I decided to buy my kids a Kindle Touch for the holidays. It arrived in the mail today and I just had a chance to give it a test drive. Needless to say, I’m not impressed and if the Kindle Fire is even remotely like this device in terms of its responsiveness, then it doesn’t hold a candle to the iPad.

The Kindle Touch has a number of problems. First and foremost, it doesn’t respond to touch well. It’s much, much slower to respond than my iPad is. There is an approximately 1 second delay between my initial touch and the device registering that I touched the screen. With my iPad, the response to my touch command is nearly instantaneous.

Secondly, it takes the Kindle nearly 2-3 to perform the desired function after registering my touch command. Again, in the iPad it’s a seamless interaction in most cases and you don’t even notice the delay.

This slow response time is particularly noticeable—and extremely annoying—when turning pages. I would say it takes between 1-2 seconds for the page to actually change whereas with my iPad Kindle app, again—it’s nearly instantaneous. 

This device has no page turn buttons. It was designed to be navigated solely by touch. For that reason, it should be highly responsive to touch. Because it is not, in my mind, it is a failure as a device.

Finally, I just don’t like the interface. The screen is gray and dull. It’s depressing. I much prefer the iPad Kindle app’s interface with the choice to have a bright white background screen with crisp black letters. I realize that the Kindle interface is supposed to work better in bright light, but quite frankly, that just doesn’t win me over.

Bottom line: I’m glad this one’s for my kids and not me;)