One thing Amazon is not afraid of is change. It alters product designs as often as some people change shirts or at least hairstyles. The point is: The way your Amazon Kindle looks today is not necessarily the way it'll look tomorrow. The new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-ink-based e-reader is, for example, quite a departure from the most recent Kindle Touch. Unlike that ugly shirt or bad hairdo, though, Amazon once again gets its new look just right.
You might not notice at first, but viewed separately, a quick glance at the two devices released just one year apart reveals a host of significant changes. The Paperwhite is smaller, thinner (6.7? x 4.6? x .36? versus 6.8? x 4.7? x .40?) and black where the Touch is slate gray. The Paperwhite moves the eponymous Kindle logo to the bottom edge; it also loses the Touch's home button and audio-out capabilities (not something I am going to miss).
The screens are similarly sized, but the Paperwhite's biggest change is that there's a built-in light within its grayish display.
See the Light
Like Barnes and Noble's Nook Simple Touch Glowlight, the Kindle Paperwhite incorporates a series of LEDs in the bottom edge (the Nook actually has two fewer LEDs along the top), and uses patented fiber-optic technology to spread that light evenly across the 6-inch display. The result is you can now read your Kindle books on your Kindle e-ink-based Paperwhite e-reader without the need for an external light source.
I love the effect on both devices, though the Paperwhite does a somewhat better job of creating the illusion of a single light source. Only at the lower edge, right near the lights, do you see the coverage gaps (they appear as slightly gray or dimmer areas), but it quickly resolves into a very evenly lit display. At full brightness, the Paperwhite almost lives up to its name — that is, it's almost white — an effect enhanced by the now black body. Nook's Glowlight is very good, but you can notice a bit more blotchiness in the light coverage.
It's worth noting that the Paperwhite's LEDs are always on, even when you turn the light all the way down. Amazon reps told me this is intended, because they believe the lights are always useful and do not, according to them, diminish the promised eight weeks of continuous-use battery life (a claim I could not test in my relatively short time with the device).
The Paperwhite differs from the Nook Glowlight in another way. Both e-readers let you adjust light brightness via touchscreen, but only Amazon's interface tries to explain which light settings are right for you. Unless you understand a little bit about how the eyes respond to lit screens in different lighting situations, however, it may not make much sense to you.
The Paperwhite has a super easy-to-use slider that says, "In brightly lit rooms use a high setting" and "Use a low setting for dark rooms." I read this over and over again, and wondered why it seemed so counterintuitive. Amazon representatives explained that reading a brightly lit screen in a darkened room is not comfortable for your eyes. Instead, the brightness should almost match the surrounding light level for maximum comfort. I understand this with backlit displays like the LCD panels found on the iPad and Kindle Fire HD, but for an e-ink e-reader that in sunlight needs no internal illumination, this had me scratching my head.
Outdoors, the Paperwhite screen looks fantastic, and I have no idea what purpose the light would serve. Yet indoors, in a variety of situations, I did find that the most comfortable setting was far less bright than I would have originally expected.
Touch
Despite the layers for e-ink and light, the Kindle Paperwhite is an impressive touch-screen device that responds well to taps and gestures. I have a second-generation Kindle, and there is no comparison. The Paperwhite is also faster than the Kindle Touch. I'd say it matches the touchscreen Nook Glowlight in terms of responsiveness, though I can't use, say, a pinch gesture to change font size on the Barnes and Noble device.
As with the previous Kindle Touch, the Paperwhite takes full advantage of the touch interface. A tap at the top of the screen displays a full menu with Home, Back, the light control, shopping, search, reading options, font sizes, Go-to, the X-Ray feature and Share options. You can link your Twitter and Facebook accounts to tweet and add status updates directly from the Paperwhite; the updates include a link to whatever you're reading.
Every part of the interface is a thousand times better than when the Kindle started, and every Kindle update brings fresh and useful ideas. One of the newest and most clever additions is Reading Progress, which you access from the main drop-down menu; this lets you select how you want the feature to display within whatever you're reading. It can be the original Location in book, which is not actually a page number, but some random metric Amazon uses to judge progress in an e-book. I'm glad Amazon now also includes the paper page number and percentage read.
The news additions, though, are quite smart. There's Time Left in Chapter and Time Left in Book.
Each will do as advertised, and based on your reading speed, tell you how long (in days, hours and minutes) it should take to finish the current chapter or entire tome. The metric is remarkably accurate; it told me I would finish the current chapter in eight minutes, and that was exactly how long it took.
The Kindle Paperwhite's other nifty trick is X-Ray. Introduced last year, it's a snapshot (at article, chapter or book level) of how often a topic or character appears. You can use it to quickly skip to parts of the book when said person or topic is mentioned. I would never do this in a book for fear of spoilers. Yet, I could see it as an incredibly helpful tool for textbooks and for students who have to write about character development in a novel.
Staying Connected
Since the very first Kindle launched in 2007, the e-readers have offered free access to the Whispernet, which is AT&T's 3G network. I tested the Wi-Fi/3G version of the Kindle Paperwhite, and found that the Whispernet still works well, as long as I could find decent connectivity, which was not always possible. Fortunately, the Wi-Fi works smoothly, and it was easy to connect the Kindle Paperwhite to my office and home networks. If you want to be able to shop for books wherever you are, however, you may want to consider the 3G model.
Shopping on the Paperwhite is a pleasure. The touchscreen allows for e-ink-style scroll (which means the image blinks when you scroll) through Kindle's Tops or "select" 25 books, a list of featured titles (Best Sellers, Deals, New Noteworthy), and an area for Kindle Singles, the new Serials, Magazines and Newspapers.
Like the Nook Glowlight, you can get a Paperwhite for $139. The 3G model I tested is $199. If you accept special offers, you can get the Wi-Fi version for $119 and the 3G model for $179. While some people are really turned off by these sleep-slate ads (which also appear on the new, subsidized Kindle Fire HD), I don't mind them at all. Barnes and Noble recently lowered the price of its Glowlight e-reader to $119; but this price does not require users to accept adsm and it also includes an AC charger. As with the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon doesn't ship the Paperwhite with an AC adapter — just the charging cable, which will plug into your powered USB port or the handful of USB-ready AC adapters you may have lying around.
With the Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon has achieved something that's better than Barnes and Noble's Simple Touch with Glowlight. With a couple of notable exceptions, they match up pretty evenly on price, book selection, screen resolution and touch responsiveness. But the Kindle Paperwhite gets the edge on screen quality with the light on, variety of useful gestures and intuitive features like X-Ray and Reading Progress.
If you own a second- or third-generation Kindle, this is a valuable upgrade. Trading in the similar Kindle Touch isn't worthwhile, at least until the battery stops charging. If you're deep in the Barnes and Noble book ecosystem, a switch probably isn't necessary; but if you're a first time e-reader, the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is — with a small edge on performance and features, as well as a better established ecosystem of products and services — tough to beat.
All Kindle Paperwhite e-readers are available for order now, and start shipping on Oct. 1.
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