I tend to judge the popularity of electronic devices on how often I see them in the subway or airport. By that standard, the first couple generations of Kindle were slowly gaining in popularity over the course of several years, but never really went mainstream. When Amazon started slashing the prices, however, the Kindle took off. Now, it's tough to get on a plane or busy subway car without seeing one.

When Amazon introduced its newest set of Kindles a few weeks back, the Fire got most of the attention, since its price and Amazon's backing suggest that it might be the device that takes Android on tablets into the mainstream. But for Amazon, the Kindle that might have the biggest impact is the low-end, black-and-white model. At an ad-supported $79, these things are intended to be impulse buys, something that you might just drop under the tree over the holidays if you run out of ideas. And, once they're in the hands of consumers, Amazon hopes they'll extend its lead in the e-book market, with the DRM lock-in that goes with it, so thoroughly that it will take a nuclear weapon to change things.

This new model also represents a bit of a departure for Amazon, in that it's the first without a keyboard. How does that work out?

In a lot of ways, brilliantly. The device is noticeably more compact than previous iterations. It fills my hand and is a very comfortable weight. I wasn't a fan of the chicklet-style keyboard with its grid-like arrangement of buttons, so I'm not in the least sorry to see it go. Its absence also gives the device a cleaner look, and places the focus where it belongs: on the screen. In the keyboard's absence, Amazon has boosted the size of the rocker button that helps you select on-screen items, which makes it a bit easier to operate.

The rocker switch is flanked by four buttons. Unfortunately, Amazon flubbed the design on these. Three of them are, without careful examination, visually indistinguishable. (Ironically, I can make out the smallest text setting on the screen, but need reading glasses for the buttons.) The centers of the buttons are also slightly raised, which creates a glare problem that makes it even harder to see what each does. With reading glasses, it's possible to determine that these are a rather sensible collection of buttons: back, keyboard, menu, and home. Each does exactly what you'd expect.

The page turn buttons are now symmetrical, with a large forward and small back on each side. It's difficult to hit these accidentally, which was a problem with some earlier Kindles. The downside is that, while the Kindle fits nicely into my hand, it's hard to arrange my fingers so that they can work these buttons one-handed.

A new type

Software-wise, little has changed with the new model. It's still focused on getting you to your reading material and then staying out of your way as you have at it. The eInk screen has gotten noticeably better since the earlier iterations, as the flash that accompanies page turns is shorter and less obtrusive than it used to be. Amazon also deserves credit for working on the software side of the equation. The early versions of the Kindle used to redraw the entire screen for just about everything. Now, the software is very selective about redraws, which makes the whole interface a lot more responsive.

Having a responsive interface is rather important now that the only keyboard is the one that shows up on the screen. And that's a change that's apparent right from the start.

The low-end model works only via WiFi, and requires a B/G router. Since Kindle content is meant to be delivered via the network, the device will ask you to log in to one when you first activate it. Entering a password required a trip to the keyboard, and it took me about a minute to punch in one that wasn't especially long.

You can bring up the keyboard whenever you need to type something in by pushing the keyboard button; the typing will be directed into whatever field you've selected with the rocker button. Or I should say bring up the keyboards—there are separate keyboards for symbols, regular letters, capital letters, and special characters like accents and tildes. You switch among the keyboards using the rocker switch, and the same method is used to navigate among the keys. They're laid out alphabetically, rather than as a qwerty keyboard. That takes a bit of getting used to, but isn't that bad once you make the adjustment.

Some of Amazon's work on being smart with the eInk screen pays off with the keyboard. If you hold a button down, it'll shoot the cursor to the appropriate side of the keyboard, but won't stop to repaint the previous keys back to white, so your selection leaves a darkened trail behind it. Similarly, when searching for a book in the Kindle store, Amazon starts offering completion suggesions as you type. These appear pretty quickly, and can be a big help. It's hard to imagine anything like that having been possible on the first iteration of the hardware.

How does it work? Well, it varies based on what you're trying to do. Typing in the WiFi network's password was a bit slow. Using the experimental browser to log in to Gmail was worse, requiring two minutes and 35 seconds for the username/password combination. Typing in the URL for Ars took about 50 seconds, although the site actually looked pretty good on-screen.

The completion suggestions that appeared in the e-book store were helpful, but if your search starts with a common word (I tried a title that started with "Travels"), you still have to type a fair bit of it out. Even so, it cuts down on the typing. Searching for and purchasing a book ended up taking a couple of minutes as a result. It took me about four and a half minutes to type out "This is a fairly short note, but it seems to be taking forever to type."

Given the choice, I'd manage the Kindle's content from my laptop, and just use the actual hardware to download the results. I would not use this for anything else, even composing a Tweet, except in absolute emergencies (and I'm hard pressed to think of an emergency that requires a tweet). If you're looking to take a lot of notes as you read, you might want to consider heading up-market to one of the more expensive models.

In a lot of ways, the lack of a keyboard makes it the purest e-book reader Amazon has made, and it's pretty good at that. I wouldn't mind a larger screen, but the quality is quite good and the eInk screen is responsive. Plus, now that the screen takes up most of the device's face, it's much closer to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' original vision, one where the device disappears and you just focus on the reading. The battery life remains excellent if you switch the WiFi off. And, at $79, it's much easier to justify as a purchase that doesn't get used every day.

If you already have a portable device that runs the Kindle software, the decision gets a bit harder. Flipping pages and navigating through books is a much smoother experience on (for example) an iOS device, which can make the Kindle seem a bit like a clunky compromise. Plus, a tablet will be able to do many more things well. It won't have the same battery life, but at least it will mean you could have one less device to worry about keeping charged. The clear place where the Kindle wins out is on weight, since it's really comfortable to hold in a single hand.

That makes for a fairly simple decision-making process. If you are good with the eInk screen, then you should consider whether the light weight or long battery life matter to you. If either of them do, at $79, it's probably worth grabbing a Kindle.

Listing image by arstechnica.com