iPad, Kindle Fire, or…iPod

A few weeks ago, I opined that, all things considered equal, I felt an Amazon Kindle Fire would make a better purchase than an Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Of course, the geekier side of me secretly coveted the Nook for the ease with which one could sideload apps and customize the user experience. Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble recently disabled those abilities with a software update, and I’m not a fan of rooting devices. I’ve bricked one computer too many in my days of tinkering to want to try such experiments with any of my current devices. That fact was the deal breaker for the Nook, and I went to Best Buy to pick up a new Kindle with some money I had accumulated from some side jobs and holiday gifts. I ended up walking out with an iPod touch instead.

Mind you, I don’t buy gadgets often. This iPod touch is my first foray into the handheld/tablet world, and I’ve been using it constantly. I actually prefer social networking in the iPod touch, and that’s kept me more focused when I’m working on the computer. It’s replaced my Bible. It’s become my e-reader of choice, and it’s that last part I want to talk about for a minute. The iPod touch is, in some ways, a superior e-reader to the Kindle Fire and even the iPad 2 for one important reason: pixel density. The pixel density on the iPod touch leaves both the Kindle Fire and iPad in the proverbial dust, with only dedicated e-ink devices as more pleasant reading devices (so long as you are the type who wants a dedicated reader).

Reading and Pixel Density

For my less technical readers, pixel density is the relationship between the physical screen size and the number of pixels on the screen. For example, an iPad has a screen resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels (or 786,432 total pixels on screen), and it has a diagonal size of 9.7 inches. This gives it a pixel density of 132 pixels per inch. It’s actually not a very impressive pixel density. The Kindle Fire fares better. It has a screen resolution of 600 x 1024 (or 614,400 total pixels on screen), and this comes out to 169 pixels per inch, which results in crisper imaging than the iPad in general. The iPod touch has a screen size of 3.5 inches and a screen resolution of 640 x 960 (0r 614,400 pixels, identical to the Kindle Fire but distributed differently). This gives the iPod touch a fairly astounding pixel density of 326 pixels per inch – nearly double the Kindle Fire’s and more than double the iPad’s density. This results in a display where the pixels are all but undetectable, even when very close to your eyes. In contrast, 42-inch television in 1080p only features 52 pixels per inch.

To illustrate, here’s a crude image demonstrating the pixel density of each device.

You can only really see the outlines of every fifth pixel, so it’s not perfect. Still, notice how the grid is plainly visible on the larger iPad and Kindle Fire screens while the iPod touch’s display is very nearly a uniform grey? That’s because the iPod’s display is straining your capability to differentiate between objects so small.

Illustrated another way, here are the displays of the three devices sized by pixel dimensions. The iPad’s display is gray; the Kindle Fire is yellow, and the iPod touch’s display is blue.

Based on it’s pixel density alone, the iPod touch features nearly as much screen real estate as an iPad or a Kindle Fire, yet that space is crammed into a screen only 3.5 inches diagonal. Developer’s can consequently create assets rendered in twice as many pixels than they usually would for that size of a screen. Text is rendered with nearly perfect smoothness.

One more illustration. Here’s a raw iPod touch screenshot, posted its native size:

click for full-size

The screenshot probably seems disproportionally large. If you hold an iPod touch or iPhone up to this image, it will dwarf your device. At this size, the pixels are visible on a normal computer screen, but shrinking this image down to the size of an iPod touch without removing any pixels produces an incredibly crisp image and text that is very easy on the eyes. Agan, outside of  e-ink displays, few mobile devices will prove easier on your eyes than an iPhone or an iPod touch. Couple this with the fact that iBooks is a much more pleasant e-reader application than Kindle’s or even the Nook’s reading clients, and you have a device that serves as a nearly perfect e-reader. Finally, thanks to the relatively few lines of text per virtual page, I don’t lose my place as much as I usually do when reading on screen.

Other Considerations

Here are some other things that tipped the scales in favor of the iPod touch.

• Pocket-sized. An iPad might be able to replace my laptop in most cases, but the cramped software keyboard on the iPod touch would prevent that. Neither would the Kindle Fire be in a position to replace my laptop in most cases; the productivity software is lacking, and the keyboard is still too small for rapid typing. Therefore, whatever I chose would still be a secondary device. This made increased portability a factor in favor of the iPod.
• App Selection. Amazon’s app selection is good but not as good as Apple’s App Store, especially if you want something other than games. GarageBand and Keynote alone are testaments to the rich applications available for iOS, and I’ll probably be revisiting the theme of apps in another post in the near future. In fact, the app selection allows for something unavailable on either the Nook or the Kindle – multiple reader apps. I can access the Kobo, Kindle, Nook, and iBooks libraries from my iPod touch. Buying the Kindle would have tied me to one vendor.
• Browsing. Browsing the web on a Kindle Fire is unpleasant at best. Sites take a great deal of time to load; scrolling is not smooth; and the browser feels half-finished. There’s no comparison to the smooth experience of Mobile Safari, even on more modest hardware than the Kindle.
• Sharing My Stuff. With the Kindle Fire, I’d have had to manually move any music videos, pictures, or files I’d want. With the iPod touch, iTunes does all of that automatically. Additionally, the iPod can run mobile versions of GarageBand, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers – meaning I can open any document I want on that device without having to convert it. Nothing on the Kindle would have been able to read those files.
• Doing More. The Kindle is great if your primary focus is consumption – purchasing games, purchasing movies, purchasing music, purchasing books. It is a devices marketed toward consumers for the purpose of facilitating consumption. While there is a definite element of consumption on iOS as well, there are more opportunities for exercising creativity and for being productive on the platform. This could change in time, but right now the Kindle Fire lives up to the popular criticism that tablets are made for consumption more than creation.

Do I still like the Fire? Absolutely; it just wasn’t the best purchase at the time. If I have the opportunity, I might still consider one in the future, but the iPod touch was the better device for my purposes at this moment. (If I could swing a data plan, I’d transform it into an iPhone 4S in a heartbeat, but that’s not happening any time soon.) Still, Amazon may have to step up its game with the Kindle Fire sooner rather than later; the reading experience is one of the weaker elements on the tablet – and it’s made by a company famous for its e-readers. Furthermore, iPad’s with much higher pixel density may be right around the corner, providing a larger screen with the great quality of the iPhone and iPod touch.

Wrapping Up

I’m working on a more in-depth review of the device, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the iPod touch. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great, and it makes for a wonderful reader – which is what I went out in search of to begin with. Thanks to a fantastic display and an enjoyable ebook application, the iPod touch is one of the best readers you can get, and it is clearly the among the best color readers – if not the best –  you can find at that price. I walked into the store thinking a 7-inch screen was exactly what I was looking for in a tablet, and I walked out with a 3.5-inch screen instead, and, if I regret anything, it’s only that I didn’t pony up a bit more to get some extra storage on the device. It’s turned out to be a nearly perfect reading device, and it performs its other functions very well. It’s no iPhone, but it doesn’t really have to be. It’s also no Kindle Fire; it’s better. The app selection is better. The performance is better. Web browsing is better, and, despite the smaller screen, the iPod touch is easier on the eyes when reading for any length of time. When looking for a new e-reader, the iPod touch is more than worthy of consideration.

Advertisement

Posted by simplyrobert on January 11, 2012

http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/ipad-kindle-fire-or-ipod/