Amazon Kindle Touch Review And Fourth-Gen Screen Quality Update

By Andrew Ku
published

Amazon Kindle Fire tablet received all of the glory. But the company also has a new e-book reader that features a touchscreen. How does the Kindle Touch stack up, and what's the real story on the display quality of Amazon's fourth-gen Kindles?

New Features: EasyReach And X-Ray

EasyReach

Of course, the Kindle Touch lacks physical navigation buttons. Instead, Amazon uses what it calls its EasyReach system. This is a touchscreen layout that relies on predefined zones for menu access and to navigate between pages.

You tap the top of the screen to display the menu and toolbar. To flip to the next page, just tap to the lower-right half of the screen. Or, tap the left-most edge to go back to the previous one.

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X-Ray

Aside from EasyReach, Amazon also added X-Ray. This is a feature that lets you explore your book without flipping through page after page of text. Instead, X-Ray lets you look-up common proper nouns and terms scattered throughout your book.

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Andrew Ku
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cumi2k4
    So basically i won't have to "upgrade" my old kindle 3 if i have no need for touch interface, right?

    Reply
  • shin0bi272
    Just need color E-ink and I'll buy 3 or 4 of em.
    Reply
  • Hatecrime69
    no epub, no thanks
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Color E-ink would be nice for any e-book readers, well almost. It still is a little bit not so robust as black and white versions, but it is getting better!
    It would be my first choise for tablet. Very long battery time, very good for reading the books and useable in reading web pages without animation. Too slow for animation and video even at this moment.
    Reply
  • Marcus52
    Umm -

    Can you say Nook Simple Touch?

    I think you need to fact-check some of your statements. Amazon and Kindle may have been the best option a year ago, but Barnes and Noble and the Nook have caught up, at least. The Kobo is no slouch either, and offers more publication formats than anyone else. Pretty much if it's published in digital form, you can view it on the Kobo, regardless of where you buy it.

    Kindle remains the only eReader that you can't natively run EPub publications on.

    ;)
    Reply
  • Amazon plays dirty - they purchased developers of Stanza, which was the best ebook app in iDevices and killed the company. After this Amazon gets none of my business. Also their kindle app on iPad and iPod Touch is inferior to pretty much any other app. It does not look like they put a lot of effort in to it. There are definitely much better readers out there.
    Reply
  • tomuw
    So, to summarize, if I have a Kindle 3, the 4 touch differences are:
    -4 has slower visible response time to "next page" requests and other commands.
    -4 has ghosting of text from previous pages viewed.
    -4 has a quality control issue such that screen may have lower contrast, or however you want to describe it.
    -4 has a touch screen
    -4 has a larger, heavier battery.
    But you think the amount of the negative differences are, in your subjective opinion, slight or can be mitigated by a return and asking for another copy.
    hmmm think I'll pass on that "upgrade".
    Reply
  • MagicPants
    I really liked the spectrophotometer comparison, but I want to see how the kindle stacks up against real paper as well. If possible, you should figure out how to compare it to real newspapers and novels.
    Reply
  • felcas22
    Did anyone noticed that the video NEVER show what happens when people interact with the finger in the screen? ALL the times the camera is facing the back of the kindle OR the front of it but when the person touch the screen the camera imediatelly change to another scene, so we never see what actually happens with the screen when the characters of the movie play with it. I understand that as: the touch features is still slow and way far to be instantaneous like fliping the pages on a book.
    Reply
  • acku
    MagicPantsI really liked the spectrophotometer comparison, but I want to see how the kindle stacks up against real paper as well. If possible, you should figure out how to compare it to real newspapers and novels.
    Well... the difference would also depend on the paper and ink combo.... Different inks and different papers will produce different results.

    felcas22Did anyone noticed that the video NEVER show what happens when people interact with the finger in the screen? ALL the times the camera is facing the back of the kindle OR the front of it but when the person touch the screen the camera imediatelly change to another scene, so we never see what actually happens with the screen when the characters of the movie play with it. I understand that as: the touch features is still slow and way far to be instantaneous like fliping the pages on a book.
    That's just the amazon intro video. It's a commercial. Check out the vid on page 2.

    Cheers,
    Andrew Ku
    TomsHardware.com
    Reply