Hands on the Kindle 2: First impressions and photos

We’ve played with the Kindle 2.  What’s the verdict?  It’s a step in the right direction but still needs more features.  

The Kindle 2 is what the original Kindle should have been. The screen is very crisp and reading off it seemed easy. Unfortunately, I have not had an extended amount of time to test it, yet.

Design

Jeff Bezos said he wanted the Kindle to disappear when you read.  No longer are you confronted with the unappealing form factor with an odd keyboard when you want to read a book. Good luck not noticing the original Kindle.  

This new version has a sleek, clean design. It is comfortable to hold and the redesigned page keys are a vast improvement. The keyboard will take a little time to get used to, but it’s decent.  The travel of the keys is short, but it is easy to tell that you have pressed a key. You will notice that there is space on the left and right of the keyboard. That’s a good thing considering you are going to want to hold the device more than typing on it.  

There is no touchscreen but there’s a 5 way toggle switch to navigate. An Amazon representative said that one of the reasons they didn’t go with a touchscreen is the current crop of touchscreens are too reflective and they didn’t want that getting in the way of reading.

There is no expansion port for SD cards, but there is 1.4GB of user-accessible space. To the people who want a Kindle with a backlight, that’s still not included. Personally, I don’t mind the lack of backlight.

Features: More of the same

The feature set is still something that needs improvement depending on where you stand. If you are an avid reader who wants a device that can take the place of shelves of books, then the Kindle is fine.

If you are like me, you may have a hard time justifying that $360 price tag. You could grab a netbook at that price. Reading your own material is still clunky since it requires a conversion process via e-mail.  

One of the big problems is that the Kindle does not play well with others. The Kindle could be the iPod of book readers. One of the things that made the iPod successful is the fact it could play the de facto standard in digital music, MP3s. Just imagine where the iPod would be without that feature.

The Kindle does not read PDFs and docs without some work. You should simply be able to upload your material to the Kindle. With the 1.4GB of space, hopefully this feature will come in a firmware upgrade.