The Amazon suits told us this morning during the press event that the new and improved Kindle is 20x 20% faster than the first generation; we found that isn’t the case.
We spent some time with the two side-by-side and we can’t see any difference at all between the two models. The K2 might have a faster processor but maybe the extra CPU cycles are being redirected to power the improved screen instead of making pages load quicker. Whatever the excuse Amazon comes up with, the proof is in the above video that the new Kindle isn’t faster than the original.
UPDATE – John here. Matt was a little harsh on the video because of the various factors at play here. Book length is obviously one and this was a decidedly unscientific test. All I can say is that the Kindle 2 changed pages with more aplomb than the K1. The K1 would black out the page completely and this redraws things almost immediately, adding to the perception of speed.
20% perhaps? Rather than 20x?
Come on now… are you just trying to get a headline?
How much faster than -almost- instant for turning a page do you want? Should it flip two pages instead of one so it could be “faster” than the original?
This is splitting hairs…
And no SD memory card slot. Wow, that is a mistake.
What do you exactly need the SD card slot for? You can always redownload your files from Amazon, if need be. I think it was a feature nobody used and Amazon took it out as the result.
Didn’t they say it can hold, 1,500 books? Are you really reading 2,000 books that you need to keep at all times?
All I asking me with this video. Why are the new pages not the same?
The only stuff that i wish were faster and will probably be with a faster CPU, is the Dictionary lookup that is a little slow on the original. Can you guys compare that?
Switching pages doesn’t need to be faster.
You must have misunderstood in the press conference, or they misspoke. Amazon’s site says it’s 20% faster, not 20x faster.
I feel 20x stupider having read and watched this report. Thanks for your wonderful journalistic endeavors.
They said 25% faster, not 20x faster. While the % and the X may look a little similar, they don’t mean the same thing.
LOL
This is obviously not a completely fair test and, on the aggregate, the K2 looked SLIGHTLY faster than I expected from the K1.
Would you say it looks about 20 PERCENT faster? (not 20x as you guys keep repeating ;-)
Journalism Fail
“I feel 20x stupider having read and watched this report.” brilliant!
I agree. Brilliant :)
Well, it actually shows on one of your pictures from the live blog (10:49 AM Doug Aamoth) a slide that says 20% Faster Page Turns…
To Amazon defense, they claimed 25% more speed not X20.
% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % %
Got it?
I spend more time here correcting bogus articles than being informed. Taking it off my RSS reader…
Yeah….this site seems to have a real axe to grind half of the time. This is the only site I have found that posted a negative review of the unit in terms of speed vs. the old unit.
Still hate the “fade to black” page turn required by e-ink…
Horrendous report. I’m with Joshua- feed removed.
It’s probably just sales talk. After all: 20% sounds much better than 12%.
More importanthly, it’s only 20% better looking, which means it still really fugly.
Come on TC editors, be reasonable for a second please. Hoe can you test page flip speed with human eye and conclude K2 is not 20% faster?
yep yep 20%.
oh and why not test with the same page(s)?
Also, I love how your video lead-in takes a full quarter of the entire video.
Doesn’t really get better than this.
So you don’t have proof or a real test, yet the giant headline remains with a small update at the end of the article.
How about I make an article:
Techcrunch 20x less accurate in 2009.
update: made a mistake, TC no less accurate now than it has ever been.
Be a man and publish another post that refutes your inaccurate one… not an update at the bottom. Is there an editor at TC even? Articles like this make me want to come back less and less.
I still think the Kindle is way too expensive and a niche product. Also does anyone really believe the number of Kindle sales that Amazon claims?
Any faster and we would be going backwards. Good story.
Moe: Oh, boy! The deep fryer’s here. Heh heh, I got it used from the navy. You can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.
Homer: Forty seconds? But I want it now!
Is it just me or is TC and its affiliated blogs actually getting worse in terms of quality and accuracy every week?
This is bad, b/c quality and accuracy were never important to the TC network to begin with.
Only reason why this is a big hit is that Amazon puts it right smack in front of their site. Other than that i consider this a failure.
Wow. If you’ve spent any amount of time with the original Kindle, you’d know that the amount of content on the page loading greatly affects load times. So loading a page with 5 words on the K1 and an entire text page on the K2 in the same amount of time actually proves to me that the K2 is faster.
Unlike the original kindle, the one I got today shipped with no cover or slipcase to protect it while you travel. I guess they want to squeeze another $100 out of you to buy one as an accessory.