Review: 40K BRB for Kindle

I bought myself a Kindle Fire HD a couple weeks ago. I'd gotten one for my wife for Mother's Day this year, and liked the look of it. I mostly got mine for Netflix and web surfing, as I have a ton of paperbacks to read before I could even begin to think about buying eBooks.

However, I wanted to check out the 40K BRB for Kindle, and had just made a tidy profit selling some Battlefleet Gothic Tyranid Cruisers. So, I loosened the purse strings and splurged on the eBook. It was actually cheaper than trying to buy the Dark Vengeance mini rulebook from a bit seller!
Here's a quick, fast, and dirty review of the product.

The navigation is pretty simple. Flick through the pages. You can tap and hold to view the book toolbar. The toolbar allows you to quickly navigate to certain sections of the book. I didn't try to match the sections up to the hardcover, but they seem to be pretty intuitive and help navigation by putting you as close as can be to what you need.

The bookmark feature is great. I've added a bookmark on the Psychic Powers page and the Game Summary page so far. I'll also put one at the beginning of the Universal Special Rules page. From the toolbar, you can quickly hop to a bookmarked section. Great for games where you need to look up the wording of a specific rule or power.

You can also zoom in to the example diagrams and photos in the eBook, though I found that there's not much point in doing so, as they don't tend to get all that much bigger. You cannot zoom in to the data tables, though. For example, the summary tables in the back that outline movement speeds and effects of difficult terrain on units can't be zoomed in, but the to-hit chart can. This is because the to-hit chart is an image, not a table. It's not a big deal, as everything is readable on the Kindle screen.
One thing that took some adjustment was the inability to pinch to zoom in and out. On web pages, you can pinch the screen to zoom on a particular area. The eBook format doesn't allow that. If you need bigger text, you have to change the font size.

You can change the background of the book from black on white to black on sepia or white on black. The sepia background helps tables and example text stand out, as those remain highlighted in white.
There's also a highlighter function, where you can drag over passages and assign a highlight color to them. Those are marked in your Bookmarks list for quick navigation.

It's important to note that the eBook is the rules only. No fluff or painting sections. There are also no interactive popouts or glossary features like the iBook version for iPad. It's a straightforward text conversion only with a few helpful features for marking passages and pages. If you already have the mini rulebook and don't mind carrying that around, I'd skip the Kindle version unless you're also downloading and keeping codexes and supplements with you. If you don't have the mini rulebook, hate lugging the full rulebook, and already have or wanted a Kindle, the eBook BRB is worth the $30+ price. You won't find the mini rulebook online for cheaper than that after shipping, at least not reliably.