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Verdict:
Justifies its slightly higher cost and weight with a raft of useful additions over the standard Kindle
Review Date: 25 Apr 2012
Price when reviewed: £109
Supplier: http://www.amazon.co.uk
Reviewed By: Seth Barton
Our Rating
User Rating
After a long and unexplained delay the Kindle Touch is finally available on British shores, over six months after its US launch. While the current slimline Amazon Kindle stripped out all the less-used features from the now clunky-looking keyboard version; the new Kindle Touch brings back the vast majority of these in a more sleek-looking package.
It's undoubtedly a little heavier and a little chunkier than the basic Kindle. It's slightly larger in every dimension, measuring 172x120x10.1mm compared to 166x114x8.7mm. It's not a huge difference, but we found the smaller model fitted better in our inside jacket pocket. There's not much weight difference either on paper, with the Touch weighing in at 213g compared to 170g for the basic Kindle. It may not sound much, but the lighter Kindle is definitely more comfortable to hold for long periods unsupported.
Here you can see the size difference between the Kindle and Kindle Touch, alongside the still-awaited Kindle Fire tablet
For those who are used to the older Amazon Kindle 3 (now known as the Kindle Keyboard), the Kindle Touch is a little shorter, but almost as wide and a little chunkier, so there's great benefit in this department for those considering an upgrade.
A TOUCHING READ
The Kindle Touch uses the same 6in E Ink Pearl display as the other available Kindles, and for that matter pretty much every current eBook reader on the market. You get all the usual benefits of great contrast, a display you can read in any lighting conditions (except the dark), and a reasonable resolution for smaller fonts.
The big difference with the Kindle Touch is that Amazon has added a touch-screen capability to the screen. In fact it's a bit more complex than that, the screen itself is unchanged, as discussed above; instead, an optical sensor is mounted around the edges of the display, which detects where your finger lands on the screen. This is the same system used by other touch-enabled eBook readers such as the Kobo eReader Touch and Sony Reader PRS-T1.
The Kindle looks better without all those buttons, but the colour scheme is still incredibly dull
In practice the touchscreen works well for reading, with Amazon opting for a tap-based page turn rather than requiring a swipe, Tapping on most of the screen turns the page, while a tap on the far left-hand side goes back a page and tapping the top of the screen brings up the menu bar. You can also swipe if you prefer, with right-to-left swipes going forward and left-to-right to go back.
The touchscreen makes little difference when just reading book, the buttons on the other Kindle models are well-placed, and the still relatively slow page turns are more of an issue for eBook readers than how your turn those pages. If, like us, you prefer reading books in landscape mode, though, then the touch controls adapt and are therefore better than buttons.
It comes into its own when you make use of the Kindle's other functions. Buying books is a breeze, as long as you know what you want; for book browsing we still prefer to use a PC browser, flicking between Amazon itself and review sites. Still, if you're caught out for something to read on holiday, the Kindle Touch will serve you far better than previous devices in this respect.
It's worth noting here, though, that the 3G version of the Kindle Touch costs a whopping £60 more than the basic Wi-Fi version. That's a big price hike for the pleasure of not finding a Wi-Fi hotspot. It seems that Amazon may have underestimated the costs that the 3G service incurred, as the price differential between such models is rising.
Buying books on the go is far easier using the new touchscreen interface
Coming back to the touchscreen, it certainly makes managing the books on your Kindle far easier, you can long press to bring up a menu with options such as deleting unwanted samples, bringing up the book description or viewing notes you've made. Speaking of which, if you do like to annotate books as you go, then the Kindle Touch is great, we found typing with the onscreen keyboard to be surprisingly accurate. It offers completed words as you type, but doesn't autocorrect misspelled words to the most likely of these options.
User Reviews
The Touch in daily use, and using other formats
I've had my Touch for 4 months now, (Xmas present from California; £36 VAT and tax collection by Royal Mail online!)
First, a comment on the review. The on/off button is indeed not recessed, but this is a disadvantage. It's so easy to actuate that standing the Touch in its edge it switches off under its own weight. I often read with it propped up, as the touch control is so light that a slight brush on the screen works, so this is an annoyance to me. And yes, it is tiring to hold it up with hand curled round a corner, reading in bed. It's twice the weight of a 200-300 page paperback, and needs a firmer grip.
The touch screen is not as cleanly responsive as it could be. It senses by movement detection, not electrically (I can operate it wearing surgical gloves - don't ask!) So a touch often turns two pages, and I haven't yet found out how to avoid this in thousands of page turns, over a hundred books read. And sometimes a few prods are needed to get any action at all. I think the reason is that the touch recognition software needs to detect one of the programmed commands, so a slight skid as you prod, or another finger hovering too close, is ambiguous. Still testing! But the multitouch is great, especially vertical pincer movements to enlarge or reduce the text size.
Bookmarking is crude. For each display of text, you can only mark the top section, by dabbing the top right corner of the screen. It would have been better to have the whole right edge active for bookmarks, so that you could dab for the section you wanted to come up in bookmark search. And going to a bookmark is a multi-stage affair, quite cumbersome if you have many bookmarks and highlights. There should be a shortcut on the main menu.
In the latest software I downloaded last week, there's full Wikipedia and dictionary support. You can choose both UK and US Oxford dictionaries - and they're both good. Hovering on a word to highlight it will bring up the dictionary in a dialog box. You can then opt to see the full entry, which opens the dictionary as a book, or a Wikipedia snippet in the box, from which you can open Wikipedia on the internet for full access - and you need to be online for most Wikipedia access. If the dictionary doesn't have a word, Wikipedia almost certainly will - the difference between a third of a million entries and several billion! And once the dictionary is open, words in the dictionary entry can be searched in the same way, as well as the copious live links in the dictionaries (and many non-fiction books). In other words, you can search your searches, too. Highlighting a short phrase now allows direct access to Wikipedia for the phrase, as well as the previous functions. This is helpful because a dash joining two words confuses the dictionary, as they highlight as one. Compared with a print book, the ability to painlessly explore words, content and references is awesome!
The web browser is crude, but works usably. It suffers mainly from two things: the usual small screen problems, which are helped by the size changes and swipe commands usual on small tablets; and the fact that navigation has only a back button - which is a pain. There is no intuitive help with typing in addresses, either - everything must be in full, and previous addresses are not remembered. Still, it IS in the experimental tools section, and the Kindle IS, to be fair, low-powered and battery-saving. That's one of the joys compared to a tablet.
It is possible to use any book format from any publisher - but not easily. What can't be downloaded from Amazon must be separately bought and downloaded to a computer, then converted to a Kindle-readable format. It's maybe not an accident that the main format you can't read is ePub, the generic format on most readers. I read books on my computer on Sony's Reader software, which is lovely to use. And I use the free ebook management, conversion and backup program Calibre (note the non-US spelling) to manage all of my ebooks, including those I've written. Calibre is easy to use and comprehensive - well worth a try.
By davidcroucher on 26 Apr 2012 
I've had my Touch for 4 months now, (Xmas present from California; £36 VAT and tax collection by Royal Mail online!)
First, a comment on the review. The on/off button is indeed not recessed, but this is a disadvantage. It's so easy to actuate that standing the Touch in its edge it switches off under its own weight. I often read with it propped up, as the touch control is so light that a slight brush on the screen works, so this is an annoyance to me. And yes, it is tiring to hold it up with hand curled round a corner, reading in bed. It's twice the weight of a 200-300 page paperback, and needs a firmer grip.
The touch screen is not as cleanly responsive as it could be. It senses by movement detection, not electrically (I can operate it wearing surgical gloves - don't ask!) So a touch often turns two pages, and I haven't yet found out how to avoid this in thousands of page turns, over a hundred books read. And sometimes a few prods are needed to get any action at all. I think the reason is that the touch recognition software needs to detect one of the programmed commands, so a slight skid as you prod, or another finger hovering too close, is ambiguous. Still testing! But the multitouch is great, especially vertical pincer movements to enlarge or reduce the text size.
Bookmarking is crude. For each display of text, you can only mark the top section, by dabbing the top right corner of the screen. It would have been better to have the whole right edge active for bookmarks, so that you could dab for the section you wanted to come up in bookmark search. And going to a bookmark is a multi-stage affair, quite cumbersome if you have many bookmarks and highlights. There should be a shortcut on the main menu.
In the latest software I downloaded last week, there's full Wikipedia and dictionary support. You can choose both UK and US Oxford dictionaries - and they're both good. Hovering on a word to highlight it will bring up the dictionary in a dialog box. You can then opt to see the full entry, which opens the dictionary as a book, or a Wikipedia snippet in the box, from which you can open Wikipedia on the internet for full access - and you need to be online for most Wikipedia access. If the dictionary doesn't have a word, Wikipedia almost certainly will - the difference between a third of a million entries and several billion! And once the dictionary is open, words in the dictionary entry can be searched in the same way, as well as the copious live links in the dictionaries (and many non-fiction books). In other words, you can search your searches, too. Highlighting a short phrase now allows direct access to Wikipedia for the phrase, as well as the previous functions. This is helpful because a dash joining two words confuses the dictionary, as they highlight as one. Compared with a print book, the ability to painlessly explore words, content and references is awesome!
The web browser is crude, but works usably. It suffers mainly from two things: the usual small screen problems, which are helped by the size changes and swipe commands usual on small tablets; and the fact that navigation has only a back button - which is a pain. There is no intuitive help with typing in addresses, either - everything must be in full, and previous addresses are not remembered. Still, it IS in the experimental tools section, and the Kindle IS, to be fair, low-powered and battery-saving. That's one of the joys compared to a tablet.
It is possible to use any book format from any publisher - but not easily. What can't be downloaded from Amazon must be separately bought and downloaded to a computer, then converted to a Kindle-readable format. It's maybe not an accident that the main format you can't read is ePub, the generic format on most readers. I read books on my computer on Sony's Reader software, which is lovely to use. And I use the free ebook management, conversion and backup program Calibre (note the non-US spelling) to manage all of my ebooks, including those I've written. Calibre is easy to use and comprehensive - well worth a try.
By davidcroucher on 26 Apr 2012
I've had my Touch for 4 months now, (Xmas present from California; £36 VAT and tax collection by Royal Mail online!)
First, a comment on the review. The on/off button is indeed not recessed, but this is a disadvantage. It's so easy to actuate that standing the Touch in its edge it switches off under its own weight. I often read with it propped up, as the touch control is so light that a slight brush on the screen works, so this is an annoyance to me. And yes, it is tiring to hold it up with hand curled round a corner, reading in bed. It's twice the weight of a 200-300 page paperback, and needs a firmer grip.
The touch screen is not as cleanly responsive as it could be. It senses by movement detection, not electrically (I can operate it wearing surgical gloves - don't ask!) So a touch often turns two pages, and I haven't yet found out how to avoid this in thousands of page turns, over a hundred books read. And sometimes a few prods are needed to get any action at all. I think the reason is that the touch recognition software needs to detect one of the programmed commands, so a slight skid as you prod, or another finger hovering too close, is ambiguous. Still testing! But the multitouch is great, especially vertical pincer movements to enlarge or reduce the text size.
Bookmarking is crude. For each display of text, you can only mark the top section, by dabbing the top right corner of the screen. It would have been better to have the whole right edge active for bookmarks, so that you could dab for the section you wanted to come up in bookmark search. And going to a bookmark is a multi-stage affair, quite cumbersome if you have many bookmarks and highlights. There should be a shortcut on the main menu.
In the latest software I downloaded last week, there's full Wikipedia and dictionary support. You can choose both UK and US Oxford dictionaries - and they're both good. Hovering on a word to highlight it will bring up the dictionary in a dialog box. You can then opt to see the full entry, which opens the dictionary as a book, or a Wikipedia snippet in the box, from which you can open Wikipedia on the internet for full access - and you need to be online for most Wikipedia access. If the dictionary doesn't have a word, Wikipedia almost certainly will - the difference between a third of a million entries and several billion! And once the dictionary is open, words in the dictionary entry can be searched in the same way, as well as the copious live links in the dictionaries (and many non-fiction books). In other words, you can search your searches, too. Highlighting a short phrase now allows direct access to Wikipedia for the phrase, as well as the previous functions. This is helpful because a dash joining two words confuses the dictionary, as they highlight as one. Compared with a print book, the ability to painlessly explore words, content and references is awesome!
The web browser is crude, but works usably. It suffers mainly from two things: the usual small screen problems, which are helped by the size changes and swipe commands usual on small tablets; and the fact that navigation has only a back button - which is a pain. There is no intuitive help with typing in addresses, either - everything must be in full, and previous addresses are not remembered. Still, it IS in the experimental tools section, and the Kindle IS, to be fair, low-powered and battery-saving. That's one of the joys compared to a tablet.
It is possible to use any book format from any publisher - but not easily. What can't be downloaded from Amazon must be separately bought and downloaded to a computer, then converted to a Kindle-readable format. It's maybe not an accident that the main format you can't read is ePub, the generic format on most readers. I read books on my computer on Sony's Reader software, which is lovely to use. And I use the free ebook management, conversion and backup program Calibre (note the non-US spelling) to manage all of my ebooks, including those I've written. Calibre is easy to use and comprehensive - well worth a try.
By davidcroucher on 26 Apr 2012
Not quite an all round improvement
I had a Touch shipped over from the US as soon as it became available there. In general I agree with the review here but, comparing the Touch with the keyboard model, the keyboard model's on/off slider is better. It's too easy to accidentally switch off a Touch. Second the volume from the keyboard model is louder probably because the speakers of the Touch are smaller. Third if you read at the poolside or in a bath forget trying to use the Touch inside a plastic bag - it doesn't work at all reliably.
The Touch on-screen keyboard is far easier to use than that of the Keyboard model. The web browser is a vast improvement you can scroll to a different part of a web page easily and enlarge/reduce a page section easily by separating two fingers/pinching. There's no noticeable difference in weight between the two models - 11 grams.
By Jaydax on 30 Apr 2012
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