We’ve heard whispers for months, but this morning Amazon snapped its fingers and made the Kindle available in the UK, as well as 99 other countries around the world. Want the skinny on the best-specced e-reader in the world? Read on.
The Kindle, for the uninitiated, is more than a simple e-reader. There’s also 3G technology inside, letting it hop online to download books on the go. It’ll also automatically download digital newspapers and magazines, assuming you buy a subscription to them, let you send and receive Microsoft Word documents and even e-mail on the move.
There’s a full keyboard for the latter, but if you just want to read that’s no problem: the Kindle will last for over two weeks with its wireless abilities switched off.
And now it’s available for order in the UK, costing $299 plus $45 in import tax or £217 in British coinage. At the moment you’ll still place your order through Amazon.com and have the device shipped to Britain (complete with a US power adapter). However, the Kindle will work just fine in the UK and includes free 3G access just like Kindle devices on the other side of the Atlantic.
Amazon says “in the future, we plan to introduce a UK-centric Kindle experience, enabling you to purchase Kindle and Kindle books in sterling from our UK site.”
For the time being, UK Kindle owners will have a choice of 250,000 books as well as British newspapers including The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the New York Times.
Out now | £217 | Amazon
