Priced at almost $500, the Amazon Kindle DX promises several features that you won't find in any other e-reader, including previous Kindle versions. Is it worth the price? We'll compare the Kindle DX with the Kindle 2 and see what the differences really are.
Amazon marked June 10 as the day that the new Kindle DX e-readers would begin shipping to customers. When the arrival of the Kindle DX was first announced during May of 2009, a bit of a controversy ensued. The Kindle 2 had only launched a few months earlier in February, and a large number of buyers complained of feeling misled – they believed that Amazon should have let them know that the Kindle DX would be available so soon, and many even stated that they would have held off on making the Kindle 2 purchase and would have chosen the larger Kindle DX model instead.
One of the responses given to this complaint is that the Kindle DX and Kindle 2 are truly two separate devices and that it's quite conceivable for people to want to own both. Yeah, right. While it may be true that the two e-readers do serve different niches in the market, most of us aren't going to want to spend $359 on a Kindle 2 and then turn around and plunk another $489 down for a Kindle DX. So what are the real differences between the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX?
Since both items were released so close together, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the devices share most of the same features. However, there are some notable differences.
Size – The most obvious difference between the Kindle DX and Kindle 2 is size. The Kindle DX has a 9.7" diagonal display while the Kindle 2 sports the same 6" display found in the original model of the e-reader. In terms of overall dimensions, the Kindle DX measures 10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38" and weighs 18.9 ounces. The Kindle 2, on the other hand, measures 8" x 5.3" x 0.36" and weighs 10.2 ounces.
Even with its larger dimensions, the Kindle DX is still very portable – about the same size as a standard sheet of paper in terms of height and width. However, as many have pointed out, the larger size makes the Kindle DX better at handling publications like newspapers and text books.
PDF Support - Here's a category that makes a big difference in my book. In theory, both the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX support PDF, but native recognition of such files is experimental in the Kindle 2 – many times, you'll have to go through Amazon's conversion process to get PDF documents to display properly, and that process can cause a little bit of annoyance. The Kindle DX supposedly has full native PDF support. I'm still curious to see how well this works.
Rotating Screen – Another new feature introduced with the Kindle DX is the ability to change the orientation of the display area in order to view a "page" in either the classical portrait or wider landscape mode. All you have to do to access this feature is turn the e-reader on its side and it will automatically adjust.
Storage Capacity – Another big difference between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX is in storage capacity. The Kindle DX offers more than twice as much available memory as the Kindle 2. With 4 GB of internal storage (3.3 GB avaialble for user content), Amazon estimates that the Kindle DX can hold 3,500 e-books. The Kindle 2 really isn't too shabby here, either. Its 2 GB of internal storage (1.4 GB available for user content) can hold about 1,500 books.
With these additions, it makes sense that the Kindle DX would have a significantly higher price tag than the Kindle 2. Still, I have to go with some of the crowd on this one and wonder why some of these additions weren't implemented with the Kindle 2. Why was Amazon in such a hurry to get the Kindle 2 out the door?
I can understand offering two different models, one larger and with more memory on board. But it seems to me that a rotating screen feature would be even more useful on a model with a smaller display and the hit-or-miss PDF support of the Kindle 2 leaves a lot to be desired. Of course, adding these features to the Kindle 2 might have driven up the price a bit. With that being said, I wonder how long it will be until we see a Kindle 3.