By now, it’s pretty clear Amazon is betting big on ebooks—and not necessarily just for ebook readers, but for color tablets, smartphone apps, and browser-based reading as well. Nonetheless, for many folks, an ebook reader is still the best choice: distraction-free, easy to hold and use, and lasts for weeks on a single charge. Amazon’s newly updated Kindle Paperwhite is the best ebook reader we’ve tested, getting so much of the experience right in this sixth-generation model that it’s an obvious upgrade from any older ebook reader without edge lighting, and possibly even some with that feature.
DESIGN, DISPLAY, AND HARDWARE
On the surface, this Paperwhite looks very similar to last year’s version. It measures 6.7 by 4.6 by 0.36 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.3 ounces; the dimensions are the same, but it’s two-tenths of an ounce lighter. It’s still housed in a soft touch rubberized coating, though the old Kindle logo on the back panel has been switched out for the more recognizable Amazon logo. Otherwise, the bottom edge features the same micro USB charger port, status LED, and power button as before; there are no other hardware controls.
The 6-inch display delivers a reasonably sharp 212ppi and 16 levels of gray, and Amazon has tweaked contrast levels once again. But the real story is the upgraded edge lighting. Unlike last year’s model, you see no blooming along the bottom edge of the screen, and the light is just brighter this time around. Amazon also claims to have improved touch response by 19 percent.
The Paperwhite hooks into 802.11b/g/n networks, and a 3G cellular option is still available for a hefty $70 extra; that model weighs 7.6 ounces instead of 7.3. Charging is easy with the bundled micro USB cable, and takes about 4 hours—but there’s no included AC adapter. Amazon sells one for $19.99, as well as a $39.99 leather cover with a magnetic clasp that wakes up the device when you open it.
INTERFACE AND READING
The Home button brings you to the home screen. A top row of icons contains Home, Back, Light, Cart, Search, and Menu buttons, the last of which drops down extra options for creating collections, syncing, and changing settings. You also can toggle between displaying all of your books in the cloud or just the ones on the device. The cover-based interface is easy to get the hang of, and you can flip back and forth between cover display and a list view. In typical Amazon fashion, along the bottom you’ll find suggestions for buying
additional books.
Once you select a book, you can start reading. The reading interface looks and works almost the same as on the previous version. Most of the right-hand side of the display acts as a giant page turn button, a small portionon the left steps back a page, and an inch-deep bar across the top brings up a two-row Menu bar. The first row contains the same icons as on the home page. Beneath the first row are buttons to adjust the font, go to a specific page, bring up X-Ray to get more information on a topic, Share to Facebook or Twitter, and Bookmark pages.
Aside from the much brighter display, the best thing about the new Paperwhite is how fast it is. Ordinary tasks such as loading books and turning pages feel much quicker, and make the old Paperwhite model seem oddly sluggish. Amazon also reduced the frequency of full-page screen refreshes, from once every six page turns to whenever an internal algorithm decides it’s necessary to preserve font sharpness.
KINDLE PAGE FLIP, X-RAY UPGRADES, AND THE KINDLE STORE
Along the bottom of the interface is a new bar with Kindle Page Flip, which makes it much easier to scan through books using a slider near the bottom of the page. The large thumbnail preview of each page that appears as you go through is about as close to Àipping through a real book as you can get on a screen.
You can now navigate between multiple bookmarks in a book, again with preview thumbnails. Tapping on a footnote now shows you the actual footnote itself in a pop-up window. Tap on a word, and you get a single window with Dictionary, X-Ray, and Wikipedia tabs. The X-Ray tab is context sensitive; tap on the word “windows,” for example, and it can figure out if you mean for a house or for your Microsoft-powered PC. The context sensitivity doesn’t carry across to the Dictionary and Wikipedia tabs, though.
Other features: A new vocabulary builder tracks a history of words you’ve looked up, and offers to teach them to you with a flash card-style interface. Once you know a word, you can tap “Mark as Mastered” to remove it from the vocabulary builder. By the end of the year Amazon will also add Goodreads integration, now that it owns the company, and indle FreeTime, which lets you create profiles for each of your kids, set reading goals, track accomplishments and achievements, and lock out store and browser access.
Otherwise, the Kindle store remains chock full of suggestions, top lists, daily and monthly deals, and other discovery options. You can browse and buy any of more than 2.1 million books right from the device, easily subscribe to newspapers and magazines, and borrow from more than 180,000 books for free if you have a $79 Amazon Prime subscription. There are also smartphone and tablet apps for all major platforms, plus Cloud Reader, which lets you read from your book collection in a browser tab on a PC or Mac. Amazon’s ecosystem is the best in the business for book lovers.
STORAGE, A FEW QUIRKS, AND CONCLUSIONS
In addition to the native Kindle protected formats AZW and AZW3, the Paperwhite supports PDF, MOBI, TXT, PRC, DOC, and DOCX files. Notably absent from the list, as usual, is EPUB, which limits your public library and Internet sharing options; this is still where Barnes and Noble and Kobo can pick up some buyers over Amazon. There’s 2GB of internal storage, with room for about 1,000 books; unfortunately, there’s no memory card slot, so you can’t sideload PDFs or other files easily. You can connect the Paperwhite as a USB mass storage device with a PC or Mac, so it’s not like you’re only stuck with Kindle Store downloads. There’s still no headphone jack or Audible support, which will also disappoint audiobook fans.
Finally, Amazon remains committed to “Special Offers.” Advertisements appear whenever you pick up the device and sometimes while browsing the interface, but never during reading. For $20 extra, you can disable these, either at the time of purchase or after the fact from within your Kindle account. I still don’t like them; although advertising is a fact of modern life, I don’t think our gadgets should be ad-subsidized themselves, and it artificially lowers the price of the Kindle next to other ebook readers.
Nonetheless, even at the higher $139 price without Special Offers, the new Kindle Paperwhite is an easy Editors’ Choice. It’s the best ebook reader on the market, and if the ads don’t bother you, go for the $119 version. I’m still hesitant to recommend the 3G option; it’s easier to use, because you don’t have to log onto Wi-Fi networks wherever you are in order to shop for new books or look up Wikipedia searches, but $189 puts you within striking distance of excellent color tablets like the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon’s own Kindle Fire HDX.
JAMIE LENDINO
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