The blogosphere is buzzing with user reports that the text is lighter on the Kindle 2 than the Kindle 1. But is there more to the problem than meets the eye?
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
Whenever a next-generation version of a product is launched, inevitably you get comparisons to the previous model–and what the older model did better. Well, in the case of the Kindle 2, the nitpicking is in full swing as several blogs have taken up the debate over whether the Kindle 2’s text is lighter than the original Kindle’s.
On Joe Wikert’s Kindleville blog, one reader lodged the following complaint:
Side-by-side, the K1 text is bolder and jumps out at you. It’s as if the low fidelity, dot-matrix-like typeface of the K1 is better suited for the reading experience than the feathered, crisp, 16-shades of gray of the K2. After 30 minutes of reading on the K2, my eyes get tired and I actually experience mild dizziness, headaches. Never experienced that with the K1.
In the Mobileread forums, a reader posted that he had decided to return the Kindle 2 after he noticed “low contrast on text as compared to kindle 1…text on kindle 1 is really good it is dark and somewhat thicker than kindle 2 at the same font size, menu is normal on kindle 2.” He said he spoke to a Kindle representative (we assume a customer service person), who said he’d heard complaints from other Kindle 2 users as well.
On Amazon, there’s a thread titled, “Amazon: Please make the text darker on Kindle 2!”
The thread’s starter, BMK, is calling for an e-mail campaign to encourage Amazon to update the firmware on the Kindle 2 to fix the alleged problem.
“Kindle 2 is capable of producing darker text than the default setting, which is light, thin, and difficult to read for many people. Customer Service has reportedly told at least one person that the standard text could have been a darker shade of gray/black than the one that was chosen.”
So, what’s the deal? Are people imagining things or is there really an issue?
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