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Amazon Kindle 3 Review!

2010-10-08
what's up everyone John render from TechnoBuffalo here with a full review of the second follow-up to the e-reader that started the e-reader craze this is of course the Amazon Kindle 3 so the first two Kindles while very useful and quite revolutionary we're not what Utes qualified as pretty in fact they were ugly electronics they just didn't look good they were cool to use sort of having the e-reader thing was new but in the world of nice looking electronic slick design the Kindle was not keeping pace the Kindle 3 really fixes that and I'm proud to say it's actually a very nice looking device let's take a look at the aesthetics and then we'll run down all the specs so this guy is quite thin how thin you ask well let's turn it to the side and bring in a mechanical pencil you can see that this thing really really really is quite thin from a size standpoint it's 7.5 inches diagonal by 4.8 inch diagonal by 0.33 5 inches and it weighs a minuscule 8.5 ounces so this one has a 6 inch diagonal screen you can also get the Kindle DX to the nine point seven inch screen this version here is the Wi-Fi only a version gonna say you back 140 dollars you can kick in some 3G there as well and everything will look exactly the same but it's gonna add about an extra 50 bucks your purchase price bring you up to a hundred and ninety dollars storage wise it can store just about 3500 ebooks battery life with the wireless off isn't extremely impressive one month with the wireless on it's going to be three weeks can download books in the Kindle Store which I'll show you guys in just about 60 seconds this now has native PDF support which is really nice enough to pay for it anymore you just email it to your Kindle address of course says tingle and Amazon's whisper sync which sort of syncs up where you are on all of your books so if you have a Kindle app on your iPad or Kindle app on your iPhone Android device I'll always know right where you are it's got text-to-speech will show you speakers on the back in just a minute and you can now look at content in portrait and landscape view which is quite nice of course really one of the biggest sellers of the Kindle is its 6 inch e-ink display and he is what you're looking at right here it's supposed to look like well Inc but II one of the downsides of reading a book on let's say an iPad or another sort of LCD type device is that they're usually Eastern out of glare and it can have some problems in direct sunlight I'm not so with an e ink display it's also supposed to reduce some of your eyestrain alright so let's go ahead and run through what the hardware looks like of course you've got now a physical QWERTY keyboard on the front because there on the previous two versions but this time it has been redesigned the keys are a little bit raised they're still round we've got a new navigation here on the right it's a five way toggle so up down left right and select now I have new page forward and back buttons they're sort of stuck into the side here and they're not so large you're gonna accidentally hit them while you're holding it those are right on the border and they have a nice clicky feel to it the back is now made of a nice soft touch almost a rubbery plastic feel it really feels nice to hold in the hand I've got two speakers up top and on the bottom you've got your power and lock switch you've got volume up and down micro USB charging 3.5 millimeter headset jack on the top you've got nothing let's go ahead and kick the device actually on here one of the other downsides of the first two Kindle devices when you wanted to turn a page the page turn was extremely slow the Kindle 3 has really fixed that as far as page turned speed like go ahead open up a book and show you I was reading let's say freakanomics here take a second to open up the book and I'll pull up right where you work page turn is extremely fast it's relatively close to almost instantaneous soon as you push the button content is almost already there you don't have to wait now half a second a second which doesn't seem like a lot but when you're reading a lot of books that certainly adds up especially if you're looking at a couple hundred pages so the speed increased is really nice one of the other great things about the kindle is of course the kindle store which now has at last count over five hundred and fifty thousand books now you're probably saying why do I need a Kindle when I can download the Kindle app on a myriad of applications and that's really what Amazon is struggling with I picked up the Kindle mostly because I was having some high strain doing a lot of reading on the iPad the devices I've been using for the majority of my books also when I'm outside in direct sunlight I was having a lot of trouble reading it the Kindle really uh alleviates that and for a relatively inexpensive entry point one hundred forty dollars serve a nice carry on device the fact that it's so thin and it's not gonna take up much space in my bag so there are a few other new features with the Kindle 3 as well let me show you what those are it now has a full webkit-based browser which you might think is weird on an eating display a web kit is just sort of an open set of standards that the app will use on the iPhone Google uses on Android palm used on webOS so it makes it for a very nice browser so I'm gonna go and open up menu and it's still qualified as experimental so we'll go and open up the experimental section I'll zoom in sort of off the keyboard a little bit more on the screen you can see what some other experimental sections are here you've got the web browser play mp3s and text-to-speech this actually read books back to you in plain English let's go ahead and launch the browser show you what this looks like I don't know if you really use this for much web browsing you probably have a smartphone or something in your pocket but it's kind of cool that it does work I just wanted to show you what it looked like let's go ahead and launch a website so we'll open up let's say it's go to enter URL let's try TechnoBuffalo com it pulls up sort of a web page looking top part there you can see go to it back in front choose your Wi-Fi strength and battery so I'll type in TechnoBuffalo and the keyword is really easy to type on now one of the downsides of course of the Kindle and the inks in general is that they are not back button of course I type TechnoBuffalo wrong on camera but I'm gonna go and leave that in is that it's not a backlit display so if you kind of read this in the dark you're gonna have a bit of trouble let's try this one more time I talked about how nice that keyboard is get a little nervous sometimes on camera good a TechnoBuffalo there we go dot-com let's go ahead and check the low times hit go to and see what this looks like here if you saw the web browser on the Kindle 2 you'll know it was a poor excuse for a web browser pretty much just pulled in text no support for images or anything this actually looks like a web site you can zoom in on text and sort of read what you'd like you can select your hyperlinks you can see that box sort of shows up there with the magnifying glass seen just zoom in on the text that you're looking at really works surprisingly well and see even has a pop up there you might actually go to use this as a web browser kinda neat let's go ahead and jump back on home primarily this is a ebook reader and that's really where it succeeds my biggest thing with the older Kindles was you had to pay to get some PDF functionality that wasn't even native I really only had it on the larger Kindle DX now that's fully supported here so I was reading a JetBlue case and you go ahead and open that up penny okay real it opens up a PDF one of the things I like to as well is that you can view content now in landscape or portrait I'll go ahead and hit the button right down here that literally changed the font size I'm gonna get the option to rotate the screen you can see it right there so I can view it the pictures on top images down below left right orientation fit screen or zoom any way I want the Kindle now just has increased functionality now it's certainly not meant to replace an iPad the iPad does a ton of different things one of the things that does do is happen to have ebook functionality this is a dedicated device adjustment for ebook reading and a lot of you guys might be struggling with why again why would I need a Kindle when I have another companion device and again the I strained it visibility to view this in direct sunlight and sort of the the easier to read this if you will of the ink really makes us a nice value proposition cope with the fact that it's so light that it can hold so many books it's very simple to use it's easy to use I could this to my grandparents for example and they wouldn't know how to use it downloads books very quick you've got access to the Amazon store which I will go ahead and show you right now the Kindle Store so go ahead and hit menu and we'll jump on over the store you can see what that looks like let's go ahead and shop in the Kindle Store and one of the great things as well about this you can download a previews of books you get the first chapter and see if something that you want to read you've got the Kindle Store you can view New York Times Kindle top sellers and a ton of other ways to sort your text knowing what you're getting into if you're looking for an e-book reader that's adjust an e-book reader that's thin and light is gonna last you for many plane flights there really isn't much of another choice now of than the Kindle 3 the Nook is out there but it's still considered last generation compared with this version of the Kindle few Sony devices as well so the only way of getting into looking for an e-book reader this is definitely a 5 star advise through aperture size and for functionality and now for speed truly address all the concerns I had with the previous generation not to mention price so that guys sort of a overview and review of the Amazon Kindle 3 kind of curious what you guys have to say are you interested in an e-reader do you have no need because you have an iPad or another device you read books on your iPhone or Android phone want to know what you have to say for exclusive content check Matt Twitter twitter.com slash John for Lakers and for all your tech news your check out TechnoBuffalo comm see you guys the next video bye bye you
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