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Miklós Szeles
Miklós Szeles

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Why did I fall in love with my new Amazon Kindle 2020? - A second glance on my Kindle - A review by Miki Szeles

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Joking apart, I would like to explain to you why I fell in love with my new Kindle. I have ordered the low category kindle as it has all the functionality that I need at a quite reasonable price.

Whenever I unboxed my ebook reader, I was surprised.

Technical Details

Size and weight

The size of the Kindle was smaller than I expected, but after taking it into my hand, I realized how light it is. I already had a Sony ebook reader several years ago, which was larger, but much heavier. So I first thought it will be too small, but after a few hours of reading, I realized it is adequate, especially as I can set the font size and I have a quite good sight so I can use a relatively small font.

Actually having this small size and weight is very practical as I can bring the Kindle with me everywhere. I can read on the tram, bus, in the car, on the toilet ...

Screen

The Kindle has a 6" 167pp resolution touchscreen , which makes it very easy to navigate and interact with. Due to the epaper screen, it is slower than a phone or tablet, but I can live with that. You can change the page by swiping or tapping at the side of the page. I really enjoy the swiping navigation, it is similar to using a real book.

Backlight

It has a built-in adjustable led light , which is perfect for me, as I can easily read during the night whenever my family is sleeping in the same room.

Wifi

The device can connect to the Wifi that you can use to download books, audiobooks and send your notes to your email.

Bluetooth

You can attach Bluetooth headphones to the Kindle so you can also listen to the books, which is quite a great feature.

Battery

Without Wifi, you can use the Kindle for 1 month reading half hour a day. It can be fully charged in 4 hours using an USB cable.

Waterproof

The device is IPX8 waterproof which means it can be submerged into water deeper than 1 meter. Well, I have not tested this feature yet, but I am not willing to do that anyway. 😊

Storage

It has a built-in 8GB of storage which is enough for thousands of books.

That's enough about the technical parameters, let's look at its features

Features

Highlighting and note-taking

My favourite feature is highlighting. Whenever I read a (technical) book, I always underline the parts relevant to me. Using the kindle is so easy, you can quickly highlight multiple lines even across more than one page. Whenever you are ready with the book, you can email the notes and highlights to yourself.

The Kindle marks the parts of the text which are highlighted by many users even showing the number of them.

Up till now, I have not tried the notetaking feature, but it has that also.

Bookmark

You can bookmark any page using your Kindle which is a great way, to mark some important pages.

Searching

You can search for any text in the book. I guess I do not have to emphasize how much it is better than trying to find something in a real book.

Built in dictionary

I love this feature. I am not a native English speaker, so usually, there are many words, which I do not understand. But I do not have to skip them, because I can read the definition of the word with a single tap using the built-in dictionary. I have already learnt so many words thanks to this. You can even install other dictionaries for your preferred language.

VoiceView

The Kindle has a built-in screen reader , with which you can listen to any book. It only supports the English language. I have not tried it yet, but I will definitely give it a try.

Audible

You can buy not only books but also audiobooks from the Kindle store. Sometimes the books are read by the other itself and sometimes they are read by actors and actresses. I bought the audio version of Seth Godin's The Dip, which was read by Seth Godin himself. I was okay-ish, but I expected more emotion in the reading tone. But that's my problem. 😊

Supported formats Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PMP through conversion.

Sync across multiple devices

In case you have multiple devices Kindle, phone, tablet you can continue reading on any of them where you left off.

Kindle Store

Using Wifi, you can buy books directly from the Kindle Store and you can of course also buy audiobooks.

Kindle Unlimited

For only a few dollars per month, you can have access to more than 2 million books using the Kindle Unlimited subscription. I subscribed to it, but up till now I have not found any book that I wanted to read in the Kindle Unlimited books, but I guess it is because I mainly read technical books. But for example, you can read the whole Harry Potter Series.

The Unlimited subscription is not available in all countries but with a little finesse you can get it. 😊

Cover

You can display the cover of the currently read book on the device and as it is an epaper, it is not consuming any energy to do that.

Web Browser

The Kindle has a built-in web browser, with which you can open any link in the books, or you can just simply browse the internet. Be warned, youtube is not supported by this browser. 😉

Goodreads

The device can integrate with Goodreads, with which you can get book recommendations based on your reading list, you can also see what your friends are reading. You can keep track of what you are reading, what you have read, what you would like to read and you can even find many book reviews on Goodreads.

Household & Family Library

You can share books and other digital content across your device and Kindle apps with one more adult and four kids , and you can even control what content your children can access.

And that's all. I hope I was able to explain why buying the Amazon Kindle 2020 was my best investment in this year up till now. By the way, its price is only $120.

Do you have an ebook reader? What are your experiences? Are you considering buying a Kindle?

Share this review in case you find it useful! 👍

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