Kindle DX : More than the 6″ Kindle’s Big Brother

I was one of the first people to buy the original Kindle. I was also among the first to buy the 2nd generation Kindle. And yes, I am among the first to buy the Kindle DX. Obviously, I really love the product!

The Kindle DX is the most expensive in the Kindle family. It is also much larger than the original. The screen size of the DX is the same size as the entire small Kindle and its leather case. That’s the reason it is worth the substantial price tag.

Consider. How would you like to read the “Wall Street Journal” in a paperback book format? I tried by subscribing on the original Kindle. It wasn’t a satisfying experience. Yes, I got to read the Journal, which I love, but what a pain moving from article to article or trying to get the sense of reading a newspaper. The “New York Times” was worse. A newspaper is created to be read in a multi-column format.

The Kindle DX has a feature that makes reading a newspaper feel like…reading a newspaper. If you turn the DX on its side, the display goes from a portrait view to landscape. You can see multiple columns in a newsapaper! You can see (albeit in black-and-white) the picture on the front page.

If you use your Kindle for book reading, you can enlarge the type and not have to click the “next” button every few seconds. If you are a student, the Kindle DX page is the same size as most text books. You can read and study with ease. You can also highlight important sections.

On the minus side, the Kindle DX costs a lot and is larger and heavier than the original. Personally, I don’t mind the extra size and weight. It is still wafer thin and lighter than most hard cover books. If you care, it has increased memory so you can keep up to 3,500 books available. I think I woudl be bankrupt long before I could fill up that much memory. If you use the DX for school or work, the ability to search the entire collection of books and documents in the DX is amazing.

There is one other feature of the Kindle DX that could turn out to be super-helpful: the ability to import and read PDF files. For example, the service manual of my car is several thousand pages long. I have it in PDF form. I can upload it to my Kindle DX (the DX is the only Kindle that can read PDF files) and search for the information I want about my car. That’s cool.

If you are considering your first Kindle and can afford the extra cost, the DX is absolutely the best electronic book reader ever made. For a couple of hundred less, you can get the 2nd generation Kindle which does a great job with books. If you plan to use your Kindle for text books, journals, magazines, or newspapers; the Kindle DX will make you much happier.

After more than two years of Kindle DX ownership, I give this wonderful family of devices five stars!

By Bob Walter