And so, while it may be a significant purchase at $499 and up-it was for me-it’s also an exceedingly practical one.įor the work I do, the Mini is far more portable, versatile, and easy to use than any alternative. I also find it much easier to video chat on the device than on my little iPhone screen. The screen streams video beautifully, has a built-in camera, and is useful for propping up in the kitchen to reference recipes on the New York Times Cooking app. While I do use my iPad primarily for reading, it’s my constant companion for a million other activities. Available for as little as $100, it’s considerably cheaper than the iPad, delivers stellar battery life compared with the 10.7 hours the iPad Mini delivered in our web-browsing tests, and focuses mainly on just one task, which means fewer distractions if you’re prone to them. There are real reasons why someone might prefer to buy a Kindle. You can email files to your Kindle app, too. I transferred it to my Kindle library in about 30 seconds, using the Send to Kindle app. I downloaded “The Age of Innocence” for free from Project Gutenberg, which has a vast library of literature available in the creative commons. The app supports not only Kindle books purchased on Amazon but also PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, and EPUB files (as in “e-publication” or digital book). It’s simple, clean, easy to use, and lacks the heavy ancient Biblical tablet feeling of the Kindle itself. I use Amazon’s Kindle app on my iPad Mini for more casual reading. I also like how the Apple Pencil charges via a magnetic connection to the side of the iPad, which makes for both easy charging and storage. I haven’t used them, so I can’t attest to how well they work. Those with truly terrible handwriting might have less luck, but I will say, I’m no calligrapher (though real calligraphers may appreciate the Pencil, too, as it has pressure sensitivity, so you can create a thicker and darker line if you press the pencil more firmly against the screen).Ī thinner Pencil tip could help here, as well, and those are available from third parties. I rarely need to go back and make corrections, which is impressive. In addition to scrawling in the margins of my PDFs, I also make profligate use of the Scribble on iPad feature, which you can see at work in the image below depicting my notes on Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence.” It allows you to handwrite comments that Apple converts to text in a pop-up box. But I prefer to use the Apple Pencil stylus (sold separately for $129), as the narrow tip (about the width of a felt-tip pen) is much easier to write with than the chubby pad of my finger. It lets you doodle, highlight, and eviscerate any document sent your way with the tip of a finger. The 8.3-inch display (measured diagonally) is plenty big for most note-taking. This makes it easy to hold in one hand and take notes with the other. While any new iPad will work for reading and note-taking-my sister, a graduate student, uses her standard iPad extensively to read and grade papers-the iPad Mini, which measures 7.69 inches by 5.3 inches, is closer to the size of your typical book. (The Kindle Scribe, introduced in 2022, comes with a stylus and allows for note-taking, but because it’s still an e-ink tablet, many of these same issues apply.) That slow e-ink-inherent response time reminds me of what it was like to type back when I was in second grade and first learning how to use a keyboard. And, on the Paperwhite model specifically, taking notes is a punishing task. The Kindle’s e-ink comes in grayscale, so if you have color illustrations or photos in your book, you can forget about viewing those in any way that resembles the original. I read up to 80 books a year, and review about eight of them, so I don’t have a ton of time or patience for the Kindle’s sluggish software and sluggish page-turning. And, according to Amazon, the Kindle’s battery lasts up to a generous 10 weeks per charge.īut for a heavy-duty user, the device can be frustrating. The muted off-white color of the screen is genuinely reminiscent of the pages of a book, too. E-ink is easier to read in bright sunlight than the LED-backlit display on the iPad.
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