Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Is Kindle Fire too heavy?

UPDATE!!  If you can measure your device's IPS screen, please share with us. Thanks in advance.
See the one below for the old post.

Some smart guys suggested using Weight/Display Area instead to rank. Good point. The following is my update, notice I changed some definitions. W/S changed from Weight/Screen Size=W/S  ===>  Weight/Diagonal Length=W/DL  Just for crude reference due to the lack of some information.
EReadersWeight (grams)Diagonal (inches)W/DLRank of W/DLISP Screen Dimension (inches)W/DARank of W/DA
Nook Tablet               4007.545314.5625 × 6.06259.31
Lenovo IdeaPad A1     4007.545314.56*6a9.31
Samsung Galaxy Tab3807.00542---
Kindle Fire                   4137.545534.56*69.62
BlueBery Playbook    4256.956143.5*69.93
IPad 2            6019.406455.8*7.414.05
Nook Color                4496.776665.8*3.510.54
IPad 1            6809.407275.8*7.415.86
HP TouchPad7409.407985.8*7.4b17.27

Note: 
a. No data available, adopts Nook Tablet and Fire
b. No data available, adopts Ipad
*All data may not be acuate, just crude sets, use it for fun.
*Samsung Galaxy Tab IPS Screen data not available.
*The Diagonal lengths in this updated table are calculated from the IPS screen display dimensions
*Many of the numbers are from tabletreaderinfo.com
DA-Display Area
DL-Diagonal Length
W-Weight in grams

Conclusion is very similar to that in the old post except for the rank of Ipad 2 and Nook Color.
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Old post

I believe that many of you have noticed that there are tons of complains about the weight of Amazon Kindle Fire. But I would say I actually appreciate the portability of the Fire brought to me. It is relatively lightweight and I prefer to bring my Kindle Fire instead of HP TouchPad anywhere, and I spend most of my time using Kindle Fire and leave TP at the corner. Let's work out some data before "fighting":
First let's define a parameter  W/S=Weight/Screen Size, which means the smaller the W/S is, the better. Then we calculate W/S (g/in) for some popular ereader tablets:
EReaders Weight(grams) Screen Size(inches) W/S Rank
Nook Tablet                400 7 57 1
Lenovo IdeaPad A1      400 7 57 1
Kindle Fire                    413 7 59 3
BlackBerry Playbook     425 7 61 4
IPad 2             601 9.7 62 5
Nook Color                 450 7 64 6
IPad 1             680 9.7 70 7
HP TouchPad 740 9.7 76 8

From the above calculations, we can easily see that Nook Tablet and Lenovo A1 are the winners though the numbers are pretty close among the 7" tablets. HP TouchPad has the worst W/S. It is also impressive that with the big 9.7" screen, IPad 2 even has lower W/S than Nook Color. IPad 2 does a very good job. We also determine that Kindle Fire ranks No. 3 which is not as bad as many complained. Yes, Amazon could have done better to further reduce the W/S by using material Al as used by IPad (Any patent issue? I do not like such kind of patent).

In summary, Kindle Fire does its job and it is not too heavy compared to other similar tablets. I would say again, think in your own way and pick the right tablet which best fits your needs.

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