Bottom line, if you’re looking for a truly dedicated eReader the Kindle is your guy.

Amazon | The Kindle | eReader Review

We love a good, hearty hardbound book that’s got soul as much as the next guy. We really do. Musty pages and inscribed covers are a few of my favorite things. It’s just that you can’t always carry your first edition copy of Les Miserables (or guilty pleasure, Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Body) on your person. eReading is not a book replacement—just an excellent solution to the never ending ‘but I can’t fit that in my pocket’ or ‘let’s not crowd the subway with my WSJ’ issues that are life.

The Kindle is the classic eReader. It’s been around since 2007 and while the Kobo’s and Nook’s and even Pandigital’s of the world tried to keep up, they’ve been left in the dust.

I can’t speak for earlier models of Amazon’s reading device…I heard the first generation left much more to be desired, but this time around they seem to have gotten it right. Anyone who was previously turned off by low battery lives and clumsy keypads can finally enjoy the ebook concept, albeit at a slightly steeper price tag then the copycats charge.

The graphite e-ink pearl technology model is damn sexy and is barely thicker than a moleskin. Intriguing, I know.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO, attributes the success of the Kindle as the bestselling product in the history of Amazon to it’s slim body, paper like e-ink and beach friendly screen.

The Kindle has the typical eReader features, no-glare screen, easy to click through pages, etc. My favorite function turned out to be the free wi-fi option, which I originally thought to be frivolous and ended up coming in hand for my extremely fickle mind. I switched from genre to genre in less time than it took to read a whole page, although it’s easy to get carried away if you don’t have the willpower to make a decision and just read.

A leather lighted case deals with any nighttime reading issues (no backlight available), but one major snafu for those accustomed to ‘regular’ book reading is page numbers in percentiles. The battery life was truly astonishing…I began to wonder if this device even needed juice the first charge was so long lived.

Only real issue? I had to turn off my Kindle for take-off and landing while old school style passengers opened their juicy paperbacks and dug in. Russell Brand’s Booky Wook had to wait 20 minutes at the beginning and end of each flight…

Bottom line, if you’re looking for a truly dedicated eReader the Kindle is your guy. It’s the King of the tech reading world. Amazon doesn’t mess around and they aren’t getting comfortable at the top–each new Kindle is better than the last. Nothing has beaten them yet and it seems no competitor will.