The Cooler Master Glacer 240L CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an
all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler. Click now to learn
more. So, I must be the only person on
Earth who had never really used a Kindle before I bought this one. Consider this
a review not from a seasoned ebook reader perspective, but rather from
someone who has mostly relied on dead trees for the enjoyment of novels in the
past. Yes, I am just old-fashioned like
that, I guess. The first thing I noticed about the Kindle was the guaranteed or
certified frustration packaging. I laughed and then opened it up. Inside, I
found a charging cable, but no wall wart, a quick start guide, which I
didn't really need because the thing only has one button, and the quick start guide basically says push the button,
and the paper weight itself. Basic specs wise, it's got a 6-in e-aper display
with a 212 pixels per inch density, 16
levels of grayscale for maps and illustrations, and a blue tinted
brightness adjustable backlight. It's got 2 gigs of storage for up to 1,100
books, plus free cloud storage of books on Amazon if you actually have more than
that. And Amazon figures it'll do about 28 hours of continuous battery life. But
with my low backlight preference and slow reading, I actually got more out of
it than than that. So, let's start with the screen. E-aper is really really
cool. The screen saver on it, which stays on at all times. Remember, it
doesn't take power to maintain an image only to change it. actually looked like
a sticker that was over top of the screen and I initially tried to like
peel it off before realizing what a dunce I was being and turning the thing
on. The screen does still have a bit of
a yellow cast, but it's much better than other e-aper devices that I've seen and
really is more white. When it came to benchmarking, um I don't know, Amazon
says it's faster than the old one or something. I I don't know. I still
couldn't type my wireless password at full speed. So, I figured, what is there
to do with this thing other than read some books and see if the actual speed
bothers me or doesn't bother me? The quick start guide made it easy to get
started within about 8 minutes. It had walked me through all the functionality
I needed, connected me to my Wi-Fi, and I had purchased a book. I decided to
skip the whole Facebook and Twitter integration thing, though, so maybe that would have taken a bit more time. And
then, of course, you can't benchmark without comparative testing. So, I read
The Hobbit on my iPad 2 to cleanse myself of that second movie. I read I
Hope They Serve Beer and Hell on Paper, followed by the first book and about a
third or so of the second one of A Song of Fire and Ice on the Kindle. The
higher display density contrasts sharply with other e-readers and significantly
reduced my eye strain compared to my iPad 2. I see well closeup. So, smaller
font sizes with fewer page flips is more comfortable for me as long as the
resolution is high enough that the text doesn't look distorted. And I found the
pixels weren't very noticeable to me unless I was closer than about 4 in.
Speaking of page flips, one thing that drove me crazy was that referring back
to things like maps or family trees in a
fantasy novel like I was reading was nearly impossible and very flowbreaking
compared to being able to keep my pinky in the appropriate appendix for quick
reference or my thumb. I'm willing to trade my appendices, however, not my
appendix, my appendices for the quick dictionary feature on the other hand
that lets you look things up either in the dictionary or on Wikipedia and have
it defined for you. That is extremely handy. The backlight was also super
convenient. I found on a setting of about four or five, I couldn't tell it
was on with the bedside lamp on in my bedroom, but when I ventured into the
darkened house to retrieve a reading snack, the setting was perfect for that
as well. So, I actually never really adjusted it. Now, Amazon touts this as
optimal for reading with one hand, but I call bollocks on that. It can be as
light as it wants to be, but it's not balanced. In portrait, the bezel is so
narrow. In fact, if you look at the picture on Amazon's website, no one can
hold it like that. They've got the thumb like way off to the side here. The bezel
is so narrow that you couldn't hope to actually use it that way unless you're
also resting it on your lap or bed or something. And for right-handed folks,
this was really frustrating. The only way it works in landscape mode, here we
go, is this way with the narrower side
in your right hand. Most people are right-handed, Amazon. I mean, it's great for the lefties. They have that nice big
bezel that I could actually legitimately call suitable for one-handed reading,
but until Amazon gives you the option to go either way with landscape mode, I I
can't really let that one go. I mean, I know a book is heavier, but the thing
about it is that it's also inherently balanced unless you're just starting out
or just finishing it up. So, I guess that's it. It's not the
most complete review I've ever done, but the conclusion isn't likely to change
with more experience with the product. So, while it doesn't compare to holding
a book for me, and I think it's the biggest scam ever, that ebooks cost the
same as physical books given their digital distribution cost savings and
the fact that they don't let people lend them more than once for 14 days, which
is ridiculous. I'll still probably be
continuing to buy books on Kindle rather than paper. Your mileage may vary, but
the space savings and convenience of only having one device to keep track of
outweighs the superior experience of the
smell of paper and turning actual pages for me. Thank you for checking out this
video on the Kindle Paper White 2013 edition. Don't forget to like this video
if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment. Let me
know books or ebooks, which do you
prefer? And as always guys, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.