Amazon Kindle DX & E Ink Pearl

July 1, 2010

Amazon’s new Kindle DX has a new color and a lower price (press release). The 9.7-inch ebook reader came only in white with a price of $489. Now you can get the Kindle DX in white or graphite (black, I’m assum­ing) with a much lower price of $379. The 9.7-inch E Ink dis­play is dif­fer­ent too. It uses the E Ink Pearl Imaging Film. According to E Ink:

This dis­play tech­nol­ogy offers the world’s most paper-like read­ing expe­ri­ence with an improved con­trast ratio by up to 50%, the industry’s best white state, and the low­est power con­sump­tion as expected with an E Ink dis­play.  E Ink Pearl deliv­ers enhanced readability.

Here are the specs on the 9.7-inch E Ink Pearl elec­tronic paper dis­play (EPD):

  • White State Reflectivity: 40%
  • Contrast Ratio: 10: 1 (Minimum)
  • Viewing Angle: Near 180°
  • Grayscale Capability: 4-bit (16 gray levels)
  • Typical Image Update Time: <1s (grayscale mode), 250ms (1-bit mode)
  • Pixel Count: 1200 x 825 (SVGA)
  • DPI: 150

I’m sure Apple’s iPad has some­thing to do with so much recent activ­ity by Amazon. I would too if the com­pe­ti­tion just sold three mil­lion units in less than three months (read Apple Sold Three Million iPads In 80 Days). Both the iPad and the Kindle DX sport a dis­play with exactly 9.7 inches. With the new Kindle DX, Amazon has now trumped Apple: the Kindle DX comes in black and white. Ooh. On a more seri­ous note the PPI at 150 is higher than the iPad’s almost 132 PPI. Not sig­nif­i­cantly higher, but still, higher. Viewing angles are equally matched, so I would give the E Ink an edge since con­trast drop off is almost non-existent. The min­i­mum con­trast ratio of 10:1 has been improved quite a bit from just 6:1, but is still con­sid­er­ably lower than the con­trast ratio on the iPad, which I think is about the same as that of the iPhone 4 at 800:1. I could be way off, but I’m sure it’s much more than the Kindle DX’s 10:1. Then of course you get 16 gray lev­els on the E Ink dis­play while the IPS LCD in the iPad pro­vides a palette of 16.8 mil­lion col­ors with 8-bit RGB sub-pixels.

If you are decid­ing between the Kindle DX and the iPad, see if this will help. If all you want to do is read books, for many hours at a time, and not worry about the bat­tery clonk­ing out on you… and most of the books you read are com­posed mostly of text then I would with­out reser­va­tion rec­om­mend the Kindle DX. It also helps that Amazon’s Kindle Store has sig­nif­i­cantly more ebooks than Apple’s iBook­store, for now.

I also appre­ci­ate the Kindle’s sin­gu­lar focus on the read­ing expe­ri­ence, though sev­eral fea­ture addi­tions seem to point to the Kindle team’s loos­en­ing of that focus. To name just a cou­ple: social net­work inte­gra­tion and adver­tis­ing sup­ported books.

For book­worms the Kindle is king. Look at the impos­si­bly sim­ple always-on con­nec­tion to the Kindle Store. Browse a book, like the book, buy the book, down­load the book, start read­ing the book. In less than 60 sec­onds. You don’t have to worry about the con­nec­tion, and you don’t have to pay for it either. You can’t quite do that on the iPad. You’ll need a data con­nec­tion that will cost you at least $14.99 per month. Yes, you can con­nect via WiFi but you’ll need to find a WiFi con­nec­tion. Try doing that at an air­port that doesn’t have the nation-wide WiFi ser­vice you’re a part of. The 3G con­nec­tion on the Kindle DX is global so you could be any­where and still get the book you want. I don’t think you can do that with the iPad. Compared to the Kindle expe­ri­ence the iPad either costs too much or is cum­ber­some. If read­ing is your thing, the Kindle is with­out peer. Pre-order the Kindle DX at Amazon.com. It ships on July 7th.