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Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake.

This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does.

And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and having you use an external light source? You have the same problem if you use LED lights - white light is generated in much the same way in LED bulbs, so you need to dim them as well, leaving you in the same position.

>You can tap both margins to advance the page. (Unlike Amazon who thinks readers always hold their books in the same hand. Have they ever seen people read books?)

The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage. You can use either hand to move forward or backward.

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It's not the luminance of the light that's a problem, it's the colour. White light contains a lot of blue, which is associated with melatonin suppression that in turn throws out sleeping patterns[1]. This problem remains even with very dim light sources.

The alternative therefore is to use LEDs with a lower colour temperature[2], producing the kind of orange light associated with flames and traditional incandescent lights, which people have been using to read by for centuries.

This isn't obscure or novel science, it's something the Amazon product team should know, or at least discover through basic research into their chosen field. The fact that they haven't backs the article author's suggestion that they're incompetent or uncaring about the quality of their product.

[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

While the colour is the main factor, the lux probably matters as well. Your article there specifically mentions eight lux, or twice the brightness of a night light. Would a faint light at four lux also have an affect? The articles don't seem clear.

I don't have a measurement handy for the lux on a kindle at the dimmest setting, nor can I find any details on if brighter lights have a more pronounced affect on melatonin suppression.

The thing is no matter what, this is still assuming that your preferred method of reading is the right one. Some people do not like the look of orange lights - personally I hate incandescents, and have been using CFLs and LEDs putting out white light for a long time now. Perhaps using said lighting directly inside the kindle looks particularly bad. Perhaps they assumed people want to stay awake while reading.

Making a design decision you don't agree with means they made a design decision you don't agree with - not that they don't care or are incompetent.

Considering that they have a model called the Kindle Paperwhite, I am assuming that the use of white light is a deliberate design decision on their part, not an accident.

Plus, the article gets it wrong: the Paperwhite screen isn't backlit, the leds are oriented perpendicularly from the reading angle, so there is no direct light shining your eyes. Add that to the automatic dimming, the Paperwhite isn't going to keep you awake.

As an anecdote, I am immensely susceptible to falling asleep when reading in the dark with the Paperwhite.

I don't understand your point: the orientation of the lighting is irrelevant with respect to suppressing melanin production. The cold temperature of the Kindle LEDs, ostensibly selected to make the screen appear white in the presence of warmer ambient lighting, is likely to have enough of a blue component to disrupt sleep. Total luminescence isn't a factor in suppressing melanin production either, as someone else has posted in this thread, so automatic dimming doesn't help either. The automatic dimming, if it worked well (it didn't in my case) would help reduce eye strain by matching the Kindle screen brightness with the ambient light level.

Yes, you're right. Perhaps my original statement was a bit too extreme in that sense. I'd wager, though, that having the screen not be back lit at least reduces sleep disruption, that is, it fares better than backlit screens in that regard. I don't know if there are any studies that have proven this to be the case though.

I'm not sure what the mechanism would be here? What are you proposing?

The lighting is indirect and not as strong as in a backlit display. That could affect the amount of melanin suppression going on. That is to say, it could very well be considerably weaker than in backlit displays.

> The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage.

Yes, but they're a total usability disaster. The author's description of them is spot on, I've disabled them because they're just too painful to use.

I think this comes down to personal preference - I absolutely love them. I didn't even change the sensitivity/haptic feedback settings on my Voyage for a few months because I really had no complaints, and my changes have been minor tweaks to get it just right.

I think this falls into the whole 'You can't please everyone' bucket - my anecdotal evidence among friends/family/coworkers with the Voyage suggest it's a big hit.

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