Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 review:

The best Kindle Fire yet 

The good: The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has zippier navigation than its 7-inch counterpart, a beautiful high-definition screen, incredibly fast 4G LTE speeds, seamless streaming performance, and access to one of the best media eco systems available. The new Fire HD interface feels better suited on the 8.9-inch screen.

The bad: Web performance is lacking compared with that of other tablets. Its physical design is fairly plain with buttons that are too flush with its chassis. The curated Appstore means many games and non-entertainment quality apps are not available. There's a $15 opt-out for ads.

The bottom line: If you're looking for a pure media consumption experience, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 delivers better than any tablet before it. People looking for something more utilitarian, however, will want to look elsewhere.

If you're interested in purchasing a Kindle Fire, know that the Fire HD 8.9 is the version to get. It has a large 1,920x1,200-pixel-resolution screen that facilitates Amazon's current Kindle Fire interface better than the 7-incher. Also, its faster processor makes for a much smoother and zippier experience.

The Fire HD 8.9's unique screen size lands in between the 7.9-inch iPad Mini and the 9.7-inch iPad. While the iPad Mini carries with it the trump card advantage of Apple's ecosystem and industry-leading App Store, the Fire HD 8.9’s lower pricing, superior streaming capability, and higher-resolution screen make it a better deal if you’re looking for a media consumption device. Especially if you’re an Amazon Prime member. The Mini does have speedier performance and as mentioned, many more app options, however.

The fourth-generation iPad is still the ultimate premium tablet. Its performance in just about everything beats all other tablets, and it's the best doorway to the most and highest-quality apps you can find on any mobile device. But, the Fire HD 8.9 has superior video-streaming prowess and is also a lot cheaper than the iPad in both Wi-Fi (starting at $269) and 4G LTE (starting at $399) models.

I should also note that Barnes & Noble offers the 9-inch Nook HD+ for $269 as well, with a slightly higher-resolution screen than the Fire HD's as well as expandable storage. The Nook ecosystem however isn't as mature, nor is its app store as well-stocked as Amazon’s. There’s also no 4G version of the Nook HD+.

The Fire HD 8.9’s $269 entry price is a fantastic deal, as the content and services Amazon provides are well worth the price. It’s not as versatile as the iPad or Nexus 10, but it’s the best version of the Kindle Fire yet and the best media consumption tablet out there.

Design

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD’s (Wi-Fi: $269 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB; 4G: $399 for 32GB, $499 for 64GB) design feels more at home with an 8.9-inch screen, compared to the 7-inch version. As a larger tablet, the Fire HD 8.9 better facilitates the Kindle Fire’s new operating system and its faster processor produces much smoother navigation.

	Kindle Fire HD 8.9	Apple iPad (third generation)	Google Nexus 10
Weight in pounds	1.25	1.44	1.33
Width in inches (landscape)	6.4	7.3	6.9
Height in inches	9.4	9.5	10.4
Depth in inches	0.35	0.37	0.35
Side bezel width in inches (landscape)	1.0	0.87	0.9

Beveled bottoms are the new hotness -- for tablets, anyway. From the Nexus 7 to the iPad, and Microsoft's Surface tablet, beveled bottoms are to 2012 what legitimately thin form factors were to 2011. Beveled bottoms have the power to make a tablet look thinner than it actually is. The Fire HD 8.9 is actually thinner than the current iPad and matches the Nexus 10’s profile length.

The tablet is dark gray and looks fairly plain, with a tablet-wide black strip on the back as the only real distinguishing aesthetic trait. In the middle of the top portion of the bezel sits a 720p Web chat camera with a nearly invisible ambient light sensor sitting to its left. The bezel itself is surrounded by an outer plastic shell for added protection.

Along the bottom edge directly in the middle are Micro-USB and a Micro-HDMI ports. On the right edge, from top to bottom, are a headphone jack, volume rocker, and the power/sleep button. Both the volume rocker and power/sleep button sit flush with the tablet's body, making them difficult to find without looking. Sitting alone on the top edge is a microphone pinhole.

The back is smooth and not nearly as grippy as the Nexus 10's rubbery back. Dual inch-long speaker grilles adorn the Fire HD 8.9's back at the far left and right sides, continuing to the tablet's right and left edges.

 

For some strange, ill-conceived reason, Amazon chose not to include an actual power adapter with the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and instead supplied only a Micro-USB-to-USB cable. While the tablet will charge when connected to a plugged-in computer, it will do so very slowly and only when asleep. Thankfully, if you own the original Fire (or pretty much any Micro-USB-to-power adapter), its charger should be compatible with the Kindle Fire HD 8.9.

Software features: The refining

Since the debut of the original Kindle Fire, Amazon has completely redesigned the interface. The new interface debuted first on the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire (2012) and hasn’t changed at all here. It still feels streamlined and mature, eschewing the toylike quality the original interface had. On the 8.9, images and text are even sharper, thanks its 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution and high contrast. The carousel interface is still here, but scrolls faster and looks smoother, with app icons rendered in sharp, less pixely forms. Apps can be removed from the carousel at will and/or added to favorites, which appear at the bottom of the screen, negating the need to scroll through your entire catalog to find the app you want.

 

Newsstand, Books, Music, Videos, Docs, Apps, and Web return as top-of-the-screen content tab options and have now been joined by Shop, Games, Audiobooks, Photos, and Offers. Search returns as well and now allows you to search in Amazon's stores in addition to the Web and your own library. 

Settings can be accessed with a quick swipe down from the top bezel and now feature more options for social network integration, more customization, and tighter security. Within each content tab are the very useful cloud and device denotations at the top that help identiify which pieces of content are on the Fire HD or currently in the cloud. 

 

There are problems, though. As streamlined as the interface is, at times it serves only to illustrate how much better it could be. After entering a content tab, you can't travel directly to another and must instead tap back and choose a new selection. I would have loved to see a more elegant solution that allows carousel options to always be available onscreen.

Software features: The newening

The streamlined interface isn't Amazon's only accomplishment here; it has added several new features to further set the Fire HD 8.9 apart from other tablets.

 

With X-Ray for Books you can get more information about characters, terms, and historical figures mentioned in a Kindle book, and it also highlights exactly where (via page number and a graph) in the book those details are mentioned and can jump right to the appropriate page. Definitely useful, but the ability to search for specific terms should be at the top of Amazon's to-do list when the time comes to revise this feature.

X-Ray for Movies is frankly a lot less useful, as it's essentially an integrated IMDb feature that provides access to actor bios while you watch the movie. Just tap the screen while watching "The Avengers," for example, and a drop-down menu of the actors who are in the current scene appears. Select whichever actor you're interested in, and as long as that person is actually listed in IMDb, you'll have access to his or her bio. Impressively, this works in real time, adding and removing people from the list as they enter and exit scenes. It's not compatible with all movies yet, and I've yet to see it featured in any of the TV shows I've watched on the device.

Immersion reading uses the audio and Kindle versions of a single book and combines them to create an experience currently not reproducible on any other tablet. As the text is read by the original audiobook reader, each word is highlighted on the Kindle book version, allowing you to follow along bouncing-ball-style (well, sans an actual bouncing ball) with the story. It takes a bit of getting used to, but can be appealing for audiobook fans like myself who love to listen but want to retain the actual experience of reading as well.

In addition, Whispersync for voice allows you to stop reading at any spot in the Kindle version of a book and then continue later at that exact spot in your audiobook and vice versa. 

Now each of these scenarios, however, requires that you'd be willing to purchase both the audiobook and Kindle versions of a book. So, who would actually own both versions of the book? Well, probably people who want to take advantage of these two features. As an incentive, Amazon claims it will offer discounts on audiobook versions of books if you already own the Kindle version; however, this won't extend to every book/audiobook combo.

You can now import your photos from Facebook to your Amazon Cloud Drive and view them (or any photos already in your Cloud Drive) on your Fire HD 8.9. Unfortunately, if importing directly from Facebook, you're not able to specify which photos you want to import and are forced to import them all.

Newsstand includes a slick page-turning animation and the option to tap on an article and read it in simple text. The Kindle Fire's e-mail interface, thankfully, has also been redesigned, now looking less like a '90s message board and more like a modern, legitimate e-mail client. Also, contacts can now be automatically imported by e-mail account instead of by each individual contact, as it was on the original Kindle Fire. A full calendar app with built-in reminders has been added as well.

FreeTime
Amazon’s FreeTime is a downloadable app that allows Fire owners to create new parental controlled profiles. Each new profile can be customized with access to the content of your choosing with access to these parameters only available after supplying a predetermined password. Daily time limits can be set for each profile, either by total use time or by individual types of content: books, videos, and apps.

 

When activated, FreeTime delivers a limited version of the OS showing only the content already chosen for that profile. The background also turns blue so parents can easily see whether their kid is currently in the mode or has somehow hacked his or her way into the full OS.

FreeTime is a great option for families looking to share their tablet, but I wish it was more seamlessly integrated into the interface. As a separate app it requires that you launch it first and then choose a profile, whereas the Nook HD’s implementation of a similar feature is always accessible from the home screen.


 
We've got ads!
Much has been made of Amazon's decision to ship all versions of the Kindle Fire HD with ads appearing on the lock screen. You can opt out of these ads by paying an extra $15; they will no longer appear afterward. The ads range from Amazon coupons to movie trailers to books; a new one appears each time you press the power button to wake the tablet. On either side of the screen is an unlock slider button. The right-side slider unlocks the screen normally and the left one unlocks the ad, taking you to the trailer, coupon, and so on. All the ads appear as high-res, high-quality images taking the place of the lock screen background. It's actually the least intrusive ad method I've ever seen, and I appreciate the coupon offers. If I owned a Kindle Fire HD or 8.9, I would personally not opt out. Although I can understand why some people would be bothered by being constantly advertised to on a device they purchased, it's not an issue that should affect your buying decision.

The Prime advantage
In addition to free two-day shipping on select products, Amazon Prime members receive two other benefits that all Fire HD owners can directly take advantage of. Prime owners receive access to Amazon's growing list of streaming movies and TV shows and can borrow a single Kindle book every month with no due date. Prime membership is $79 per year, and each version of the Kindle Fire HD comes with a free month of Prime so you can try out the service. Honestly, if you don't have a Prime membership, the appeal of the Fire HDs are greatly diminished. It would be almost like owning an iPad without an iTunes account.

 

No quad-core for you!
While it's difficult to find a tablet release without also finding a quad-core processor inside of it, Amazon bucks the trend by embedding Texas Instruments' dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP4470 CPU inside the Fire HD 8.9, with the GPU stylings of the Power VR SGX544 GPU in tow. It also includes 1GB of RAM, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth, and a gyroscope.

How much is 4G?
The 4G version of the Fire HD 8.9 is identical to the Wi-Fi-only version, but sports a superfast cellular connection, with a starting cost of $399.

 

The price has been lowered from the original by $100 and for a line of tablets that has thus far prided itself on low prices is still pretty high, but the actual cellular plan appears cheaper than what's currently available on tablets. For $50, Amazon offers 250MB per month for 12 months. Both 3GB and 5GB monthly plans are also available. For comparison, 4G on the iPad costs $15 per month ($180 per year) for the same amount of data. A proposition that's $130 more expensive than the Fire HD.

Wi-Fi vs. 4G LTE
Amazon touts the Fire HD 8.9's inclusion of dual antennas, MIMO support, and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band support, but Web page load speeds under Wi-Fi were consistently several seconds behind the fourth-generation iPad running Safari. However, in every instance I tested it, Web page loading speeds over 4G LTE were on average 3 to 4 seconds faster. Also, I found quickly scrolling down Web pages had a hard time keeping up and consistently produced lots of clipping. While navigating through the Fire HD’s OS interface felt much zippier than on the 7-inch version, the Web experience on both tablets felt sluggish in not just load speeds with simply navigating. It sometime took 1 to 2 seconds for the keyboard to appear after tapping the address bar; on other tablets like the iPad or the Nexus 10, this happens instantaneously.

Streaming-video performance was where the Fire HD 8.9's new networking hardware earned its keep. I started streaming "The Avengers" on both the Nexus 10 and Fire HD 8.9, and while neither had any trouble reproducing a crystal-clear 720p image when within close proximity of my test router, things changed as I left the lab and walked several feet away. At about 20 feet away (and with two or three walls in between), the Nexus 10 lost the streaming signal and delivered only a spinning circle for several minutes. It eventually connected to CNET’s internal network and picked up the signal again as I walked down six flights of stairs and switched to a lower-bandwidth SD signal. As I left the building, the Nexus 10 was no longer streaming the movie. The Fire HD 8.9, however, kept streaming its HD signal, even as I left the building; I was a good 50 feet away when I finally got the spinning circle.

 

Packed with pixels
The 8.9-inch version of the Kindle Fire HD features an in-plane switching (IPS) screen, running at a 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution. Colors pop from the display and have a really vibrant, high-contrast look. There is unfortunately some very visible backlight bleeding at the top when viewing dark screens.

Tested spec	Kindle Fire HD 8.9	Apple iPad (third generation)	Google Nexus 10
Maximum brightness	413 cd/m2	455 cd/m2	368 cd/m2
Maximum black level	0.45 cd/m2	0.49 cd/m2	0.44 cd/m2
Maximum contrast ratio	917:1	939:1	836:1

Amazon says it combined the touch sensor and LCD into a single layer of glass for the Fire HDs, which purportedly should decrease reflections, but I honestly didn't see a difference between it and other premium tablets in that regard.

Games performance
I used Riptide GP to test relative game performance compared with the current iPad and Nexus 10. Both the Nexus 10 and iPad are able to maintain consistently high frame rates during play, but the Fire 8.9 could not keep up . Frame rates are still playable, just not as silky smooth. However, N.O.V.A. 3 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted each run at consistently smooth clips.

 

Thankfully, since the release of the 7-inch Fire HD, many "Kindle Fire Edition” games have released into the Amazon Appstore, reducing the need now to sideload apps. Conversely, many useful utilitarian apps available on the iPad are nowhere to be found here.


Speakers
While watching movies, playing games, or listening to music, the Fire HD 8.9's speakers delivered clear, loud (if you need it to be) sound that's noticeably better than what I've heard from other tablets. While the speakers are on the back, thanks to the tablet's beveled bottom, they don't sit flush with the desktop and actually send out sound at an angle that reverberates off the desk, enhancing the quality.

There is a lack of bass, however, and ideally I'd rather listen through earbuds or larger speakers. For tablet speakers, though, there are currently none better.

Battery life
I've had the Kindle Fire HD 8.9's brightness set to about 75 percent during the three days I've had to play with the device, constantly streaming video, downloading apps, playing games, and navigating the interface. During that time, the battery required charging about once every five hours. Look for official battery results soon, after CNET Labs has a chance to run it through its paces.

Conclusion
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 was made for Amazon’s new Fire interface. Compared with the 7-inch version, navigation is snappier and the higher-resolution screen better displays menu options. Amazon’s content offerings are vast, especially if you’re a Prime member, and its 4G LTE speeds are incredibly fast. Starting at $269, it’s one of the best tablet values available. The Kindle Fire line is still the strongest media consumption tablet line going, and this latest version is the best one yet.

Amazon Slashes Prices On Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Across The Board ($30 Off Wi-Fi, $100 Off LTE), Now On Sale In Europe And Japan

Whether to combat flagging sales or reflect lower component prices, Amazon dropped the price of its Wi-Fi 8.9" Kindle Fire HD today by roughly 10% - down to $270 for the 16GB model. The price of the 32GB model dropped by $30 as well, to $300. The LTE model received a much more substantial 20% cut, and now costs $400 - $100 less than the price it debuted for.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 isn't exactly old news - it began shipping only 5 months ago in the US, and $300 for the entry-level model was scarcely believable even at that time. Why now? There are basically two plausible explanations. First, the HD 8.9 isn't selling as well as Amazon expected. That's far from unbelievable, given the rampant success of the company's small Fire and Fire HD tablets, and the decidedly non-techy, frugal audience to which they are designed to appeal.

The alternative may not be so much lower component prices, but rather a component switch-up. The Fire HD 8.9 uses a TI OMAP 4470 chipset, and back in September of 2012, TI announced that it was winding down its mobile chipset business. The company's OMAP 5 platform (likely its smartphone/tablet swan song) is slated to hit the market in Q2 2013, but I doubt we'll be seeing many consumer-oriented products utilizing it. This price drop may reflect an upcoming early refresh for the HD 8.9 in an attempt to clear out stock before a model with new guts is unveiled.

Either explanation is, of course, speculative.

The Fire HD 8.9 is also now officially on sale in select European markets and Japan.

Amazon Kindle 2012 review

Introduction

The Amazon Kindle has become the ereader to own, much as the iPod became the signature MP3 player back in the noughties. Amazon hasn't become complacent because of the series's popularity - the new Kindle Paperwhite remains our ebook reader of choice. However, the budget model looks and feels much like the non-touch version released in 2011. Given this great starting point, and with a few tweaks made, this a superb buy if you don't want a touchscreen, though.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Design

This year's lower-cost Kindle makes just a few design changes to the formula setup by the 2011 model. It doesn't have a touchscreen, relying entirely on clicky buttons instead, and it's still much lighter than the top-of-the-range Kindle Paperwhite.

 

At 170g, the Kindle is a similar weight to the Sony PRS-T2 and Kobo Glo - the outlier is the chunky Paperwhite, rather than the non-touch Kindle. However, the weight and build of the device are hard to fault. Its body feels reassuringly dense but is light enough to hold for hours without causing twitch-inducing muscle spasms.

The boldest design change here from last year's model is the colour. In the past, Kindles all had grey bodies, which helped to mask the grey-ish quality of E-ink screens, but now the whole Kindle range has gone black. If there's one ereader that'll suffer from this change, it's this £69 model - the Paperwhite has a contrast-increasing light and the Kindle Fire models use LCD screens that don't have the low-contrast look of E-ink. We'll cover the effects later.

Materials used in the construction of the ereader have changed slightly too. In the 2011 Kindle, the edges of the ereader were metal, but this time they're finished with black plastic. In-use, you'll barely notice the difference as the parts that come into contact with your fingers use the Kindle-staple soft touch plastic. The entire rear of the device uses this soft finish, and its silken surface is a treat for the fingertips.

The rear success of the non-touch Kindle design is something that was present and correct in the 2011 edition. The page turn buttons are superbly designed, the page forward button resting under your thumb naturally whether you hold the ereader in your left or right hand, while the page back button is rightly relegated, given a smaller button above.

The 2012 Kindle's other buttons are just the same as the previous ereader, too. There's a central D-pad used to flick through the menus, and a quartet of shortcut buttons - back, keyboard, menu and home.

Using such an array of buttons means that this Kindle isn't quite as pure-looking or attractive as the beautifully simple Kindle Paperwhite, but the move to a black body wins the new £69 Kindle a half-handful of cool points. It would arguably look better if the sides weren't glossy, though.

Although not afraid to plaster its body with buttons, the 2012 Kindle keeps its connections as simple as possible. There's just a microUSB slot, used to charge the internal battery and transfer ebooks.

Some other ereaders let you expand upon the memory and plug in headphones, but here there's no audio playback whatsoever and you're stuck with the 2GB of internal storage, 1.25GB of which you have access to. The 2012 Kindle has Wi-Fi, but there's no 3G option - as there is with the Paperwhite model.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Screen

The one reason why ereaders like the 2012 Kindle can continue to lighten wallets in a world saturated with low-cost tablets like the Google Nexus 7 and large-screen phones like the Samsung Galaxy S3 is the E-ink screen. As it doesn't use a backlight, or traditional pixels, it is much easier on the eye than an LCD screen.

The Kindle 2012 screen is monochrome, using black and white charged microcapsules to form text and images.  The screen has not moved on since the 2011 Kindle, though, with 800 x 600 resolution, 6in of screen space and E-ink Pearl tech at its core. Next to the Kindle Paperwhite, it is starting to look a little dated. Top-end ereaders these days offer higher resolution, meaning sharper text, and use ingenious front-firing "glow" lights that let you read in the dark with a more relaxing look than an LCD ereader.



The change from a grey to black screen surround does have a noticeable downside too. It shows up that blacks are grey-ish, and the white background too is a paler shade of grey. However, once you've trained your eyes to accept the limitations of E-ink, the 2012 Kindle offers an excellent reading experience, albeit one that's not quite as good as the Paperwhite's.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Reading Options

Compared to most other ereaders, the 2012 Kindle gives you very limited control over what your books look like. There are eight font sizes - which is sufficient for just about anyone - but only three font styles and a trio of line spacing and margin options.

Other ereaders like the Kobo eReader Touch give you far more options on this front, and there's also no control over how often the E-ink screen performs a full refresh. E-ink screens use charged capsules that move forwards and back from the front of the screen to form text, and until the screen is "flushed" these can stick, producing a ghostly afterimage.

Most ereaders let you choose how many page turns the ereader cycles through before performing a full refresh, but the 2012 Kindle appears to use a dynamic system that judges refresh timing on what has been on-screen. If it's a full-page image, it'll refresh with near-enough every page, but with plain text it'll be up to five page turns before a refresh. Tech heads may miss having full control over the refresh cycle, but it works extremely well. Text residue rarely becomes too noticeable while you're reading.



The main improvement to the general reading experience in the 2012 Kindle is page turn speed - it's extremely quick, almost as fast as your thumb will allow. As with the 2011 Kindle, there is an inbuilt dictionary too.

Use the D-pad to move an on-screen cursor over a word in a novel and its Oxford English Dictionary definition will pop up at the bottom of the screen - and you can bring up its full definition if you want more information. This is the part where we miss the touchscreen of the Kindle Paperwhite the most, though, as using the D-pad feels much less intuitive than simply pressing on a word.

The 2012 Kindle also misses out on the X-ray feature of the more expensive model. This pulls more information about characters and locations in books from Wikipedia. To get the same information here, you'd have to laboriously tap in web addresses in the "experimental browser". Like most previous Kindles, the 2012 edition has a basic internet browser, but using it is too slow and clumsy to make it useful in any situation other than a dire emergency.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Interface

Amazon reworked its Kindle interface in the new front-lit Paperwhite model, but the interface of this budget £69 is a little simpler. If you owned a Kindle 3 or 2011 Kindle, it's more-or-less identical to those models.

Your home screen is a simple text list of books in your library, arranged by how recently they were accessed. It's not fancy, but it is about as effectively functional as you could hope for. You're never more than a button press or two away from sinking back into a novel.



The ultra-simple interface and the lack of connected features like X-ray does make the 2012 Kindle feel like a much more insular device than either the Paperwhite or an alternative like the Kobo Mini. A world of books may be just a few taps away, but this ereader highlights your own collection over the wares of the Kindle Store. 

 

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Kindle Store

The Kindle Store is accessible from the menu, not directly from the home screen. However, the 2012 Kindle still benefits from the excellent Whispernet delivery system.

You can browse the Amazon website, which incorporates all the ebooks of the Kindle Store, and have a title sent directly to your Kindle - as long as it's connected to a Wi-Fi network. This is a fantastic feature that is a valid reason to pick a Kindle over a competitor. You can rifle through the Kindle Store on the thing directly, but it's not much fun.

The Kindle Store offers content other than books, too. It offers newspaper and magazine subscriptions, blogs and a lending library. This only launched recently in the UK, and lets Amazon Prime members borrow a book a month for free.



Not all the books in the Kindle Store are available through the lending scheme, but this is an important addition to the Store's arsenal. Kindles do not support the EPUB format used by public library ebook lending schemes, making it the first time library-style rentals have been available on Kindles in the UK.

If you already have an ebook collection stored on a computer, it's easy to transfer files over to the Kindle. Hook up the ereader to a computer with the supplied microUSB cable and the 2GB internal memory will show up as a standard disk drive, letting you drag and drop files.


Although the 2012 Kindle doesn’t support the popular EPUB format, several other file types are. Naturally the native Kindle AZW type is in, along with PDFs, Word docs, MOBI/PRC ebooks and TXT files. JPG, GIF and PNG image files work too, although frankly the Kindle makes a terrible image viewer.

This is far from the best PDF viewer as well. Moving through PDFs feels clumsy, far less smooth and quick than it is on a Sony PRS-T1 or Sony PRS-T2. The Kindle Paperwhite is not a great PDF reader either, though.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Battery Life

Part of the reason why the 2012 Kindle is able to be around 50g lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite is that it uses a smaller battery. Where the top-end Kindle is rated for two months of use, this £69 model "only" lasts for a month.

By Amazon's rules, this means the Kindle will last for a half hour's use a day for around 30 days (without using Wi-Fi). Doing a quick calculation, this equates to 15 hours of solid reading - roughly a decent-sized book. However, rating battery life in an E-ink reader like this is trickier than with an LCD-screen device.



The Kindle's E-ink screen only draws significant power when what's on-screen changes - during page turns. For those embarking on a reading-leaving lounging holiday, the extra stamina of the Paperwhite will come in very handy, but for light-to-moderate readers, having to charge that little bit more often is no great hardship.

Amazon Kindle 2012 - Value

Having used a number of more advanced competitors, it's clear that the 2012 Kindle does miss out on a lot of what's great about the latest top-end ereaders. If you're going to spend a lot of time reading in bed or anywhere that's remotely dark, it's worth investing in an ebook reader with a light. And next to the Paperwhite's new interface, which puts greater emphasis on new book discovery, the oldie Kindle interface here feels a little stilted, a little old.



More improvements could have been made here, but the Kindle is a device that has generally aged extremely well. As most ereaders adopt the touchscreen wholesale, it proves there's still room out there for a button'd ereader, and at the price it's the best-made model you can hope to get.

Verdict

The Amazon Kindle 2012 doesn't change all that much in the blueprint laid down by the excellent not-touch 2011 model. It's light, it's affordable and it's better-made than many an entry-level ereader. Next to the top models, which offer integrated lights and snazzier interfaces, it is starting to show its age. However, if you can't afford to splash out £100-plus, this remains an excellent buy.