Hands-on with the Kindle DX

After yesterday's New York launch, we got the chance to have a quick play with Amazon's new, much larger Kindle DX ebook reader. In the flesh, what's surprising is how much the DX -- bigger face aside -- is like its little sibling, the Kindle 2. We should point out that the Kindle is no closer to arriving in the UK, but our fingers are perpetually crossed.

In profile, the two devices appear equally svelte: the 9.7mm-deep DX is just a tad thicker than the 9.1mm Kindle 2. Obviously, the main difference here is the Kindle DX's 25cm e-ink display, which technically offers 2.5 times more screen area than the Kindle's 15cm display. That extra screen comes at a price, both figuratively and literally, as the DX weighs almost twice as much (536g) as the Kindle 2 and costs $130 (£85) more, at $489 (£325).

That said, while the DX is significantly larger and heavier, when you pick it up, it doesn't feel too chunky to carry or hold. It clearly isn't as portable as the Kindle 2, however. Most women's handbags, for instance, just won't be big enough to contain the thing.

Amazon says the DX's screen technology and guts (ie, processor) are exactly the same as in the Kindle 2. The DX comes with more memory: 4GB (3.3GB usable), compared with 2GB for the Kindle 2. That's enough memory to store 3,500 books, according to Amazon. Sadly, neither the DX nor the Kindle 2 has an expansion slot for more memory, which the original Kindle did.

The DX also features a nonremovable, rechargeable battery that delivers about two weeks of battery life if you use the built-in 3G wireless data connection judiciously. If your battery dies, you have to send the device back to Amazon to replace the battery for a fee.

Aside from the expanded memory, the two most important feature additions to the new Kindle are native PDF support and the capability to go from portrait to landscape mode by simply rotating the device. Additionally, you can now adjust not only the font size but how many words you want to see on a line of text. And finally, the Web browser is slightly improved (we'll get to that in a minute).

In our limited time with the Kindle DX, we were impressed. As advertised, the larger screen lends itself to displaying newspaper and magazine content, especially when you throw some graphics and images into the mix. You see more of the story on a single page and the reading experience is a more akin to reading an actual newspaper.

The same goes for textbooks. Again, the key is that the Kindle does a good job of displaying graphics and charts (alas, there's no colour -- only 16 shades of grey), so complex layouts with multiple images end up displaying more or less as they would in a textbook. And obviously, the Kindle DX weighs far less than an organic-chemistry textbook, which is why this device will appeal to students hoping to lighten their backpack loads.

Amazon didn't make a big deal about the capability to add notes and highlight sentences and passages as you're reading, because that functionality was built into previous Kindles, along with a built-in dictionary and keyboard. Ideally, of course, the Kindle DX would have a touchscreen, and you could mark up the pages themselves by writing on the screen.

As for PDF documents, there's no explicit zoom feature, but switching into landscape mode crops the PDF and essentially enlarges a portion of it. One of the problems with the Kindle is that it doesn't appear to have the horsepower to properly zoom in and out of PDF files quickly, so this horizontal mode is Amazon's workaround. While it may not offer the most flexibility in terms of viewing options, it's not bad.

We promised more on the Web browser improvements and here it is: you can now switch from a basic mode to an advanced 'desktop' mode that allows you to view the Web page as you would on your desktop (you switch into landscape mode to get a wider angle of view).

As a test, we brought up the CNET.com home page, and after some lengthy load times and some awkward graphical glitches, the page did indeed look more or less like a monochrome version of our US front door. This model, like previous Kindles, doesn't offer Flash support and won't display video. In other words, it's improved, but it's not a huge step forward. Ultimately, the browser still does best with lighter (read: fewer graphics) mobile versions of Web sites. For now, Amazon is saying that a firmware upgrade will not be available to Kindle 2 owners to add the new browser features or native PDF support.

All in all, we came away liking the Kindle DX and think it certainly advances the concept of e-reading. That the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe are all dropping the prices of their subscription rates to $9.99 (£6.60) makes this an appealing device for commuters looking to get their news fixes each morning. It should also appeal to elderly and partially sighted people who want to increase font sizes, but also have more than a few words appear on a line. And finally, this type of larger e-reader is being eyed by businesses -- or mobile professionals -- who deal with a lot of PDFs and want to have them easily accessible on a single device. It's a shame there isn't a memory-expansion option.

Obviously, the price of the Kindle DX is one of its biggest shortcomings and it might limit its appeal early on, although we expect Amazon will figure out a way to subsidise the cost of the device for one audience it hopes to reach in large numbers: students. We assume universities will get a substantial discount if they buy hundreds or thousands of units.

Ultimately, however, the DX needs to cost the same as the Kindle 2 -- $359 (£235) -- to make sense to a broader audience. Even to well-off gadget freaks, it would be better to hold out for a touchscreen e-reader that offers more mark-up and note-taking flexibility (almost like an electronic pad of paper).