When I shared my first impressions of a new Kindle Touch, my review was positive but not glowing. Now that I’ve used it quite a bit over the past week, my opinion about its readability has improved. Thanks to evolutionary advances in its display technology, this Kindle is much better for reading than last year’s Kindle DX model, which gave me eye strain.
On the Kindle Touch characters are black and crisp, contrast is better. There’s also an option that gives you some control over line spacing and character spacing. If you care about the “rivers of white space,” this allows you to minimize that effect — which makes for better readability.
It does not render subtle typographic effects very well; grey-scale graphics are also somewhat compromised. That said, it’s very useful for displaying text-dense novels and similar reading material.
Thanks to its improved display, I can comfortably read the Kindle for at least an hour without eye strain. (I had to return a Kindle DX last year because it gave me eye strain headaches after 20 minutes of use.)
It’s delightful to know that I can safely tuck the Kindle Touch into a purse or knapsack, for use while on-the-go, or when waiting for someone to show up for a meeting.
I do hope that publishers will soon take advantage of the new EPUB® 3 standards, for more variation in the typography and page layout of e-books. Otherwise there’s a boredom factor that you have to overlook when reading books on a Kindle.
In the meantime for straightforward books, the Kindle Touch is the best e-book reader for immersive reading, when you’re willing to dive into a book for an hour or more.
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Kindle Touch: First Impressions Positive, Not Glowing // Dec 1, 2011 at 9:50 am
[...] display is crisp, but can be uneven. (My opinion about the Touch’s readability has improved somewhat after a week of [...]