# Kindle vs Ipad - who wins? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 5, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kindle-vs-ipad-who-wins/535031 "2010-04-05T15:38:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kindle-vs-ipad-who-wins/535031/61 "2010-04-09T20:24:33Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > The Kindle DX isn’t really comparable to the iPad either. It’s a book reader, while the iPad is a general-purpose Internet device. Oh, I agree – I just think that’s the comparison the OP heard claiming that they were about the same price, which patently isn’t true unless they were talking about the DX. > [@scr4](#): > > And frankly, I think the Kindle DX is a complete flop. It’s much bigger than a book reader needs to be, and its slow response and lack of color makes it unsuitable for viewing formatted documents (PDF, PowerPoint, etc). I’ve seem rumors (Amazon doesn’t say) that about 40% of the Kindles sold are the DX version, which might or might not qualify it for “flop” status, but I won’t give mine up. My family owns both a Kindle 2 and a DX – and I never use the 2. The DX screen size makes page turns rarer, mitigating the slow refresh somewhat. Some formatted stuff works just fine on the DX (Apple’s developer documentation, for example), some doesn’t (Microsoft’s developer documentation, for example) unless you turn it sideways, which which case you get a size equivalent to paper (although you have to do a page turn in the middle of each page). It mostly depends on the margins – the DX trims them, which means if the document doesn’t have stuff in the margins, it’s quite readable. That said – I’ll keep the DX for front-to-back reading, but PDFs and the like are making the migration to the iPad. It’s not the refresh or color that matters so much, rather it’s the inability to zoom when documents use small fonts, and the utter klunkiness of searching on the Kindle. Reference stuff (i.e. random access rather than front-to-back) is actively painful on an e-paper device with that horrid little keyboard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kindle-vs-ipad-who-wins/535031.md?page=3)