chapter of every book I have wanted to read, but never sure if it was going to be for me. After all it was blurb on the back of a Kelley Armstrong book I read once in Waterstones that lead a whole lot of my friends to purchase (and fall in love with) the entire Women of the Otherworld series. And it was the first chapter I downloaded of Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark on Kindle for PC that made me go a buy the entire set. I think this might be a costly habit!!

Overall I think I am in love. Heavy books no more I am a reader of a super light, and super stylish Kindle. I don’t think I will ever run out of space, but with cloud storage you never need to worry about losing your books, or even your page.

4.5/5 (it lost a 0.5 because it is fuelling my book worm habit!)

Thanks for reading,

Love Rie xx