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I am willing to get Kobo Touch or Kindle 4 and I wanted to know the disadvantage of the same. I have checked out the specification of the same and I am aware of most of its advantage but I am not able to find out drawback of these products. I have heard that they don’t have a better battery life and have been going through a no of firmware issue. So I just wanted to know if these things are true, is there anyone who is using the same and can share their experience regarding it??
Member
As far as the negative point of the Kindle 4 is concerned is that it has 3G connectivity and is not reliable for wireless network. The 3G connectivity is making it a poor choice on the other hand its storage has been substantially reduced. People who need to have large libraries will have an issue regarding that as well. Other than this it lacks ability for playing audiobooks so if you have are fond of listening music while reading your ebooks then Kindle 4 is not a good choice in that case. I have found the below things to be the drawbacks of Kindle 4:
Less storage
Hard to input text
Web browser
Member
Just to elaborate the cons of Kindle 4 in detail. I will like to inform you that Typing on Kindle 4 is said to be the worst experience as compared to the other ebook readers that are available these days around the same price. It appears as Kindle 4 has been made just for pure reading as they have provided typing to quite minimum. One has to press 'Keyboard button' on Kindle 4 so as to get the onscreen keyboard and then make use of the 5 way controller for typing. These 5 way controller on Kindle 4 are quite hard because of which it makes the typing and browsing experience worst.
According to its specification you might have found that Kindle 4 supports PDFs but you will come to know about the false advertisement after reading a magazine. I am not saying that it does not supports PDFs but the words that are sown up while reading pdfs are too small and there is hardly an option for increasing the font. If you don’t want to strain your eyes then you will have to convert them to Kindle-Friendly formats like Mobi or AZW for reading the PDFs. If you don’t do so then you will have to 'Zoom' into the PDFs pages and navigate through the page setting to go through the area you want to read. You might get slightly better reading if you change the 'Screen Rotation' to 'Landscape Mode' but that’s really not a satisfying PDF reading experience.
The memory size as already mentioned above it said to be 2 GB but only 1.3 GB is available for user. I personally think that it is enough for the sake of reading ebooks but some people needs to carry GB's worth of eBooks so it won’t be a better choice for them. There are other Kindles providing 3 GB of memory as well so they can check out those.
It does not have Audio support and its text-to-speech feature is not that developed as well. So if you are find of listen to books or MP3 Audiobooks then it won’t be a better choice and you will probably have to use your I-pod or Portable MP3 Player for that purpose.
Member
The cons of the Kobo Touch are as followed:
- Kobo Touch is said to be Less Intuitive when compared to its main Kindle and Nook. Its interface ad touch functions are less intuitive.
- It lacks features as compared to Kindle equivalent, it does not have the ability to play MP3 files and it does not even have text-to-speech function. Once can read PDF files and it does supports library lending formats but it does not give you a better pdf reading experience.
- As far as the Newspapers and Magazines are concerned Kobo Touch is having fewer titles to choose from where as Nook and Kindle on the other hand are having excellent selections of titles in their stores.
- Overall all if you ask me if it is worth buying or not then I will say that it is, as per its price but not as per its features compared to the other ebook readers available by now.
Member
I have checked about the same and have found some more disadvantage of Kindle 4. It does not have shelves like the Touch and you have to enable a plugin for the same. If you don’t do so then you will probably have to wait for its updates. Some people have mentioned that its Dictionaries are not that good rather than English-English, German-German and English- French. On the other hand it takes more steps to open the dictionary and does not have a "word lookup" option instead it has "translate" and "definition" which is a bit disappointing. As it lacks a physical keyboard it is quite difficult to add note on Kindle 4 using the inconvenient screen keyboard. I also wanted to add that you do get a better view when reading pdfs in the landscape mode but I will like to inform you that one cannot use a 5-way-navigator and he is just allowed to use page turning buttons which makes reading pdfs uncomfortable.
Member
If you don’t mind then I will suggest you to better go for Sony PRS-T1, I think that will be a better idea than choosing Kobo Touch or Kindle 4. The Sony PRS-T1 is winning in the below terms as compared to the Kobo Touch:
- Multiple built-in dictionaries
- Integrated Wikipedia and Google search
- Supported web browser with multi-touch controls
- Direct access to public libraries
- Dedicated hardware buttons
- Headphone jack and built-in music player
If you want then you can go through the specification of Sony PRS-T1 to get a better idea of it:
- 2 GB Flash Memory Capacities
- Touch screen
- microSD Card Supported
- 65536 Colors (16-bit) Color Support
- 504 Hour Battery Run Time
- Dictionary
- Wi-Fi
- Built-in MP3 Player
- USB Host Interface
- Package Contents-PRS-T1 Digital Text Reader, Micro USB cable, Stylus Pen, Quick Guide, Reader for PC / Mac Reader
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