Kindle Ad Shows Better Reading in Sun: But What About in Darkness?
The new Kindle ad is clearly taking on the iPad, showing two people sitting by a pool, one with a reflective device (which isn’t actually an iPad), and the other with a Kindle. The latter, a curvacious young woman, is happy with her Kindle in the sun, but pool-dude-in-a-t-shirt isn’t so happy with his reflective device. So be it.
What they don’t say, though, is that if you’re not in the sun, reading a Kindle is much more difficult than reading an iPad. I’ll grant that the Kindle has some advantages: you can read in the sun, or under a bright light (in fact, you had better have very good lighting), and it’s lighter. But for all-around reading, unless you’re going to read by a pool or on the beach, the iPad wins out.
Here’s the Kindle ad:
I’m an iPad user. I don’t see why the inability to read in the darkness is a knock for the Kindle. It is, after all, an electronic replacement for books. When people read physical books at night they requires some sort of illumination.
I love my iPad but I know better than to try to use it outside. It’s a nightmare under direct sunlight, a pain under plain old daylight with the reflections on the glass. The ad is a bit cheesy but it makes its point: If you want easy to read anywhere books the Kindle is better (and far cheaper). The underlying subtext is the iPad is better at other stuff; and, indeed, it is.