It’s a better book than actual books for 98+% of books I’ve read on it.
Taking as many books as I want onto an airplane for a business trip is great. My kids and wife read theirs literally daily. I’d have to look up how old they are, but the newest one is 2 years old and I think mine is around 10 (it’s a first gen paper white).
The e-ink display updates fast enough to not distract me from reading. The battery lasts multiple business trips, even on my very old unit.
I’m surprised how negatively you feel about it, given my and my family’s very good experiences.
You really threw me for a second with talking about your kids reading and then saying "I'd have to look up how old they are, but the newest one is two years old"!
The ability to take a library with me is great, obviously. I also primarily read on kindle.
The complaints I have are all qualities within their control that seem to be lagging due to neglect (responsiveness, UI, stability, degrading performance over time, keyboard, search)
Now ignore the library aspect and compare reading a single book to reading a single e-book and the gaps will be more visible.
I was recently given a physical book as part of a work-related book club and took it along with my Kindle on a family vacation in April, so I ended up doing a direct comparison. The physical book was not better than a Kindle version would have been. It was bigger, heavier, was only one book, was harder to read in the evening, harder to highlight passages and find them later. I think the only thing is the around double resolution of the print version, where the Kindle's ~300dpi is entirely passable, and the fact that the book's "battery life" is >100 years while the Kindle needs charging once per month. Still a big Kindle win.
Depends on your perspective. If you sell kindles you probably are pretty pleased with almost 100 million units sold. Not a lot of products get those numbers. It sold quite successfully I'd say.
> The device itself is neglected, underpowered, unresponsive, unreliable , sluggish with a terrible UI.
UI is great! I can easily read on the thing. What is “terrible”? Who cares if the device is underpowered or whatever? I tap on the screen and things happen. I’ve owned nearly every kindle ever released and never had any of the complaints you do.
It’s great for reading, I’m not mining bitcoin on the thing.
UI controls are not responsive.
Search is slow . Keyboard latency is frustrating. Large books overwhelm the device (try reading a study bible ) . Switching books is slow . Seeking pages is slow . The UI is clumsy and inconsistent – some appearance adjustments are on the top menu and some are in settings. Settings and menu design model is inconsistent .
Despite being a mature device it has the design and performance of a beta product
But the software is awful and the application of the eink hardware is terrible too.