I find the Kindle a pretty fascinating product. I owned one for a little while (the 3rd generation kindle keyboard), but eventually concluded that it was mostly redundant with my iPad (3rd Generation), and decided it made sense to give to my mom (who loves it).

Recently (well a couple months ago), Amazon launched the Kindle Voyage. This looked like an attempt to provide a high-end user experience on a kindle device. Historically, Kindle devices were set at low-as-possible price points and were meant to be primarily a vehicle for online book sales.

In the last little while, I've seen a handful of reviews of this device. Some people seem to like it a fair bit. Others, not so much. Some own every kindle ever, along with some reasoned thoughts on the new one. Some said it was a relatively minor improvement, but some hated it so much they even sent it back and switched to iBooks.

I still believe that my iPad is a "good enough" reading device, but I remain pretty intrigued. The new Kindle appears to be pretty polarising amongst the tech geeks I follow. On the one hand, the Kindle is a monster of a device in the e-reader market, and in my mind benefits from some of the best features of both physical books (crisp text to read and lack of glowing screen to reduce eye fatigue) and ebooks (thin-ness, light-ness and capability to store thousands of books at a time). However, Amazon's lack of attention to detail and their recent penchant of releasing badly thought out products doesn't instil confidence in their future direction for hardware.

For now, I plan on staying on the sidelines. But the last little while has been pretty interesting for someone sitting in the peanut gallery.