“Why I Had To Buy The Kindle After iPad2”

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(This video was shot at FairHavens guest house in Nainital, Uttarakhand)

The iPad 2’s super-rich display notwithstanding, the Amazon Kindle’s black and white base version still finds a place in our reviewer Sauvik’s briefcase.

Sauvik is a Dubai-based management consultant who travels often and catches up on lost reading time on flights and during trips like his recent one to Nainital. While he loves his iPad, he feels when it comes to reading experience, the Kindle offers him a better reading experience than this Apple tab for four reasons:

One: The Kindle is lighter than your average paperback and small enough to be gripped by one hand. So when Sauvik’s travelling, reclining in his chair or reading in bed, he can maneuver the Kindle easily to any position with effortless movement of his wrist. Compare that to the iPad, which is bulkier and rests flat on the palm of the hand, and cannot be moved around easily.

Two: The glare bouncing off the iPad’s LCD strains his eyes, as he demonstrates in the video. The harsh sun coming from the back makes it nearly impossible for him to read as the screen becomes a reflector. Sauvik compares that to the print-like feel of the Kindle which does not have a glazed screen like the iPad, which he says makes reading easier for hours and hours.

And in the night, the black and smoky white Kindle screen, which has no backlight, again replicates the book experience, especially when Sauvik is reading for long. The iPad 2’s backlight however, can begin to strain the eyes after a point.

But when the lights are out, Kindle’s no backlight advantage turns to disadvantage, which Sauvik informs can be remedied by getting a small reading light that you can clip to the top of the Kindle. The experience is like reading under a lamp.

Three: Sauvik is wowed by the Kindle’s dictionary feature. The Wi-Fi enabled Kindle takes you to an online dictionary as you click on a word, and it also allows you to share phrases or go to Wikipedia links. Of course, the iPad reading app that Sauvik uses, iBook, offers those features as well. But the fact that the Kindle is not lacking in these is a plus for his reading experience.

Four: The ease of downloading a book on the Amazon store is obviously more on its own offering, the Kindle, where Sauvik can make a quick payment with his credit card registered in the US Amazon store and download a book in 10 seconds! On the iPad, however, he needed to download the Amazon app too,which in his country of residence, the UAE, is fraught with hurdles, and needs getting around standard procedure.

Sauvik does mention, though, that the Kindle falls short when it comes to reading color sites that have pixel-rich photos and graphics, and for that he says Amazon’s new Kindle Fire may be a better bet.

Product: Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7-inch
Price: Rs. 18,999
Buy Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7″, Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, 32 GB on Amazon India  | Buy Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7″, Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, 16 GB on Amazon India