A Photo Comparison of Kindle Klassic and Kindle 2

I'll just start this off with a photo comparison I did quickly when receiving my Kindle 2 after having enjoyed the Kindle 1 (dubbed 'Klassic' or 'KK' or 'K1' by enthusiasts) for about half a year. Many wanted to know what the visual differences were and there had been some discussion (which continues) of not only the more photo-like grayscale capabilities but also the relative degree of grayness of screen backgrounds and the basic font's black density. The Kindle 2 has a somewhat thinner font that some perceive as 'crisper' or 'sharper' while others see it as 'lighter' and providing less contrast. It can be like comparing a fine-point pen to a medium one (as seen with the home page listings, which I have not photographed yet).

The K2's directness of access to the dictionary and to links without added pop-up boxes is a real plus.   I wish, though, that the 5-way were not anchored by the dictionary lookup for each word hovered over while passing through.  But web browsing is much faster.

TEXT and book preview images.  I used the same Amazon store page used by PC World in its recent K1 and K2 comparison.

    *CLICK* on images that don't quite fit on this page to see full original images.




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Here's a shot of both units displaying a page with very basic fonts for periodicals sent to the Kindle via plain-text RSS feed once a day from Kindlefeeder.




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OUR PERSONAL PICTURES UNDER 'PICTURES' FOLDER




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I chose text LINE spacing that was modified using the key-combo Shift-Alt-5 to match more closely K1's spacing between lines. (We can choose from Shift-Alt-[1-9], with '3' the somewhat cramped default.
Sample:    Leslie's The Amazon Kindle FAQ



 
    I used this sample to confirm that the fonts can be just as dark if they are specified as black somewhere in Amazon's coding.


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PLAIN TEXT FROM A BOOK ("The Spell of Egypt") - CLOSER UP
Again, modified the default Font '3' by pressing Shift-Alt-5 to expand line distance more similar to K1's line spacing

The Kindle Klassic first, followed by the Kindle 2.  This close-up pair had to be taken separately, to get that close, and my shadow looms over them.


 


    Most of the rest below were taken by lamp light, with the lamp at the left, closer to the K1, but aimed across the K2.  No scientific review here!

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WEB PAGE interpretation by K1 and K2
+ ESPN as example



The rows of links are quite sqeezed together by K2 browser.
They underline each link and highlight certain links.

  Someone or something does a terrific job dithering the 4-shades for the header image.

Here's a zoomed-in area to show what the text looks like if we're reading the page.


And here's a separate shot I took closer up of the K2 screen.  I used only the top part of the shot.



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WEB PAGE interpretation of
PEOPLE MAGAZINE -   



  Text with images are shown quite differently on these two.

K1's 4 SHADES and K2's 16 SHADES - using this People magazine page




  This was not a bad job of dithering for 4-shades (using diffusion to blend the dots). 


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MORE on K1s 4-shades vs the K2's 16 shades
using People Magazine still.  This one was for a big fan of Hugh Jackman   :-)



 


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JUST AN EXCUSE to put "Slumdog Millionaire" folks in this thread.



One last comparison -the K1 image is pretty nicely dithered:
 

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MY KINDLE 2,  AT REST ON THE LOUNGER



I hope this helps with the conflicting reports about less clarity vs the K1 while others say the screen is crisper and sharper.

  The 16 shades capability of the K2 will cause it to interpret colors as different shades of gray.

  You know how they say, "Just give me the basics - no grays"?

    The large differences from using only Black and White plus 2 other shades made up between them (for the K1) leads to inherently good contrast for the eyes at a loss of shading.  The 11 additional shades of gray (for the K2) means that some text will be in a lighter shade, depending on what the publisher or formatter decides to use for the font.

Nevertheless, a few Kindle 2's  (as with the Kindle 1's)  have seemed to have unreadable fonts in sunlight (which shouldn't be), so, for display anomalies do check with Amazon customer reps at 866-321-8851.

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Check often:  Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.