New Kindle reader: light to handle
Amazon has veered in just 3 months from its costliest e-book reader to its cheapest. While the Kindle Oasis will set you back some `24,000, the new Kindle, in the same 6-inch screen size, costs `5999, weighs slightly more at 161 grams, offers the same modest storage 4 GB — accesses the same online book store of some 3 million titles, with half a lakh of them priced from `100 to `300.
So what are you missing for the asking price that is one fourth of the Oasis? Only one feature as far as I can see — the built-in light of the Oasis that leads you to read in the dark. Don’t be misled by Kindle, calling itself a 6-inch reader into comparing it with a 6-inch phone. The actual size if you go by the diagonal, which is how phones and TVs rate themselves, is more than 7 inches. I like the size that Kindle has standardised on. This is a WiFi model but I notice Kindle still buries its browser deep among its settings and tends to nudge you towards its own bookshop. In fact you can’t even begin to use the device till you signed up for an Amazon account — your online shopping ID will do.
Kindle’s other readerfriendly, font-adjusting, page-turning features are all here and as a product, I would rate this new model as the most compelling.