New Kindle Voyage

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Same resolution as PW1, but uses higher contrast Carta screen & different waveform tech.

Thanks, and sorry for the error. I haven't followed the PWx closely, because NO PAGE TURN BUTTONS!! (No SD card slot and no folder support other big minuses, but sometimes compromise is necessary, so KV is not completely out of the question for me.)

[Waylander]

The PW2 was hackable, but there was an update that made it extremely tedious and time consuming for people like me who just about managed the JBPatch on PW1 . One can hack it, but it is almost too much bother. I see no reason why Amazon would not have made the Voyage as hack proof as possible. If I can pull off the Kindle Collections trick with the new basic Kindle, thereby making the margins narrower, then that is what i will go for.

[Marseille]

I hope some of the features of the voyage eventually filter down the line. It would be really nice to have buttons and a light, and that combination of features needn't be exclusive to a flagship reader. Right now, I can attach an unfortunately hefty lighted case to my K4NTB, but I can't, AFAIK, attach a case with page turn buttons to a paperwhite.

And so there are two current kindles that have less than zero appeal to me, and one that's nice, but has a series of premo features (microetched glass, flush display, thickness, weight, resolution) I don't care about price blocking me from the basic features I desire in a dedicated reader.

Page buttons used to be exclusive to the bottom of the line. Now they're exclusive to the top. If you want this feature once ridiculed by the touchscreenarati as an anachronism tantamount to the outhouse, you have to be able to afford the penthouse. It's a good time to be a button, but a bad time to want one.

[Barty]

To me, it's a very mixed bag. Higher resolution is fine, although what I need from e ink is higher contrast, which trumps resolution every day (it's not like with LCD where you can see the pixel structure anyway). I wouldn't be surprised if the voyage had worse contrast because of the flush screen. The aura HD (flushed) had worse contrast than the PW, and the new h2o (not flushed) has better contrast than either, according to Nate's review. Could be many things, of course, but I suspect the flush screen. You have to put the LEDs somewhere between the e ink screen and the glass and the farther out you move the glass the bigger you make the gap. Micro edged gorilla glass? To me all this is just trying to compensate for messing up the e ink screen in the first place by adding a light and touch layer. We'll see how well it works.

300dpi? I would've preferred same resolution in a bigger screen. The fancy buttons? I would've preferred a bigger screen. Magnesium laced back? I would've preferred a bigger screen. Light sensor? I would've preferred a bigger screen. Anything that is not better contrast? I would've preferred a bigger screen.

I guess I would've preferred h2o hardware with kindle software, provided it is still hackable and they haven't made it impossible to adjust font sizes and margins etc.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Look up "wear leveling" for flash memory. This is done at a very low level. The memory device has no knowledge of its partitioning and after a few writes, the mapping of logical sector number to actual device location becomes spaghetti. That is why "defragmenting" a flash memory device is a bad idea.

Hm. I know about wear leveling, putting parts of files wherever it wants to. Does it go so far that it internally even splinters partitions and scatters them on the entire drive, while still presenting a continuous partition to the operating system?

If so, that's very cool, and something I didn't know. I stand corrected.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

The Voyage appears to be a hit - the lenght of this thread clearly shows that. If Amazon can deliver on the experience reading on it, then I don't even think the price is too high for what is offered. All this complaining about price here only makes it clear (to me at least) that the Voyage is desirable if only it was cheaper.

It's not "complaining" to say an eReader is not in your price range. It's just a statement of fact. I can't justify paying $200 for an eReader, nor do I want to. And yes, the buttons (for me) make it more desirable than the Paperwhites or the Touch. But I would have to see how well I liked the "flat face" and front light before I bought one -- even if I was willing to justify spending $200 for an eReader. I haven't had much luck with front lights, so this one needs to be clearer than what I've seen in the past. Maybe the automatic "dim control" (whatever it's called) would make this better for me because, in the past, I found myself constantly worrying over and trying to adjust the light's brightness.

At the very least, I think the release of the Voyage and the response to it should dampen the "eReaders have been superseded" sentiment.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by rcentros

It's not "complaining" to say an eReader is not in your price range. It's just a statement of fact. I can't justify paying $200 for an eReader, nor do I want to. And yes, the buttons (for me) make it more desirable than the Paperwhites or the Touch.

So in short you would have wanted the buttons. Somebody else may have wanted the higher resolution. Putting everything into a new Paperwhite and still expect the same price won't happen. So Amazon put everything in one new device. From there they don't have to figure out what else to add to the Voyage, but which single feature to add to either PW or KBT.

I'd still say it is complaining - since now you have to buy all those extra features of the highest price Kindle just to get the buttons. And it pushes you over your limit. Not everybody will be happy: it is either too much raising the price or not enough.

At the very least, I think the release of the Voyage and the response to it should dampen the "eReaders have been supseded" sentiment.

Yes it is unexpected since everybody was only waiting for a PW refresh.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Well technically all the specs were leaked back in Nov. of last year so there is some expectation that we should have known what was coming.

[ApK]

Boy, how cool would these fancy buttons be on a water proof reader like the H2O. <sigh>.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

The Voyage appears to be a hit - the lenght of this thread clearly shows that.

Discussions of Voyage are a hit. People certainly like to praise/complain/learn about gadgets.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by ApK

I apologize if this was mentioned above, but I find it fascinating that the side page turn buttons (or sensors, apparently in this case) have migrated from only being on the cheapest low-end device, to only being on the most expensive high-end device.
Perhaps Amazon has finally been swayed by those of us who don't like the touch screen for page turns!

It might be the case that they have saved money by removing them from the cheaper model as its less moving parts, but for now the sensors are expensive and/or unique enough to be used as a selling point on the most expensive model and will eventually return on others in the future.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by kaufman

I think you are missing my point. Its not that $400 is the correct price point for an eReader now. Its that saying that to say that no one would ever pay $200 for an eReader is not correct. While some people are complaining about the $200 price point, I bet a lot of people buying it are thinking to themselves how much better it is than the device they paid $400 for not to long ago. I know that's what I thought when I ordered mine.

I'm thinking more in terms of just how much I use my Kindle do even if I only had this new one a year, it still only works out at a few quid a week which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

As far as the pricing, one thing that this one will have in common with all previous models is that they will have a pretty good idea of just how many of them they will be able to sell and will have priced them accordingly.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The Voyage seems like an odd device to me. I don't see the extra functionality between it and the PW2 to justify the extra cost. Maybe it's a status thing, like with Apple and Android.

Just because the extra functionality does not seem to merit the price difference to you does not mean that anyone opting for one is doing so for any kind of status reason, they might simply value the improvements between the two models more than you do.

[duydangle]

I will consider buying the new kindle or kindle voyage after confirming this:
- New Kindle has carta screen. the US says that it has pearl while other sites says it has carta. Carta is much more superior, while you don't have to turn page refresh to have crisp text. It does not have light so It doesn't have an extra layer like paperwhite. I will also watch review and real photos to confirm it has "black" text or gray.
- Kindle Voyage darkness of text: again black or gray, and is the text looks like behind the screen like pw2, not on the screen like pw1.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by duydangle

- New Kindle has carta screen. the US says that it has pearl while other sites says it has carta.

I believe that's the Basic Kindle, not the Voyage.