mdilthey

Not sure if you guys already saw this, but Amazon dropped the price of the baseline Kindle, so it's pretty cheap. I like having a Kindle on tour, it lets me read every night in camp, or when rain keeps me tent-bound, and doesn't weigh hardly anything.

If you're touring without a library of some sort, you're just uncivilized.

RidingMatthew

i hear you! my luxury item on my tour was my wife's kindle touch. i enjoyed having it for reading last year. I think it will come with me this year.

pdlamb

I don't regret buying a tablet and installing the Kindle app on it, but I have to admit (with a long, rainy, ice storm day off coming), my wife's Kindle is better for simply reading. Tablet battery lasts less than a day, while the Kindle keeps going and going ...

3speed

Can you put maps on a Kindle? Do they allow you to check email or anything like that?

Grillparzer

It's Internet and PDF reading capabilities are limited. Maps would work much better on a tablet than a Kindle and the same for email. You could probably do it, but readability and loading speeds would be an issue. As a book reader it is excellent, but not much good for anything else. Amazon does sell the Fire, it's tablet, so that might be a compromise to consider.

mdilthey

I did browse the web on my Kindle once in an emergency, and found my way to the nearest bike shop. Took me like 15 minutes, though. That was on an older model kindle, no experience with the new ones (though, i'm tempted to pick one up...

lopek77

Kindle is a hub for buying stuff from them. That's why they push it for so little. I almost bought one for my son, but after checking it out at the store, and reading all the reviews - I decided to buy Nexus instead.

dh024

I'm not sure I agree. I have both a Kindle and a Samsung tablet. The Kindle is WAY easier to read from, and the tablet is far better for Web browsing, so I buy nearly all my purchases on Amazon with the tablet. I rarely browse any Amazon products with the Kindle. Maybe you chose wrong?

lopek77

Wow lol So you are an example of exemption from the rule So you saying Kindle is excellent for reading, and it should be like that. If you were forced to use only one, which one you would choose?

veganbikes

I love the Kindle mainly because I got one for my father for the holiday seasons and he reciprocated with money for bike parts which went into my new Cambium saddle and some tires and tubes.

I have considered picking one up but for touring I think the functionality of my tablet is more useful to me than a little better reading quality because most likely I would still carry a paperback on tour as I do on solo or longer adventures. I am not a fast reader and don't devote a ton of time to reading at night while on tour so it is not as important.

dh024

If I were forced to choose only one for reading, Kindle, hands down.

But if you want to be lured into buying lots of stuff on Amazon.com quickly and easily, DON'T get the Kindle -- get the tablet.

:-P

onbike 1939

+1

My Kindle has Wifi and 3G which means that in a field in France I can download my daily newspaper......or any novel I choose.

staehpj1

The Fire is a poor eReader IMO and the basic Kindle is a poor tablet.

Back a few years the media kept saying that we would soon have color displays that had the advantages of eInk. I have been hoping for that ever since. The market seems to want fast displays that can play movies and do other more tablet like stuff. Or at least the manufacturers think that is what the market wants. That display speed comes at the expense of battery consumption. eInk displays use significant power only when drawing the screen, so essentially power is used only for page turns.

A battery stingy color eInk would be awesome for reading books with charts or illustrations. It would also be great for maps. The biggest problem I have had when using maps on my kindle was that the maps tended to be very hard to read on a monochrome display. Granted the lack of good zooming features would still be limiting, but an eInk color kindle would be pretty sweet for reading and maps IMO. Sadly it doesn't look like that technology is coming.

staehpj1

I am a fairly voracious reader at home, but have not found that I read very much on tour. I guess sometimes the point of touring is to be a bit less civilized.

Some tours I read a little and some not at all. I think that in 73 days on the TA I read only two books and I read none at all on the ST or the Pacific Coast. I experimented with audio books on a couple other tours and found that worked pretty well for me.

tmac100

And here I have been told that the customer is always right

Obviously YMD(oes)V

fuzz2050

A kindle is for reading books, and it's great for that. Anything else, web browsing, email, maps, you might be better off with a tablet. A Kindle is a direct replacement for a book, and anything else you try to do with it will be a cludge. This is in no way meant to be dissparaging towards the kindle though, it's great if you want a book replacement. I've had one for about two years and read close to 150 books on it, and it's perfect for that. Much better than trying to read on a backlit LCD screen.

RidingMatthew

My wife asked for a kindle touch a few years back from her parents. they gave her one. Then two months later she won one of the first versions of the kindle fire. I basically use the touch now.

I have read an hour or so for almost a month on the touch before recharging the battery. I brought it with me to read the book I was reading on tour. It is lighter than some paperbacks and easier to hold in my hammock while on tour. I dont need to surf browse internet while touring. it is a way to disconnect.

corwin1968

I carefully considered the pros and cons of a Kindle versus a Tablet and went with a Kindle and it turned out to be the right choice. I also splurged and bought a $50 leather case with a built-in light that runs off the Kindle's battery. Of course, 30 days later Amazon announced that new Kindles would have a built-in lighted screen! Also within 30 days, my wife won a Samsung tablet at work and was then issued an I-Pad so we now have my kindle and two tablets!

After about a year, my Kindle got dropped into water and although I grabbed it within a couple of seconds, it was still ruined. This gave me the chance to buy one of the lighted screen versions and of course, it's a few mm shorter than the old version and doesn't snap securely into my $50 leather case!! I shimmed it with a small piece of stiff paper and it's held firm for the past 6-8 months or so. I use it daily and even at a high brightness setting, I don't have to recharge it very often.

pdlamb

Unfortunately, I've had to go back to buying paper books when I need something that's heavy on charts and figures. Kindle versions, well, I haven't been able to figure out what the point of a figure was in three different books, on either a genuine Kindle, tablet, or laptop.

revcp 

+30 for the kindle. Haven't bike toured with it yet, but have used it on canoe trips up to five weeks. I turn off the kindle's light and use a headlight so I'm not running through the battery too quickly. I use a small solar charger when the kindle battery dies.

Wanderer

We have several different Kindle Fires, and use them as tablet computers all the time - they are fine as computers. Seem to work on everything.

corwin1968

This is the one drawback to the Kindle. If I'm buying something for reference material or for illustrations/photographs, I buy a real book. I stick to recreational reading with the Kindle. I will note that the Kindle PC App is much more user friendly than the Kindle itself and I use it as much as I use the Kindle.

fietsbob

Adding more E Toys makes worrying about the 28 pound bike being to heavy kind of a silly quest..

I toured with trade Paperbacks , gave one away to the doorman at a Warsaw Poland Hotel.
he was happy to have it to work on his English Lit.

mm718

A Kindle can weigh less than a trade paperback.

erig007

6.3oz for the lightest
Best Kindle Comparison Review 2015 | Compare Kindles