SLJ Reviews the Amazon Kindle 2 Ebook Reader

Remember how the original Apple iPod suddenly made the MP3 player a must-have for music fans back in 2001? The Amazon Kindle 2 just might be the device that finally has ebook readership exploding in similar atomic fashion. While the first incarnation was undeniably impressive, the original Kindle was still a bit rough around the edges. Thanks to a complete cosmetic makeover and a rapidly growing library of available reads, the Kindle 2 seems poised for total ebook domination.

If that happens, its success will be based on the same basic model as the iconic music player. Just as the iPod had iTunes, the Kindle’s main strength is the library it connects to, free-of-charge, via a Sprint 3G connection available in most of the contiguous United States. (Sorry, Montana.) Amazon’s growing ebook library now makes well over a quarter million titles available for snappy download, so book addicts are always just a button press away from a quick fix and a slightly elevated credit card balance. (Be forewarned.)

Take away that instant access to a massive library of current ebooks and you’d still be left with a decent eInk-based reader in the Kindle 2. Not the best, perhaps, but certainly better than the original Kindle. The first improvement you’ll notice is mostly aesthetic. The harsh angles of the original have been replaced by smooth curves and rounded edges, and the quirky thumb keyboard in the lower third of the device has been toned down as well. Though it weighs nearly the same as its predecessor, the second-generation device is sleeker, yet feels more substantial and less plasticky. A brushed aluminum base also makes it cool to the touch. In short, the Kindle’s revamped design is now iPod-like, too, and if you want to grab style-conscious early adopters, the package counts.

Want to read content on the device not from the Kindle library? That’s still dicey. You’ll need to have it converted first, either by emailing it or uploading it to Amazon, where it can be forwarded to your Kindle 2 for a nominal fee. While popular file formats like DOC, TXT, and HTML all looked fine on my Kindle 2 after conversion, the PDF I had converted had several formatting problems and a PDF page that rendered nicely as an image was much too small to read.

That highlights the one change I really wish they’d have made on the Kindle 2: a slightly larger screen size. Sure, the display’s better; it now has 16 levels of grayscale detail, providing noticeably better image reproduction than the original Kindle, which had four. And the pages refresh faster, too. But the six-inch diagonal electronic paper display still seems a tad undersized.

Luckily, I won’t have to wait very long to see a Kindle with the two features I’d most like to see, a bigger screen and a built-in PDF reader. Amazon says the Kindle DX—announced early last month and slated to hit the market this summer—will accommodate PDFs without conversion and will sport a whopping 9.7-inch screen.

While the Kindle 2 might not have a direct impact on education, the potential application of the DX as a textbook reader may set the stage for a subsequent iteration of the Kindle appearing in a classroom near you. As for the Kindle 2, it just might make the ebook into a serious contender, even among diehard print junkies.