I don't miss books — not their smell, weight nor feel as I turn the page. This is largely thanks to products like Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite. The ereader and its competitors, including Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch, have continually raised the technological bar, while bringing the ereading experience closer to what feels like perusing an actual book. The new sixth-generation Kindle Paperwhite now nearly matches print tomes for visual clarity and quality, is just as easy to navigate and, of course, does things no physical book could ever do.
SEE ALSO: What to Do With Your New Kindle
Amazon, which recently unveiled a new collection of full-blown Kindle Fire Tablets that use HD LCD screens, shows no sign of abandoning the E-ink-driven ereader market. Although the 2GB Wi-Fi Kindle Paperwhite costs $119 and an entry-level Kindle Fire HD costs just $139, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told us that he believes readers should buy both kinds of hand-held products. I tend to agree. (An ereader is primarily a reading device and a tablet is for web browsing, email, games, video, social media and more.)
Kindle's Paperwhite was already an excellent digital-reading device, but thanks to a number of component-level and software-based enhancements, it's now virtually unmatched in performance and usability (until, at least, the struggling Barnes & Noble reveals its latest Nook ereader).
Inside
Externally, the Kindle Paperwhite looks exactly the same as its predecessor (6.7 inches x 4.6 inches x 0.36 inches with a black, plastic body). However, Amazon execs told us that at 7.3 ounces, the new Paperwhite is slightly lighter than the previous one. I couldn't really tell the difference, though. especially after putting both of them in cases.
The real differences are inside. Amazon told us that the new Paperwhite features a 25% faster processor, which should make virtually every operation on the device faster than the fifth-generation Kindle ereader. In side-by side comparisons, the new Paperwhite was faster, but not noticeably so. I would say the screen transitions were sharper, and animations — which are tough to do on E-ink in the first place — looked a bit smoother.
Amazon also significantly increased the complexity of the touchscreen grid. This change was far more noticeable, as I ended up with fewer false touches when I selected text, navigated from page to page and selected the new Kindle software-based features.
Last year, LED lighting was the big new thing in ereaders. Amazon and Barnes & Noble both introduced new devices featuring these internal light sources. Barnes & Noble's was slightly better because they did a better job of shedding consistent light over the top of the E-ink page. Now the Kindle Paperwhite has the edge. Amazon significantly improved the light channels at the base of the device to decrease the blooming effect that appeared with the last Kindle. Reading in a darkened room, the Kindle Paperwhite's lighting looked great.
The reading screen also looks great because the latest E-ink technology is noticeably better. Contrast is much higher so the grayish background of the page (areas without text), now looks much closer to white, or at least the off-white of a standard printed page.
Reading is Fun
At its very core, the Kindle Paperwhite is a reading device. Sure, it has an experimental web browser that almost no one uses, and the ability to register with and share from two of your favorite social networks, but it's really about reading. Fortunately, Amazon has added a couple of new tweaks that actually improve the overall experience.
The main one is Page Flip. Put simply, it lets you skim through books in much the same way you might a physical book. A touch of the menu bar at the top of the screen (it only appears when you touch the screen in that area) reveals a new navigation bar at the base of the screen. When you touch that, a slider appears. It lets you skim through pages and chapters, all while giving you completely readable thumbnails of the pages. To navigate to one of the pages, you just tap the thumbnail.
Page Flip worked well, though, sometimes it was a bit hard to control when the "flipping" would actually stop. I assume that, with some practice, I'll get better at flipping through digital pages so they don't fly by like an animated flipbook.
In general, though, I love this enhancement. It may sound like a fairly small thing, but for anyone who has been reading ebooks for years and found their myriad navigation and bookmarking methods inadequate, digitally thumbing through a 900-page tome is a godsend.
New Tools Galore
Like so many other improvements, Page Flip is intended to help the Paperwhite achieve the overarching goal of most ereaders: to make the experience as book-like as possible. Beyond that, it's getting hard to see how much more Amazon can improve the "reading" experience. However, Amazon is not shy about taking advantage of the Kindle Paperwhite's digital nature to add features, like X-Ray, that are impossible in print.
X-Ray is the tool that lets you learn more about any topic in any book you're reading. Along with the explanation, it shows you every instance of that topic/character/place in the book, lets you see the term in context and, if you choose, navigate to that page in the book. The Kindle Paperwhite's new software also enhances lookup features by combining the dictionary, X-Ray and third-party sources like Wikipedia into a tabbed interface it calls "Smart Lookup," which appears when you hold your finger down on a word. This worked perfectly for me.
In my view, books, even those I read for entertainment, are about learning, whether it's about story structure and character, or new locales and exotic vocabulary. I'm not ashamed to say that I often use Amazon's built-in dictionary to look up words. When I read physical books, I almost never stopped to pick up a separate dictionary to look up an unknown term. All ereaders have made this easier, but the Kindle Paperwhite may be the first one that collects the words you've looked up and then quizzes you on them.
A new feature called Vocabulary Builder (which has a dull cover and was sort of hidden in my Cloud collection) collects all the words you've looked up across all the books, magazines and textbooks you've been reading on the device. It lists the words either by book or as one large list. A tap on any one of the words reveals its dictionary definition and usage, and there's also an option that lets you delete the word from the Builder. The best part, though, is the Flashcards tool. Flashcards show you the context of the word, with the definition hidden on the other side. You can flip through the cards until you think you've mastered them and then delete the cards.
Another new feature that should appeal to the fact-checker in all of us is the Inline Footnotes tool. This works exactly as you would expect. A footnote has a little number over it, but instead of having to flip to the end of the ebook, you can now tap the number on the Kindle Paperwhite screen to see the footnote reference in a pop-up window. Both this and the Vocabulary Builder work smoothly, and each could be a real boon for students.
Not Yet
There were a couple of newly announced features — Goodreads integration and FreeTime parental controls — that I couldn't test because they haven't arrived on the Kindle Paperwhite yet. However, Amazon has promised that these features will be available soon. In the meantime, I didn't miss them much. Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite is really all you could want in an ereader: a great, clear E-ink display, a super-responsive touch screen, a smart, intuitive interface and a reasonable price.
You can certainly choose to spend more for the Whispernet 3G edition, which will give you access to the Amazon bookstore and ebooks wherever you are. But with near ubiquitous Wi-Fi and the fact that most of your time will be spent reading books and magazines stored locally on the Kindle Paperwhite, I don't see why you would.
The Lowdown:
The Good: The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is a pleasure to use, with crystal clear text and natural, book-like navigation.
The Bad: The Page Flip feature is awesome, as long as you can get it to slow down.
Bottom Line: If you want an ereader — and who doesn't — it's hard to do better than this device.
Image: Mashable
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