What's New with the Kindle 2?

by Aric Annear on February 25, 2009

The Kindle 2 started shipping in earnest yesterday, and many who've been keeping abreast of the e-book reader may be wondering what exactly makes it differ from its predecessor besides it's looks. While it wouldn't make sense for us to give it a formal gadget review (since it's our product and we'd clearly be biased), we can give a side-by-side feature comparison between the two to help you understand better how the device has improved over the past year.

So for the curious, here briefly is a rundown of the most important changes and new features in the Kindle 2:

Obvious Stuff: The Cosmetics

It's thin. Real thin. The original Kindle was a little less than an inch (0.7") at its thickest point and it tapered on one side. The Kindle 2 is about a third of an inch (0.36") all the way across, about the thickness of a magazine. The back now has a stainless steel finish, removing the potential battery cover mishaps a few users were experiencing. The interface is much cleaner, replacing the scroll wheel and animated side cursor with mirrored side buttons and a simple five-way rocker switch. A lot of functions are consolidated to this rocker switch, letting you pull up, navigate, and select items in popup menus.

The 6"-diagonal screen is the same size but supports more shades of grey--16 shades versus the original Kindle's 4--making graphics easier on the eyes and making image-heavy content like blogs much more pleasant to read.

Faster Pages

The Kindle 2 just plain runs faster, with 20% faster page turns. It's one of those statistics that doesn't necessarily stand out on paper; but having both Kindles side-by-side, believe me it makes a difference.

Longer Battery

The battery lasts about 25% longer in the new Kindle. That means four days of reading with the wireless turned on, and up to two weeks with the wireless antenna turned off.

Text-to-Speech

Now the Kindle will even read your books to you. The text-to-speech function features a male and female voice that will recite book content through the onboard speaker or connected headphones. The text-to-speech works surprisingly well, though I personally found the male voice to be a little less "robotic".

No Memory Card Slot

You can play MP3s on the Kindle 2, but keep the 1.4 GB capacity in mind because the SD card slot has been removed in this version. Amazon backs up all your content purchases, though, so you can make room where you need to.

Web Browsing

Amazon's "Whispernet" 3G network will now let you peruse web pages in addition to downloading books. Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, and more are browsable right on the Kindle with no data plan or bills. I'm not going to lie--the web functionality's pretty limited and it's never going to replace a dedicated web browsing device, but it's great if you want to look up a word in a book you're reading, looking for a quick recipe, or want more background on the topic at hand.

Want to know more? Learn more about the Kindle 2 on Amazon.com.

Tags: Kindle