Top Reviews of the week: Nokia Lumia 1320, Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and Kindle Paperwhite!

It’s been a rather busy week here at the tech2 labs, with much-awaited devices like Nokia Lumia 1320, the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and even the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G 2013 coming in for reviews. Check out our take on them:   **Nokia Lumia 1320 (6/10):** At a retail price of Rs 24,000, the Lumia 1320 is simply too expensive to consider. The highlight feature is of course the battery life and the fact that you can now install pretty much any app without a problem. But apart from this, there’s little else going in its favour to warrant such a hefty premium when compared to phones like the Lumia 625 and Lumia 720. We would still love to see a ‘Lumia 725′ with 1GB RAM, which will undoubtedly be a much better buy than the 625 and 1320 put together. To sum up, the Lumia 1320 would make a good smartphone at Rs 16,000, if you’re into ‘phablets’. You are paying far too much if it’s anything more than that, and we recommend you skip it.   **Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G (2013) (8.5/10):** If you love reading books and want a device which can replicate the same experience of reading a physical book, then the Kindle Paperwhite is the best investment right now. It is much better than reading books on a smartphone or a tablet, which can cause a lot of eye-strain due to their backlight. With the frontlight on the Paperwhite, you can comfortably read for long hours without feeling any strain on the eyes.   [caption id=“attachment_217576” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  The new Paperwhite might not look different from the outside, but it’s a different beast once you use it[/caption] **Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 (7/10):** The Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 is officially available for Rs 24,890 but you can find it for it little lesser online and in most stores. Samsung is charging a Rs 4,000 premium over Grand Duos’s launch price and we feel this is too much for what’s on offer. If this was mid-2013 and the Grand 2 launched for this price, it would have been acceptable. But a year later, the Grand Duos has almost reached its EOL (End of Life) period, which is typically when we expect a refresh of sorts with mildly bumped up specifications for the same price. And the Grand 2 ticks all those boxes perfectly, except for the pricing. Samsung has also missed out on little details like putting a notification light or NFC even.   [caption id=“attachment_217907” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Samsung can’t seem to get enough of faux-leather[/caption] **Seagate 600 SSD (240GB) (7/10):** The Seagate 600 series SSD comes at an MRP of Rs 17,500 which comes to around Rs 78.1 per GB. This is lower than the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme, but the Samsung 840 Pro as well as the Corsair Neutron GTX selling at Rs 16,000 offer better performance and better value. So naturally, we find it hard to recommend the Seagate 600 series SSD over the Samsung 840 Pro or the Corsair Neutron GTX SSD. A quick online search on Indian e-tailing sites, quotes the price of the Seagate 600 SSD around Rs 13,000, which is decent pricing if you are willing to look beyond the relative performance hit. But we would still suggest you spend a little more and go for the Samsung 840 Pro.