It’s true, the DX is merely a larger version of the standard Kindle. It has a wider keyboard with more pronounced keys and a significantly larger screen, but from there on the two are identical in every way. Same features, same technology. Now the screen is more than just a little bit bigger, it’s huge, enough that it completely changes the way you use it. The DX is bigger than a paperback, than a pocketbook, even a hard cover edition or an encyclopedia. It’s about the size of a coffee table book, which is an important comparison when you consider how many coffee table books are read on airplanes or subways. This begs a number of interesting questions. If it’s too big for travelling and if it’s too large for reading novels, what do you use the Kindle DX for?

The answer might seem obvious. Magazines and newspapers, surely. An international selection of both are offered through the Amazon digital store and are commonplace in subways, on airplanes, and other travel routes. But a magazine can be rolled up and a newspaper easily folded into smaller, more manageable sections. Both can be tossed if needed. The Kindle DX is forever large and flat, never easy to tuck away in a hurry.

It uses the same E-Ink screen as other readers on the market. Monochrome and paper-like in look and feel, but with the slightly reflective surface of a computer screen. At 9.7” the display becomes a canvas of words when you load a regular novel. It’s a wall of text that the eye cannot take in all at once, making it less comfortable to read. This is why large publications like newspapers, magazines, and blogs divide content into columns, into smaller sections for your eyes to take in one piece at a time, but that format isn’t one that has been carried over to the digital Kindle versions of these publications. Instead each article is presented fullscreen and so has the same issue. You can adjust the fonts through six sizes and the number of words per line, but what large-screen readers need is an option to change the page layout to support columns, not bigger print.

What about manuals, business documents, or presentations? These seem like a shoe-in for such a large display. You may have to e-mail them to Amazon first for conversion, but the Kindle does support .txt, .doc, .pdf, and unprotected Mobipocket files. I’ve experimented with a number of PDF manuals, reference materials, and presentations and find the results mixed. The print is often too fine to read. I’d adjust the font size, but that option isn’t available with most personal documents. The grayscale used to reproduce images and pictures lack the contrast to bring out needed details. There’s one level of zoom you can try, but it’s not enough to move into diagrams or drawings the way you need to, and it's not available for all documents.

Hidden inside the DX is an accelerometer sensor which means the screen will automatically switch between portrait and landscape views when you physically turn the screen around for comfort. This is great for manuals. What Amazon needs to add is a more scalable zoom function and the ability to scroll the screen to better access the content on the page.

In creating a new version of the Kindle Amazon has taken the opportunity to change just two aspects of its design. They’ve removed the page turning buttons from the left-hand side, leaving just the ones on the right, an annoyance for those who are left-handed, and have replaced the keyboard with a wider layout that offers raised keys and is easier to use. It’s a better keyboard and that’s a step forward.

The Kindle DX retains everything that makes the original a winning reader; the free, wireless 3G connection to an international store, sophisticated note-taking, dictionary, and text-to-speech features, and the ability to play audio books and music files, but what it lacks is any follow-through on the larger screen. At $489 US, a substantial leap over the $259 US asked for the standard Kindle, what is offered beyond a bigger screen that might be appealing for those with poor eyesight? Amazon hasn’t invested the thought into exploring how that bigger screen can be used and what software tweaks, even little ones, might support that experience. From a better zoom to options for different content layouts, these are additions that will hopefully appear in either their next software update or their next version of the DX. If Amazon doesn’t come up with them, their competition surely will.