



The side buttons on both sides of the device have changed, too, and this is one update we're not that keen on. They feel a bit 'mushier' now, and if you're not looking (as we're often not when reading), it's easy to miss the keys. While the bottom forward arrowed buttons have been enlarged, the back arrows are now smaller -- a feature we agree with, but, as we said, overall, we're not a fan of how easily you can miss the buttons completely when trying to press them. Still, this is definitely the sleekest Kindle yet, and we seriously love the look graphite gray review unit we were provided with.



Other key changes Amazon's made to the Kindle include the doublling of storage up to 4GB from 2GB, and the company also claims to have doubled the battery life from two weeks to four (that's with the wireless off, of course). With the new capacity you can squeeze around 3,500 books onto one of these now, and while we did not test Amazon's battery life claim (because we haven't had it nearly long enough), trust us when we say the battery should rarely be an issue with one of these.





Performance and reading experience





What can we say? It reads just like a Kindle. Yes, the page refresh is slightly faster, but it's barely perceptible in comparison with the Kindle 2, and it's still a very E Ink experience... probably because of the E Ink screen. What is noticeably awesomer is the contrast ratio... this thing is incredibly sharp, and we suspect that it boasts the same quality E Ink screen that the newest DX packs, as that one also impressed us. Honestly, we still find E Ink to be rather frustrating to deal with at times -- mostly because of the refresh rate -- though this is the best Kindle reading experience yet.



There are a few other notable new features -- mostly that new, experimental Webkit browser. In our experience with it, it's called experimental for a reason, and we can't really imaging using it on a regular basis, but we do get a kick out of seeing the internet in glorious grayscale. The 3G browsing experience is (as expected) somewhat noticeably slower than the WiFi one, and while it's obviously in its infancy, we suspect Amazon will continue to improve the browser, and it far exceeds the previous one in terms of quality. Other additions include native support for PDF files, which some people will certainly be very happy about, though there is no support for the EPUB format.





Wrap up



