Re-Evaluating the Kindle Voyage

3-minute read
Kindle • Gadget • Reading

I’d like to share my thoughts on the Kindle Voyage as someone who barely read until he got his first Kindle a few years ago. The Kindle somehow changed my relationship to the written word. I still don’t read very many books each year, but that’s only because I’m a rather slow reader. Nonetheless, the number of books and the topics that interest me have been growing ever since.

When we first got the Voyage we already had the Paperwhite for like a year or so. I immediately dismissed the new reader because of the overall design, the feel, and the strange origami case. It didn’t speak to me and so I went back to the Paperwhite.

As I said, I was never much into reading. So I was surprised that the first Kindle made me enjoy a good book and that it kept me engaged. Reading became a routine for me (I actually have a repeating OmniFocus task that I can check off every day) and that’s a great thing. I’m a fairly organized and routine-oriented guy, so this is exactly what I needed.

The aforementioned points that turned me off in the first place made me worry that I might lose interest in reading as I might have not liked the device as much and that was no-go for me. I had no interest in losing this new habit of mine.

Though, a few months later my own curiosity convinced me to give it another try. And so I did. A few of my initial fears got confirmed, a few new ones appeared and some things were actually pretty great. I’d like to just give you the raw list of my thoughts:

Pros

  • The higher resolution looks pretty great.
  • The device is overall a bit faster. Which is nice.
  • The hardware buttons on the bezel are a great idea (but poorly executed, see cons.)
  • The ability to prop up the reader by folding the covering lid on the back is actually quite nice when reading at a desk.

Cons

  • Tapping the lower left corner to bring up small info section barely works. I’d say 1 out of 10 times.
  • When the Kindle goes to sleep while the cover is still open, you have to lift the magnetic cover from the back to reveal the power button to bring it back.
  • The buttons are basically just painted onto the bezel and you can’t distinguish them from the rest. You can’t feel them at all. Therefore, tapping them correctly in the dark isn’t easy.
  • The buttons on the bezel are too sensitive: When lifting the device I often accidentally trigger the page turn on the bezel.
  • The entire front is a flat surface. You can’t distinguish between screen and bezel. Therefore, I often accidentally trigger the page turn on the screen itself.
  • The screen’s reflections are pretty annoying.

If I had to make a rational judgment and if every single one of the aforementioned pros and cons had the same weight the cons would win and I’d have to go back to Paperwhite. Though I’m not convinced yet. I’m only halfway through my current book and so I want to at least finish it. Maybe I’ll just use both of those devices in parallel. We’ll see.