Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi, you know I Love my Kindle and how I've reviewed the third generation one and I did a tear down as well I'm super excited that there's a new Kindle in town. It's just turned up, just landed on my doorstep. It's the new fourth generation Kindle In fact, there's quite a few Uh models in the new range of Kindle Uh, there is the new one.

This is the $79 one bottom of the range. super low cost strip down version. we're going to review and do a tear down of uh. there's also the Touch version as well at uh $99 and that's with Wi-Fi And there's another Uh Touch version with 3G as well.

and that's $150 uh with touch screen as well. And there's the new Kindle Fire which Well, that's a whole different category that's a tablet. but we're going to check out the new $79 one. Let's go.

and here's the box which it ships in very uh, similar. I Think it's a bit smaller than the original one. It's got a uh wedge shaped here where it's pretty obvious that you get the uh ripoff tab here because it's got the Frustration Free certified Frustration Free packaging Beauty I Love it and it's a recycled material as well I believe and let's crack it open see what's in here? A can't wait. Is it really frustration free? You just grab the tab there.

Zip it off. Oh, here we go. Tada And there it is. There's my new Kindle I Love it.

And no, it's not switched on because it's got the E in display it, uh, permanently. Um, it just retains the image without drawing any power. Let's check out what we get in this little uh pocket. here.

We've obviously got a uh, what is this? That's the uh user guide, license terms and agreements and terms and conditions. Give me a break. God Here we go. It's got a little uh, quick start.

guide by the looks. get into to know your Kindle charge in your Kindle Oh, is that it different languages? There you go. It's actually literally that It's not hard at all. It ain't rocket science folks.

and we have the Kindle itself. What's under here? we have. Yep, there it is. Ooh, that's nice, but we'll take a look at that.

and uh, we have our micro USB cable. excellent and that's all you get. but uh I Love the packaging. The packaging is really, uh, you know it.

It is really state-ofthe-art They put a lot of effort into this and there are actually a lot of people actually copying the packaging of this because a lot of the time there's a lot of uh, wastage. In terms of you know it, it has a nice pretty uh pack that it's uh displayed in. Then it's got to be shipped inside another pack with bubble wrap or or or with foam peanuts or something like that. But in this case the the actual protection is built in and it ships and cuers just in this re.

it looks like recycled uh, cardboard I it's just brilliant I Love it. Unfortunately, the packaging is of course made in China and here it is compared to uh, the third generation. uh Kindle As you can see, it's a fair bit smaller. it's actually uh, not as wide either and uh, thickness wise, we're talking uh, it's probably a little bit thinner I'd have to get my calipers out there and check, but the uh, the look is much nicer, much sexier I really like it.

they've uh, ditched the quiry keyboard of course which will go into instead of the dark charcoal graphite which I I still like and I used to like I think this uh silver color is H much nicer and it's got the protective film on of of course let's take the protective film off and there we go and it's just a beautiful display. The uh eink display is just as good as the other one. um, you would in fact I think it might even supposed to be better. um, but it is really quite a nice design I like it the nice silver uh backing on it and if we take a look at the back here, you'll see yeah assembled in China of course.

um, it's got all the uh FCC markings and uh, everything else and it's curiously got uh, two terminals here which obviously are are either for um, uh, charging as well or for their um, they're probably for a um, another external uh light cuz there's one thing you'll notice that there's uh, it's not the new Kindle is not compatible. Fourth generation is not compatible with the old uh, third generation uh lighted case. It doesn't have those two two uh slots on the side which you um, saw in the previous ones there. They are the two little uh two slots there which hook into the lighted Um case and it also has a Serial port in there which we found out so the new one doesn't have any of that at all.

All it's just got these two terminals here, so um, sadly, it doesn't look like uh, there is an accessible externally accessible serial port like there is like all the hackers loved on the third generation. Kindle what a bummer. And if you compare the Uh side switches here between the two units, they are um, quite understated. On the new fourth generation Kindle they're are angled sharper.

these ones are have much bigger purchase for your thumb on there and they're really uh, obvious. whereas they're they're less obvious on the new generation Kindle more angled I Have to tell you if there any good just through uh, use of them but I I think just from a feel point of view I probably prefer the Uh third generation Kindle there. but anyway, um, that does remain to be seen and of course on the bottom because this is only a $79 unit bottom of the range. It's got no audio capability so it drops the uh headphone uh output.

Presumably there be no uh microphone um in there as well. although that little hole there could be a microphone. we'll have to check it in the tear down and uh in the specs as well. but it's got this same uh micro uh USB connector which is excellent cuz micro USB is very high reliability High number of insertions Um, they've done away with the Um with the flicking uh one here.

with the LED that we had on the third generation, they've replaced it with just a single button and let's press it and give it a go. All right there we go. It's got night that's not a microphone, it's an LED There you go Tada it's booting up so I'm not sure uh what happened there I have to play with the onoff switch a bit more. uh but maybe this is only a first time thing once it boots up.

Uh, we'll just let this go and see how long it takes here we go that took about a minute. There you go and uh I'm not sure if the original one popped up with this, but uh English uh United Kingdom or United States Well I'm going to go the UK cuz I don't want bloody us English Screw that, let's go United Kingdom English use English United Kingdom as your device language. Well, that's what I clicked on gez do I have to confirm it. Okay, thank you very much and it's going through more boot up process.

Twiddle the thumbs, it's boo in there you go. Welcome welcome to the Kindle Kindle and uh, it asks you to connect to the Wi-Fi directly so we'll go through the process and uh, we'll set it up. Well, it's found my Wi-Fi straight up I'm only getting one bar out here in the lab cuz I've got my transmitter power down on my Wi-Fi so that's fairly typical and we'll see if it connects. And one of the first challenges you face is that because it has no querty uh keypad it tells you you have to hit the keypad button down here to call up the onscreen keypad.

There it is there and you've got to scroll around with the cursor key. That's one of the uh disadvantages of uh, having a smaller unit um, with no room for a quiry keypad although I Guess technically you could have squeezed one in there, but that would have been quite an engineering effort and it probably would have been uh, too small for most people's liking. But we'll give it a go and here we go. it's connecting now.

One thing I noticed that it didn't do is it didn't uh, encrypt your um or it didn't hide your password as you typed it in. So the whole password was uh, you know physically there on the screen I don't like that I like uh, when they actually, uh, hide it I'm sure the uh, the previous uh generation Kindle did that, but uh, it's trying to connect to my network. It might be that we've only got one bar there, but um, oh, are we in? Yep, there we go. we're in.

We're connected. No problems at all by the looks of it now. uh. One complaint I already have is that um I'll show you later.

but on the Uh quiry keypad I Found that this cursor key here they the cursor pad um is exactly the same as the third generation Kindle and you can understand why they've reused it. Okay, but because you've dropped the keypad here and you're using this all the time to enter stuff in on the onscreen quiry keypad, it should have been bigger in my opinion and my uh, thumb and fingers aren't um, terribly big and I sort of have trouble getting that purchase on the tiny little um cursor Keys around the outside of there and in the center um as well I feel as though I'm going to press the wrong key now. It was okay on here cuz you didn't use it a huge amount because you had the querty keypad but now you're going to use it more. It's found a little bit annoying I Thought they could have redesigned that potentially and made it a bit bigger, but I still like the uh concept of it.

It still works uh, quite well. Now one of the things I'm sure that the previous Kindle did uh when I opened the box, it said welcome David because it already knew that I bought it and they had pre-registered the Kindle for me, but this one hasn't been pre pre-registered at all. We've got to go through the registration step. Um, so I don't know if the uh, more up Market touch models will be uh, pre-registered and the tablet will be pre-registered for you, but this one certainly isn't a little bit annoying.

Uh, considering that that was a really nice thing, it just worked out of the box last time. and uh, here's the query keypad. I Don't mind it at all. It's uh, quite.

Uh, you know it's um, not laid out in the querty uh fashion. Sorry, it's laid out in the, you know, alphabetical order type fashion. but I I I like it. It's big, It's uh, it's fairly easy to navigate and it's typical of these things which don't have a quiry uh keypad and I find it works quite well.

And of course, to cycle through these uh tabs here, you naturally just press the uh side buttons up here and they let you cycle through uppercase, lower case and various uh, um, other asy characters as well. But I've got to admit, it did take me an annoying amount of time to type in David at alternate Zone.com and because it knows you're asking for an email address here, it would have been nice if it could have actually do com so you could just put in do bang like that. but now you've got to put in Dot And then you got to type in com and well, you know it did take some time. So that's a limitation of the uh, lack of the querty keypad.

um, but that's to be expected on a smaller lighter and for 79 bucks? Well, you know, if you're annoyed with that using um, you don't have have to uh, enter this sort of stuff on here. you can do it on the Um on the on your main computer on the Amazon website as well. And here we go. We are connected now.

I Noticed that it did hide the password on that one so it's only the Uh first screen it didn't bother to hide the password on and the setup of our Kindle is finished. Let's go to Uh shopping in the Kindle Store Shall we? Tada Here we go, let's see how fast it is now. remember this has only got one wifi bar up here. Bang! We're straight in, nice and quick.

I like it and uh out of the box the um the battery the looks like the display up the top. David's third Kindle there you go. It knows it automatically knows that I've got I own three Kindles and it's called this one David's third Kindle I can go in and change that uh name if I want, but that's what it's given it by default I like it. uh and um.

same display as before. We got the Wi-Fi symbol, the Um Wi-Fi signal strength meter, and the battery gauge which it ships. you know, um, sort of. you know for this, uh, full so it's rather nice.

It works quick and it's working on one bar. Wi-Fi So so far so good. Well now that's interesting. Uh I've powered up my other uh, one of my Wi-Fi Kindles here the third generation and it can't even detect my uh Network whereas the new fourth generation Kindle I'm OB I'm still getting one bar as you saw I logged in and it connects and it servs no problem.

So it looks like the Wi-Fi antenna is or the Wi-Fi antenna SL circuitry is more um has greater sensitivity in the new fourth generation I like it. Okay, I've turned my uh Wi-Fi router up to 100% from 25% and uh, I'm now getting two bars on the third Uh generation Kindle and still only one bar on the fourth, so go figure. Anyway, they're still both working there. Still a bit of a speed test now.

where I've gone into the Kindle store or books and uh, let's say we want to search the uh nonfiction section. Let's go I'll press it at the same time. Go here, we go. Come on.

Oh no. Third Gen No, no it. It flickered the screen but uh, there we go. bang.

the new one is in there first. Go figure. Bit of a speed Improvement there? Okay, let's press the back button on both and see what happens. Bang and yep, very similar.

Let's uh, try that one more time just to make sure it's uh, you know it's not a fury and bang straight in there CED it? uh, obviously. but the uh, the new generation Kindle was quicker than that. As you saw there you go bang. It's well, maybe there's a bit in my key press there I'm not sure, but uh h, no, let's let's let's call that one even for C pages.

and if we take a look at the interface here, you'll see it is very simplistic. It's got the minimal you need to uh, match the capability of the existing Kindle but in much fewer. Keys There's uh, the cursor keys of here Of course with the enter SL select button in the middle. We've got a back key here, so if you make a mistake or you just want to go backwards, you hit that uh.

there's the Uh keypad key here which calls up the Uh over keypad overlay which basically replaces all of the uh querty keypad on the previous uh Kindle There's a home button here which takes you back home to this screen as you'd expect to get back from anywhere. And there's a settings menu button as well and that duplicates the uh entire capability of the existing third generation Kindle with the quiry keypad and after after you boot it up, uh, you get the welcome David thing. We can go in there and talk about that. It talks about the Kindle I assume dear David There we go.

yada, yada, yada, all that sort of stuff sincerely yours Jeff Benz off good on you Jeff What a champion. All right now. let's go back in here and we can transfer all of our Kindle content over to this Kindle So all of the books and stuff we bought we can transfer them over nice. And there's the New Oxford American Dictionary ox sorry, yeah, the New Oxford American dictionary and the Oxford dictionary of English just in case you don't like the American version.

And there's a Kindle users guide and there's archived items as well I Don't know why they need to be archived, but uh, there you go now. if you take a look at them both side by side, you will not sure if this will turn up on camera, but the third generation Kle certainly has a wher uh' background than the new fourth generation one. It's slightly a duller color if that sort of uh makes sense. The I I'm not sure which one I prefer I'd have to get uh used to it.

Certainly the contrast is H still there, but the displays are actually different. The older one is definitely wider now. Um, of course the menu. uh system.

If you pop up the menus here inside the book, uh, we've got it's it's exactly the uh, same Wireless on oh, the time's not right. We haven't set that on the new one. uh, shop. But of course it's um, the new one has changed font size because the old Kindle had that dedicated font key down here.

which uh, it doesn't have on the new uh keypad on the new one. So you've got font sizes in the main menu. But apart from that, um, it looks to be uh, exactly the same searches book. Add bookmarks, notes or highlights.

Um, well, add a bookmark it doesn't have, add a note or highlight. it's got add notes and view notes and marks. so it doesn't have the capability to add notes or highlights in this one. But apart from that, functionality is the same and the display capability is exactly the same.

The font sizes haven't changed any of that. The tip: Face line Spacey words per line. Uh, there's no text to speech on the new one of course, cuz it doesn't have any audio capabilities. That's how they get the Uh price down and the Uh weight as well and the size.

so that's about the only difference. But apart from that, they do have identical interfaces. the uh, third generation here goes all black. It doesn't go nearly as black on the, in fact, it doesn't um, so the updating is uh, smoother I don't know if it's any quicker I I don't think so, but it's just nicer cuz it doesn't go all black like that I that's a nice Improvement I Like it.

One thing to notice about these uh Power pads on the back is that they are actually, uh, recessed down in there. and that's important because you don't want to short those out if you throw it in your bag or something like that. and because they're recessed I think you you'd really have a hard time uh, shorting those out with anything I Guess you'd have to get um, you know, some steel wool or something in your bag or you'd have to have something really, quite uh, weird to actually, uh, short out both of those. But technically it's possible.

And let's measure those pads on the back and see what we get. The Kindles are turned off at the moment, so let's check it out. In the off mode, of course, we get: uh ZIP there's nothing there at all Let's uh, switch it on and our little LED is on down there I can see and there you go 3.9 Vols Um, it'll be interesting to see if we can actually take any current from that at all. Okay, I've got it switched on here and uh, I've got my meter connected to uh in current mode 10 a range Let's uh, do something nasty and short out these terminals here and uh and see what we get.

Shall we? Let's go. Yep, no limits itself to 58 milliamps. by the looks of it. let's uh, change that over to milliamp mode and there you go.

It looks like it's current limited to 58 milliamps and doing that. uh, didn't actually uh, switch off the Kindle at all. so they've actually designed that properly as you'd expect. All right, power up, boot time.

Let's see if we can do it. It's a bit hard cuz this one's got the springy uh power switch which I probably prefer I Got to really like that springy power switch. but let's give it a go and here we go: W Pretty similar I'm not going to call that one let's uh, well, let's call it even shall we? And every time you uh, switch this off, it uh, gives you a new uh display just like the other one. new screen saver image.

uh, just like the other one I Don't know how many um, but the other one came up with authors. This new one has uh, looks like early uh writing instruments and uh implements and things like that and what more can I tell you? it works exactly the same as the previous uh generation. Kindle so you know it's exactly the same the the Uh dictionaries in there and all that. All the stuff works identically and the Highlight feature is exactly the same between units.

That's one of the things I love about the Kindle the Highlight feature. It all works exactly the same. So if you've used the Kindle 3, well, you're going to be used to the Kindle 4. But of course, the big thing is the size and the weight of this thing.

It is much smaller and much lighter than the previous generation. Kindle 168 G There you go compared to 220. G for the just the Wi-Fi only version and the Wi-Fi with 3G version 232 G that's over 30% lighter and that's valuable. It's one of.

it's probably the major reason. It's probably the only reason why you'd buy this thing because it is a stripped down version. It's smaller, it's lighter, but it works exactly the same. It's a bit more inconvenient, but hey, I like it actually.

I Bas that uh, 30% uh figure from the Amazon website cuz that's what they claim. They claim this is 30% lighter than the uh previous generation Kindle Well, you actually measure it. it's not. It's only uh 20, 3.6% lighter.

So I claim somebody in the marketing department has rounded that number up because well, you can't just claim all 23.6% doesn't sound nearly as good as 30% Well, the contrast of the screen I don't know what can you say. The new: I maybe slightly prefer the third generation Kindle here. it's just uh, whiter. the contrast I think's very similar, but I don't know.

it's hard to tell what's Take it outside and see what it's like in sunlight. Well here I am outside and well I don't know there's it's still uh whiter again here, but there's there's not much difference. They're both extremely readable I just probably personal preference. prefer the uh, previous third generation one, but there's not much in it.

And here's the display under my extremely dim uh LED uh reading light cuz I I don't like really bright light when I'm reading it lot at night and uh, really, it's probably going to be hard to pick up on camera there, but um, you know there's not much in it. Glare is practically identical. uh between the two units, so glare is exactly the same. um I don't know I Once again I can't call it now.

There's one thing I do notice is the black um border around the actual display here. the uh, bezel. There's sort of a black uh bezel in there as opposed to just, uh, really nothing on the uh previous generation Kindle I'm um I I don't know. It certainly looks, uh, smarter.

It looks sexier. um, but yeah. I I don't know, it's well, this thing. okay, this is.

this is better to hold and better to look at I think if you're just reading a book, this thing looks like it's some Gadget with its big keypad, but this actually looks more like sort of a paperback book. Really, you know it doesn't actually look like a book, but as a replacement for a book, an ebook. I I Think it, it is much better. and I've got to tell you the smaller size and the lower weight is very welcome if I'm reading I'm going to if I got the same book on both these devices.

I'm going to pick up this one every time. it's just. uh, it just really is nicer. And one of the problems though with being so small is that uh, you know your sort of your fingers sort of get in the way.

if you're holding it like that, you know it's uh, whereas there was more space before down here on the previous generation, you could just hold it like that. You could even have your thumb up at 45 and it's still not covering the display like that. but the new one, it's sort of. it's it's just different.

It's harder to hold. but I guess you would get used to that now. One thing I do like is that they have bugged off the Amazon name from the front of the unit plasted all over Amazon Kindle it's just Kindle now I find that's much nicer and much less offensive quite frankly. and after using it for uh, a little while about the side buttons, it's all about the side buttons.

uh, the page forward and page back I I Don't know. they're a little bit more uh, finicky than the uh existing. Kindle Just cuz there's just a smaller, uh, operational range of angles and things it works over I think so and it just feels different I guess it takes getting some used to I think I prefer the previous one though, but give me a month or so of using it and I probably won't even notice the difference. Hopefully you can really see the differences uh there in the two units.

the new ones on the bottom, the old ones on the top, and the old one has, uh, you know, much, um, sort of. You know, much more purchase on the top, much more uh, surface area on the top, less angled. The new ones are much, much more angular and they've got a sharp uh, turn on them in there. but uh, yeah? I I don't know they're they're just slightly different.

The actual position of them is uh Chang compared to the screen. So there you go. there's a bit of a difference. um, but I find there's there's not much in it.

you would just get used to it really. but I've got to say, they've probably got. the location of the new ones are right compared to the bottom. Here, they sit uh, lower.

but compared to the screen, it's actually higher up. but I find that uh, my hand when I'm actually using it I can get better access with my thumb to the page back button compared to the previous Kindle and as per the previous version, I held down the button uh for uh, 10 seconds and it completely, uh, switched the thing off. so let's uh, switch it back on. the LED is there and bingo it's back.

So what happens if we charge this thing? let's give it a go. Plug it in. Yep. LED lights up Amber Presumably it'll light up green when it's uh, finished charging and well, there's nothing there.

but if we, uh, press the menu Bingo charging. no problems. and if we physically give it the uh twist test there I think it's actually more rigid than the previous Kindle which uh, which did have a bit of uh, bit of flex and play in it. look, you can actually see it, see it flexing there and uh, the new one.

it's uh, much more rigid I like it feels pretty solid. Uh, good quality Plastics and uh, the construction seems excellent I Like it. Build build quality is first class. So so how does the new generation E in display compared to the old one at low temperatures? I'm glad you asked.

Let's toss it in the freezer and find out. Beauty We'll uh come back later, shall we and see what's happened? All right, it's been about half an hour. Let's take it out and uh, check it, see what it's like? Oh nice and frozen solid. I Love it.

and uh, there. Still got the still. got the displays on there and let's uh, try and boot them up at the same time. Let's well, let's do them one by one, shall we? Let's do the old Kindle Tada And hello.

Oh there we go. Slowly move. What's going on? Slowly fading. Oh, it doesn't like that at all.

ghosting. It's still what's going on. Oh, it really doesn't like that at all. Oh, critical battery.

No, the batter's died. Batter's died. All right. let's try the new one.

see what it's like? I Think we've got a, uh, slight problem with the battery. uh, frozen solid. There we go. It's uh, yep.

at least this one's at least this one works I may have left it in there a bit long. oops, but uh, yeah. Fe Ghosting on there at low, uh, temperatures as you'd expect. Um, that's pretty darn low.

That's feels pretty Frozen I'll let it thow out see what happens and here we go. The old Kindle actually uh, reset itself. It totally crapped itself out. Um, so let's restart that one now.

but it seems to have recovered. it's got some energy back and it know the battery's still low so the batter's crapped itself. But let's turn on the new one and see what happens. It's slower as you can see it turns on a little bit slower.

uh, the display. That's what we found on the previous Uh generation one at lower temperatures. The update rate is a bit slower, but apart from that, it's survived nicely and you can see that update rate here if we hit home. It's really, it really is a fair bit.

uh, a fair bit slower. but it still works. And if we're in the main screen here and we check out the Uh main menu, we've got the uh experimental uh menu down here as we did on the old uh Kindle and it's got a web browser and that's it. So it's got the web kit I assume it's still the webkit uh, web browser and Amazon Wikipedia And once again, but because it doesn't have 3G, you can only do it if you've got Uh WiFi access.

So let's call Out Wikipedia shall we? And bingo, there's the Wikipedia article. No problems at all and let's go to Eev Blog.com shall we? A most excellent website and there you go. It rendered the page and all the ads and everything just fine. No problems at all.

So there you have it. That's the new fourth generation Kindle over the third generation. Just the other week I was sort of picking up the Kindle and sort of complaining third generation and complaining that jeez, it feels a bit heavy. You know it, it should be lighter.

And sure enough, the new one popped up on the market a week later. and it certainly is. It's smaller, it's lighter, it's funkier, it's sexier. I Like it.

It's probably a better designed uh product in terms of the look and feel and the functionality. And if you're going to travel, you definitely want to take this over the third generation. Kindle No doubt about it. but because it's uh, cheaper and it's a strip down version essentially a stripped down version of the previous.

Kindle The new Touch model? uh, won't be. It'll have all the same capability except of the old Kindle except with touchcreen. Um, this one has uh 2 gig of memory instead of 4 gig. but because it doesn't have any audio capability, no text to speech, no capability to store audio files.

they're the ones that it really chew up the space so memory doesn't really matter and it's got no SD card slot uh at all. which is a real pain in the butt. but because it doesn't have audio, not a big deal on the Touch version with audio. absolutely you're going to need that expansion capability cuz the old one you put audio on here and it chewed it up.

but there's no tomorrow. So anyway I kind of like it. they um it's 79 us bucks but there's two versions is a catch to that price. The marketing are at it again.

it is AD supported. Now this is the international version. This is not the $79 one. I Don't think the international version I didn't have a choice Um, whether or not to have the cheap ad supporter one.

Clearly, the ads don't work in Australia or something the international model go figure. But yeah, if you pay 79 bucks, you apparently get ads not in the I don't think it's in the book so don't quote me on it. but during operation of the device, you're going to get plastered with bloody ads. It's ridiculous.

So I don't know price to be paid for saving a few bucks there I'd probably get the one without the ad. Who cares about the additional cost? Bloody marketing idiots. And because of the smaller weight, it's got less of a battery life. It's 1 month.

Uh, so they claim. Um, it remains to be seen with the Wi-Fi turned off using it like 30 minutes a day or something like that. you know, turning Pages reading books. Um, it supports the same uh file uh formats.

Exactly the same 800x 600 uh screen except it's supposed to be an improved screen. um I don't see it I Probably slightly prefer the other one. as I said, not much in it. Anyway, it's still pretty darn good.

There's no ghosting on on the display. It's excellent I Love it. And it's got the identical pixel per inch. the same size uh screen as a previous Kindle It's got 16 levels of gray scale exactly the same as the old one except it's it's improved.

So my verdict I Love it. It's uh, it's short, it's stripped down and but it's built down to a price. But if you just want to read books and if you're traveling, it's fantastic I Love this thing, even just general reading I'd rather pick up this because it's just smaller, lighter, and it's sexier. Catch you next time.