I compared my iRiver Story HD side by side with the kindle wi-fi last night and here's a few thoughts. The kindle was a major competitor for me when buying a new reader but the fact that I doesn’t support epub has always made me hesitate. And now I’m quite satisfied that I waited for the iRiver instead. But it is still interesting to compare the two (for me at least
).
1. The Story HDs screen is in my opinion the better of the two. The higher resolution allowed for much clearer fonts on the iRiver and images and line art looks great on the iRiver since it seems to have more levels of grey as well. Menus look much better than on the Kindle. I would say that the contrast is on par or slightly better on the Story HD than on the Kindle. The text appears blacker on the Story but the grey of the background was about the same.
2. The page turn speed of the iRiver was not as good as on the Kindle though. I didn’t time it but the kindle was slightly faster. The kindle was also somewhat faster in menus and handling overall. Especially if you compare dictionary lookup (thanks for pointing that out stesc) where the iRiver is awfully slow compared to the Kindle. Let’s just hope that this improves by firmware updates.
3. The devices are quite similar in size and apperance. The kindle seems a bit heavier and not so comfortable to hold in my opinion (without a case anyway). The keyboard keys are softer on the kindle and less audible than on the iRiver. I also found that I like the navigation switch on the iRiver better than the Kindles side buttons.
Now back to reading!