6" screen - are people happy with it?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by cmdahler

I'd like to see a slim form-factor ereader (read: no idiotic keyboard or wide sides around the screen) that had a screen large enough to accommodate a text block 7.5" inches tall by 4.25" wide. In other words, the typical text block on a hardcover book. The Kindle DX is a bit overkill - these proportions leave a fair bit of margin around the text, but it works better for 8.5 x 11 PDFs, so perhaps that's best.

The other necessity for me before I would ever be attracted to a separate e-Ink reading device, though, would be to double the pixels per inch. Amazon's DX is at 150, hardly better than the iPad's (133). The Sony's are 170, which is somewhat better, but still only a marginal improvement. I need a screen the size of the DX with at least 300 ppi before I'll think it's worth it to cart around another device. That would measure out at 2400 x 1650 pixels on the DX, as opposed to its current 1200 x 824. At that point, I would be seriously impressed enough to plunk down cash for it.

I agree. So many readers waste valuable real estate with a wide bezel around the screen and fancy controls that eat up too much space (such as round control "wheels"). Some may find the keyboards to be of use (even though you and I are not among that number) so that may be arguable. My now defunct Mentor has a 6" screen but it is effectively only a 5" because of the margin it adds to the screen. My JBL, on the other hand, uses almost the entire screen (it even has a zoom to expand images to the full width of the screen with only a few pixels for a margin). Pity its resolution isn't quite as good as the Mentor's was.