Should You Get a Kindle Voyage?

If you like tech stuff, and you like to read, chances are you have an ereader of some sort. Aside from my phone and iPad, I've had a Kindle Paperwhite for the last two years and loved it. However, this year Amazon came out with an improved ereader, the Kindle Voyage, that I super duper wanted and got for Christmas. Yay!

So, the question is: If you're thinking of replacing your older Kindle with the Kindle Voyage, or looking to get a dedicated ereading device (as opposed to just using your phone), is the Voyage worth it? I'm here to break it down for you!

Features

On the surface, the differences between the Kindle Voyage and Paperwhite seem minor:

• There's no "ridge" between the frame and the screen
• You can now set the backlight to auto-adjust
• There are buttons on the side that can turn pages in addition to the touch screen
• The screen itself is much "crisper" (300 ppi as opposed to the Paperwhite's 212, whatever that means)
• And it's slightly smaller and noticeably lighter (6.4 x 4.5", versus the Paperwhite's 6.7 x 4.6")

In practice, however, these small changes on the Voyage make a big difference! I love having the buttons on the side in case I'm holding it with my left hand, and I like not having to think about adjusting the lighting every time I move from indoors to outdoors or a bright room to a darker room. The smooth surface of the screen makes it much easier to turn pages via the touch screen, the lightness of the Voyage means it's super easy to carry around, and Amazon has done a good job of nearly eliminating the "etch-a-sketch effect" that was a hallmark of the early Kindles and Nooks.

The browser–which you can use to buy or borrow books via Amazon–is also VASTLY improved from the Paperwhite's. It runs quickly and smoothly and makes for a better buying experience. With the Paperwhite I would put it down to download books over my phone before I'd use its built-in browser.

Covers

As I've mentioned before, covers are a BFD for me. I loved both the classic Kindle and Paperwhite's covers. LOVED them. For the Kindle Voyage, on the other hand... well, it's been a bit of a journey.

The first cover I bought was the ACcase Smart Shell Case. The color was very pretty, but the surface was extremely slippery, and there was a slight gap between the front of the cover and the Kindle. However, once I started reading with the cover flipped back, the slipperiness wasn't a problem and I liked the feel of it in my hands.

However, I was somewhat unsatisfied and pretty sure there HAD to be a better cover out there. Which is why I decided to purchase another cover, the Flintie Protective Leather Cover. This one was not slippery. Yay! However, it felt cheap and dinky, and there was a much more significant gap between the cover on this one and the screen of the Kindle than there was with the ACcase cover. I DON'T LIKE GAPS. I used this cover for about an hour before switching back to the first one.

No gaps!

And then I finally broke down and bought the Amazon-designed Voyage cover, which they call the Origami. The biggest negative with this one is it's expensive, like fifty freakin dollars (compared to the first two, which were around twelve dollars each). Uhg. BUT. But! It's also fantastic. The surface of the cover is pleasantly grippy and not slippery, the front locks securely in place to both the Kindle screen and the back of the cover using magnets, and I love the origami feature that allows you to fold the cover and prop up the Kindle for easy reading while eating or cooking.

So basically: the Amazon-designed cover is once again totally worth the price. If you're being particularly frugal for some reason, though, the ACcase is a not-completely-sucky alternative.

Minor Annoyances

The Kindle Voyage also comes with some minor, possibly-to-become-major-PITA annoyances that are worth mentioning.

First and foremost, I don't know if this just my device or what, but the thing in the lower left-hand corner that tells you where you're at in the book is IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE. On the Paperwhite, it's easy to tap and switch between what page you're on, how many minutes you have left in the chapter, how many in the book, etc. Yes, that info's usually wrong, but hey. I like to stay misinformed.

On the Voyage I can't even do that! If I tap on it nothing happens, unless I tap on the top to get the summary view, then return to the page view and THEN tap. I can see this sending me into Hulk Mode on a bad day.

Also the auto-adjust feature, while nice, is overly sensitive. One minor tilt of the screen can send the screen into bright light or no light mode. However, I can turn off the auto-adjust if it ever gets to be too annoying.

Those are really my only complaints so far.

Conclusion

Purchasing the Voyage as a replacement for an older Kindle or as a dedicated ereader is definitely worth it! The changes to the device make using it feel much more intuitive and require less "thinking" on the reader's part than any of the previous Kindles. So far I'm definitely happy with it.


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TSS: NaNoWriMo, DNFs, Kindle Paperwhite

Hello, my bookish cabbages! Usually I do a "deep thoughts" post for Sundays, but there are a bunch of little things I want to mention this week, none of which have anything to do with the other, except as they pertain to this blog and my reading!

National Novel Writing Month

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo again this year. If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's this super-fun thing where people try to write a 50k word novel (or more, if you're ambitious) in a single month. Last year was my first year participating, and I started writing with absolutely no idea where I was going. This year I have three stories plotted out, and I'm having a bit of trouble choosing between them, so I thought it would be fun to ask you all for help! If you would be kind enough to vote on the story you'd most like to see written, I'd really appreciate it. Just use the form embedded below or go to the survey's webpage. I've included blurbs for each of the stories in the survey.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

If history is anything to go by, I'm not going to be posting much during November because I'll be focusing on NaNo. Instead, I'm planning to cross-post some reviews from my other blogs here, and vice versa, once a week, plus new posts as I'm able to do them.

Reading

In book news, my reading has not been going at all well lately. I did manage to finish a book this week, but I nearly DNF'd it, and now I have NOTHING to say about it; or at least, what I do have to say seems very confused and my review is utter nonsense. All of my other last three books have been DNFs, too. I don't know if this has anything to do with my insomnia problems lately (it seems like changes in the seasons make it more and more difficult for me to sleep every year), but I end up reading very late at night and getting bored and annoyed. I mean, if I WANT to sleep, and I CAN'T sleep, the least I could be is entertained. BUT NO. The books I pick up are either really stupid or boring or I just don't care. That's probably the insomnia talking, of course, but it doesn't change how I feel about it.

So basically I've been watching a lot of movies.

Shiny Pigeon!



In other exciting news, I got a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday (that was three weeks ago... slow shipping). Yay! I only got it yesterday and haven't even had a chance to read a book on it yet, but so far it's very cool. I love the cover and the ability to adjust the light, and the words are much sharper than on my keyboard kindle. The device is slow in processing highlights and typing, but at least the touch screen seems to be more accurate and sensitive than the Nook's touch screen. I'm kind of excited to use the glow screen during my next bout of insomnia!


That's the major news for this week. What's going on in your reading world?

KINDLE vs NOOK

For Christmas I got a Nook Simple Touch. Now that I've had both a Nook and a Kindle for a few months, I thought it would be useful to compare them. It's not quite like comparing apples to apples, as my Kindle is over a year old (yet weirdly seems like I've had it forever) and is not a touch screen like the Nook is.

Cover

It may seem shallow to start with a cover as a selling point, but for me the covers of eReaders really add or subtract to the experience of reading on them. They help me to feel as if I'm reading a paper book, and that's important.

The Kindle covers are awesome--sturdy, comfortable to hold, and very nice-looking. I've had the same Kindle cover for over a year and it looks as nice as the first day I bought it, and I definitely haven't been light-handed with it.

The Nook covers, on the other hand, SUCK. There are lots of choices, but the vast majority of those choices are either ugly or boring. I chose the "Charm" cover, above, because it was one of the few I thought was pretty. It cost $60, which is comparable to the Kindle cover I own; unlike the Kindle cover, however, this one is very cheaply made (the fabric started bubbling up a week after I bought it), flimsy, and not comfortable to hold. You fail me, Barnes & Noble.

Screen Quality

With eReaders there's a "flash," or what I like to call the Etch-a-sketch effect. It's a flash of black between turning pages or changing screens before all the words and images reform the way they're supposed to be. Sometimes there's also an afterimage of the previous page or screen saver that appears; this goes away after you change the screen (or should).

The Nook definitely has a shorter flash than the Kindle, and the images are much sharper, so that's a definite plus. Keep in mind I don't know if this would be the case with a new Kindle, and when I'm reading I don't don't notice the flash that much, anyway.

Touch Screen vs Buttons

The main reason I wanted a Nook in the first place was because it had a touch screen. "How convenient!" I thought to myself. I love making notes on Kindle, but the tiny little buttons drive me crazy, and it's a pain to add things like question marks and apostrophes (you all know I hate me some dropped apostrophes). I also thought a Nook would be preferable over a touch-screen Kindle because there are side buttons to turn the page, so I don't HAVE to touch the screen if I have jam on my fingers or something.

The reality is, touch screens are a pain in the ass (unless it's a good touch screen, and only iPad has that right now). The Nook screen is extremely sensitive, but not accurate; I have to fight with it every time I want to highlight anything, as it never seems to follow my fingers. As for the side buttons on the Nook that I wanted, it take a lot of effort to press them, and my thumbs quickly become fatigued. The side buttons on the Kindle are sooo much better.

Ease of Sideloading/Uploading

One of the things I love about Kindle is that I can buy books from my device, or from the webbernets, and immediately have them on my Kindle to read. I can also delete or archive books directly from my Kindle. It's so easy you never even have to think about it.

I wasn't expecting things to be any different with Nook, but they are. For one, it's a bitch trying to get it to connect to our wifi at home. Turns out since December 2011, Nook devices aren't compatible with wireless routers from certain companies. HOW. CONVENIENT. What, shall I traipse over to the nearest Barnes & Noble just to download my effing books? Come on! (My mom's reaction to this news: "I'm done with them." I have to echo that sentiment.)

Plus, I can e-mail myself files to read on Kindle. You can't do that with Nook. Since I download a lot of files from Project Gutenberg and other sites, it seems like I have to sideload onto my Nook a lot--much more than with Kindle. I also can't delete those files from the Nook once I'm done with them; I have to plug it in and delete them from my computer. Another inconvenience, if minor.

Formats

Of course, a plus point in Nook's favor is that it allows more formats than Kindle, including the beloved ePub. I was excited by that as well. But you know... with Calibre and de-DRM programs, it's pretty simple to reformat ePubs for my Kindle. Turning mobi files from Amazon into ePubs, on the other hand, is something I haven't puzzled out yet (if someone has any clue, please feel free to share--keep in mind I have a Mac). I've found myself thinking, "Good thing I have a Kindle," a lot lately. Number of times I've thought "Good thing I have a Nook" so far: zero.



Do I like my Nook? Yes, I like certain things about it. And I'm happy to have two eReaders so I have two options to read books on (as well as being grateful and aware that I'm very technology-spoiled). But if I could only have one, I'd chose the Kindle. The Nook gives me headaches that the Kindle has never ever given me; whether those headaches are due mostly to the touch screen, the cover, or the device, is up in the air at the moment. But I definitely feel a fondness for my Kindle that just isn't happening with the Nook.


Do you have an eReader[s]? What are the features you like/dislike?