Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite sends the Kindle Voyage packing. The Voyage already struggled to justify its high $199.99 price tag beyond the strength of its 1,448-by-1,072-pixel, 300-ppi E Ink Carta screen, and the latest Paperwhite has the same sharp display, without raising its original base price of $119.99. It also has increased RAM for faster performance, along with access to Amazon's superlative ebook store. The Paperwhite is the best ebook reader you can get for the price, and an easy pick for our Editors' Choice.

Pricing, Design, and Display

First, it's worth mentioning there are a couple of different versions of the Paperwhite available. The standard Wi-Fi-only model costs $119.99 with "Special Offers" (Amazon's code for advertising, which is a full-page ad that appears onscreen when your Paperwhite is sleeping) and $139.99 ad-free. A version with 3G wireless connectivity—so you can download books any time, without the need for Wi-Fi—boosts the price to $189.99 with ads and $209.99 without. I tested the $209.99 version, but we're basing our rating on the base model, since most users will be fine with Wi-Fi and ads.

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Like the Voyage, the Paperwhite uses a six-inch Carta E Ink touch screen, with a resolution of 1,448 by 1,072 and 300 pixels per inch. Simply put, the display is terrific. Text is incredibly sharp and dark, and the screen is glare-free. I was able to read in direct sunlight, on the subway, on the bus, and everywhere else I carried it without issue. It's one of the best ebook reader screens you'll find, although it lacks the adaptive backlight in the Voyage, which is basically an automatic brightness sensor. And it doesn't get as bright as the Kindle Oasis, although you'll have no trouble seeing it in the dark. The Paperwhite is also missing the Voyage's page turn buttons on the left and right bezels. These are small nitpicks though, since the Paperwhite's brightness is easy to adjust via the onscreen menu, and the touch screen is perfectly usable for turning pages and moving around the interface.

The 3G version of the Paperwhite weighs 7.2 ounces and measures 6.7 by 4.6 by 0.4 inches (HWD). Placing it in a case will add to that, but it never felt too heavy or uncomfortable to read. The power port is still on the bottom, alongside an LED charging indicator and the Power button. Once again, there is no headphone jack, because audiobook support isn't available.

Unfortunately, Amazon has yet to make its Kindle lineup waterproof, something that the Kobo Glo HD and the Kobo Aura H2O can boast. It would be great to take the new Paperwhite in the tub or to the beach, but the lack of water resistance is by no means a deal breaker here.

Features

The Paperwhite has a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM (an increase from the second-generation's 256MB), for all-around faster performance. It uses 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, or 3G data on AT&T's network to download ebooks to its 4GB of internal storage. There is no external memory support, but there is free cloud storage, so you can carry your ebook library across any variety of devices that can download Amazon's Kindle app. You can even link Amazon accounts together using the Family Library feature, so you can easily share Kindle books with one another. A new About This Book feature reveals information about the title you're currently reading, its author, and its place in a series, too.

Amazon's Goodreads social network is included as well, which you can access by tapping on the "g" icon in the toolbar at the top of the screen. From there, you can follow friends, view your shelved books, share passages while reading, see what friends are reading, and rate books in a manner similar to the Amazon.com storefront. You can also update lists like what you're currently reading, what you have read, and what you want to read.

FreeTime also returns here, a feature that lets you create profiles for kids so you can set reading goals for them. It tracks accomplishments, awards achievements, and generally encourages better reading habits. It makes the Paperwhite kid-proof too, locking out the Kindle Store, Goodreads, Wikipedia, and the (beta, rudimentary) Web browser, so kids don't get distracted or go shopping.

The Paperwhite lasts a long time on a single charge. I received my review unit at half-charge and used it for a couple of days before it needed juice. Amazon promises "weeks" of battery life, but that's only if you read for 30 minutes per day. In any case, your mileage will obviously vary depending on how often you use it, but you can read for hours on end without worrying about finding a power outlet. When you need to charge, just plug the included standard micro USB cable into an outlet adapter (not included) or a computer and you're good to go.

Interface and Reading Experience

If you're familiar with Amazon's previous Paperwhite models, or other Kindles, then you'll feel right at home here. When you turn the Paperwhite, you'll see a row of icons at the top of the screen for Home, Back, Brightness, Cart, Search, Goodreads, and Menu, along with six covers of books you currently have in the cloud or on your device below. You can easily switch between the cloud and local storage by tapping Cloud or On Device below the toolbar.

If you open a book and tap near the top of the screen, you'll bring up a similar row of icons like Home, Back, Brightness, and so on, along with options to adjust the font, navigate to a specific page or location in the book, share to Facebook or Twitter, or bookmark pages. The bottom of the screen displays how much reading time you have left based on your reading pace.

To read a book is quite simple. You merely have to tap the right or far left side of the screen to progress forward or backward. I flipped through several chapters of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Mike Davis' Planet of Slums with nary a problem. Reading felt just like a physical book, the screen barely refreshed (turned to black), and my eyes never experienced any discomfort.

Amazon Store and Conclusions

The Kindle Store is still the ruler of the roost in the ebook space, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon. So if you want the best ebook selection available at the best prices, you will probably want to go with an Amazon device. You can also subscribe to magazines and newspapers, and Amazon Prime users can borrow books for free from an extensive list of titles. Then there's the Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service, which is like a Netflix for books that gives you access to over a million titles for $9.99 per month.

In addition to the native Kindle protected formats AZW and AZW3, the Paperwhite supports TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC, HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP files. Notably absent, as usual, is EPUB, which limits your public library and Internet sharing options; this is still where Barnes and Noble and Kobo have an edge over Amazon. But you can connect the Kindle Paperwhite as a USB mass storage device with a PC or Mac, so it's not like you're only stuck with Amazon's store downloads. For more on this, see How to Put Free Ebooks on Your Amazon Kindle.

All in all, the Kindle Paperwhite is the right ebook reader for most people. That said, while the upgrade in resolution is easy to see, it's probably not enough of a reason to upgrade from your second-generation Paperwhite. But if you're upgrading from an older ebook reader, or just buying one for the first time, the new Paperwhite is a no-brainer.

As for other E Ink-based ebook alternatives, the Kobo Glo HD offers similar sharp fonts with a screen that matches the resolution of the new Paperwhite and the Voyage—plus it's waterproof—but it's slightly more expensive than the Paperwhite and lacks Amazon's winning ebook ecosystem. And while the Kindle Oasis remains Amazon's high-end ebook reader, you simply can't beat the Paperwhite for sheer value. It's a fantastic deal for the price, and our top Editors' Choice.