What are the more recent Kindles like? (ie. ebook readers, not gen. purpose tablets)

[mikeymikec]

A few people I know have a Kindle. IMO while there are a few appreciable aspects of the design (long battery life, easier to read in sunlit areas), it has always bothered me how low-resolution the text quality was, as well as how long the screen took to update from one page to another. Perhaps the low-end CPU and the poor quality screen (by mobile/tablet standards) are what help the Kindle to keep its power usage low, but anyway.

Admittedly it would have to be a pretty compelling argument for me to stop using my Nexus 5 for ebook reading and shell out for a Kindle, but I'm curious: Have the more recent Kindles improved wrt the points I mentioned?

From my minimal usage of Kindles, it seems like some screen contents can take multiple seconds to update (responding to a screen touch, loading a store page, turning a book page, etc).

 

[ControlD]

My wife has a Paper White and the response time is pretty good. When you flip pages, it is basically like doing it on a real book time-wise. There isn't much of a delay.

Personally I still prefer reading books on a tablet so I can have side by side pages, but as far as the technology goes the newer Kindles are perfectly adequate.

 

[Dulanic]

I have a paperwhite which I upgraded to from a Kindle keyboard. The response time is MUCH faster on the paperwhite. I don't notice any lag, but I haven't really "looked" for it specifically.

I personally like the display type on the kindles, it looks and feels like a book which is the draw to it IMO. I personally can't stand reading on a backlit LCD screen, at least book wise.

 

[mikeymikec]

I usually read at night, so I set the backlight down to minimum, trying to read a bright screen is hard work on my eyes (I have my monitor set to eco mode most of the time, switch it to normal mode for gaming).

 

[gorcorps]

Every gen of Kindle has improved on screen resolution, and the built in backlights are awesome. I've never been a big physical book person, so having such an awesome digital reader has me reading books more often than I would have otherwise.

Buy one. At the very least, go to Best Buy and try theirs out.

Then buy it. Get the paperwhite at the minimum, but frankly I think even the Voyage is worth the extra. If you buy it through Amazon it's $50 off for prime members right now.

 

[stlc8tr]

A few people I know have a Kindle. IMO while there are a few appreciable aspects of the design (long battery life, easier to read in sunlit areas), it has always bothered me how low-resolution the text quality was, as well as how long the screen took to update from one page to another. Perhaps the low-end CPU and the poor quality screen (by mobile/tablet standards) are what help the Kindle to keep its power usage low, but anyway.

The newest Kindle PW is 300 ppi (up from 212 ppi). And since it's eInk, it looks much better than even higher PPI LCD/OLED displays, IMO.

 

[Demo24]

Bought GF a paperwhite for Christmas and I've been reading a book on it lately. I rather like it to be honest, more so than I'd thought. Screen refresh for pages isn't too bad, maybe <1 second? It's faster than physically turning a page so that's all that really matters. I like that I can change fonts, font size, illumination, dictionary, etc. The new screen makes text pretty clear in my opinion.

Where it slows down is in the menus. I think the latest update helped things overall, but that part is still tap-and-wait kind of style. It's not like you dive into menus very often so that's not a big deal.

I wish it had physical buttons as I don't like touching the screen so much (texture issue), and I do find it mildly awkward to hold lying down in bed. Battery life is of course much better than a tablet and I also hate reading on those type screens.

However, I'd wait about a week as Amazon stated their going to unveil a new high end Kindle.

 

[Mike64]

Sorry to semi-hijack your thread, but I lost my Kindle (tablet) a couple of days ago so find myself suddenly in the market for a new device. I'll probably end up with a tablet since I rarely eread outdoors let alone in bright light/sun and prefer the flexibility of the tablet, but the Paperwhite - while seeming to me kind of expensive for a completely single-purpose device - is pretty cool. Except that as far as I can tell, one is completely tied to Kindle's ebook format. Is that correct? I'm fairly sure there are no workarounds as far as non-Amazon ebook formats go (since the PWs can't run "apps") but can you not even send PDFs to the Paperwhites, letting Amazon convert them to whatever format they need to be in, the way you can send stuff to the tablets with the PC-based "send to Kindle" utility?

 

[biostud]

I have the Kindle Voyage with 300dpi display (I've also had the original kindle), and the display is really good.

@Mike64 you can use it for pdf reading without any problems, you just transfer them via the USB cable. Also use the Calibre software to manage the content of the Kindle.

 

[sbpromania]

I bought a PocketBook Touch Lux 2 recently, after owning a Kindle 4, for a few years. I taught that the speed will be way above the Kindle, but unfortunately it's not so fast.

However, I don't think that the speed is so important, after all, you don't open 3 books in 1 minute, and the page turning is almost instant for almost any reader.

 

[gorcorps]

Sorry to semi-hijack your thread, but I lost my Kindle (tablet) a couple of days ago so find myself suddenly in the market for a new device. I'll probably end up with a tablet since I rarely eread outdoors let alone in bright light/sun and prefer the flexibility of the tablet, but the Paperwhite - while seeming to me kind of expensive for a completely single-purpose device - is pretty cool. Except that as far as I can tell, one is completely tied to Kindle's ebook format. Is that correct? I'm fairly sure there are no workarounds as far as non-Amazon ebook formats go (since the PWs can't run "apps") but can you not even send PDFs to the Paperwhites, letting Amazon convert them to whatever format they need to be in, the way you can send stuff to the tablets with the PC-based "send to Kindle" utility?

You can send other file formats to the kindle. You can even do it over email (your kindle device gets its own Amazon email for this purpose).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email

 

[corkyg]

My wife has a Paper White, and she loves it. I maintain it and load books for her. To preserve battery life, put it on Airplane Mode except when loading or unloading books.

 

[gorcorps]

My wife has a Paper White, and she loves it. I maintain it and load books for her. To preserve battery life, put it on Airplane Mode except when loading or unloading books.

I haven't done any tests to compare, but after using it a while I wasn't noticing that much of an impact to battery life just leaving wifi on. That way my last page read is always in-sync with the server in case I ever want to read it on another device. It doesn't happen often, but it's nice to know it's an option.

 

[stlc8tr]

You can send other file formats to the kindle. You can even do it over email (your kindle device gets its own Amazon email for this purpose).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email

Or use Calibre to convert from ePub (or whatever format) to AZW3 (the latest KF8/Kindle format).

 

[Mike64]

@Mike64 you can use it for pdf reading without any problems, you just transfer them via the USB cable. Also use the Calibre software to manage the content of the Kindle.

Or use Calibre to convert from ePub (or whatever format) to AZW3 (the latest KF8/Kindle format).

You can send other file formats to the kindle. You can even do it over email (your kindle device gets its own Amazon email for this purpose).

Thanks, all, that makes more sense than what I was seeing on the Amazon forums (useless wastes of server space that they mostly are) which seemed to be saying that the Paperwhites could literally display only Kindle/AZW3 formatted files. I also wasn't familiar with the Calibre software you've mentioned, but I'll look into it. I'm still leaning toward a generic Android tablet rather than a Paperwhite (much less a Kindle Fire), but this gives me some food for thought...

 

[boomerang]

I have a Paperwhite I use pretty much daily. Once in a great while (once, maybe twice a year) I find that it slows down to a crawl or even fails to respond when flipping pages. Guess what fixes it? Rebooting it! Who'da thunk?

 

[gorcorps]

Thanks, all, that makes more sense than what I was seeing on the Amazon forums (useless wastes of server space that they mostly are) which seemed to be saying that the Paperwhites could literally display only Kindle/AZW3 formatted files. I also wasn't familiar with the Calibre software you've mentioned, but I'll look into it. I'm still leaning toward a generic Android tablet rather than a Paperwhite (much less a Kindle Fire), but this gives me some food for thought...

I would never bother with a Kindle Fire, but an e-ink Kindle is worth having even if you have a tablet IMO.

You only have to fall asleep reading and drop your kindle on your face once to appreciate how much lighter it is =P

 

[Mike64]

I would never bother with a Kindle Fire, but an e-ink Kindle is worth having even if you have a tablet IMO.

You only have to fall asleep reading and drop your kindle on your face once to appreciate how much lighter it is =P

I didn't choose the Kindle Fire (vs a regular tablet) myself, actually (it was a gift), but OTOH, I wouldn't have bought myself any sort of tablet or ereader 2 years ago to begin with (the clincher for me was what turned out to be huge ebook collections at my local libraries, which I had no clue about until I'd gotten it) so I was pretty pleased to have anything that let me save as much on "light reading" material as it has over the couple of years I managed to hold onto it. (I read a lot, and I read that sort of stuff very quickly, so at today's prices, "quick reads" are outrageously overpriced as far as I'm concerned and I basically never bought anything along those lines I couldn't find second-hand for a couple of bucks - which was acceptable to me, but obviously seriously limited my choices...)

I actually sleep on my side, or at least fall asleep on my side, so dropping it on my face has never been an issue. Though since you mention falling asleep reading on it, how does Paperwhite work out in total darkness? I found that between changing the screen color to light text on a black background and then using an after-market app to dim the overall lighting way down, the regular screen was very easy to read with the lights off and - unlike black text on even a dimmed, "sepia" backlit background - didn't interfere with me falling asleep in the least...

The other thing is that I do 90% of my e-reading on public transportation, where I simultaneously use the Fire's (or going forward, another tablet's) music-playing capability. With the Paperwhite, I'd have to buy a separate MP3 player, which I'd also basically never use except when sitting on the subway or a bus... So while the eInk display does sound/look pretty cool, I'm not sure it's worth the extra expense/hassle in my specific scenario. (And I'm really not looking to spend the fairly serious money to buy all of a tablet and a Paperwhite and an MP3 player right now....)

 

[gorcorps]

I didn't choose the Kindle Fire (vs a regular tablet) myself, actually (it was a gift), but OTOH, I wouldn't have bought myself any sort of tablet or ereader 2 years ago to begin with (the clincher for me was what turned out to be huge ebook collections at my local libraries, which I had no clue about until I'd gotten it) so I was pretty pleased to have anything that let me save as much on "light reading" material as it has over the couple of years I managed to hold onto it. (I read a lot, and I read that sort of stuff very quickly, so at today's prices, "quick reads" are outrageously overpriced as far as I'm concerned and I basically never bought anything along those lines I couldn't find second-hand for a couple of bucks - which was acceptable to me, but obviously seriously limited my choices...)

I actually sleep on my side, or at least fall asleep on my side, so dropping it on my face has never been an issue. Though since you mention falling asleep reading on it, how does Paperwhite work out in total darkness? I found that between changing the screen color to light text on a black background and then using an after-market app to dim the overall lighting way down, the regular screen was very easy to read with the lights off and - unlike black text on even a dimmed, "sepia" backlit background - didn't interfere with me falling asleep in the least...

The other thing is that I do 90% of my e-reading on public transportation, where I simultaneously use the Fire's (or going forward, another tablet's) music-playing capability. With the Paperwhite, I'd have to buy a separate MP3 player, which I'd also basically never use except when sitting on the subway or a bus... So while the eInk display does sound/look pretty cool, I'm not sure it's worth the extra expense/hassle in my specific scenario. (And I'm really not looking to spend the fairly serious money to buy all of a tablet and a Paperwhite and an MP3 player right now....)

The paperwhite backlight is able to get very dim to help not throw too much light at your face. I can't say I've compared sleeping habits so I can't give much of a comparison, but I haven't noticed much difference between nights I read and nights I don't.

You do have a point with the music. For me, I'd always have my phone on me which has all my music so that wouldn't affect me, but it's still a good point to warrant having a full blown tablet in some situations. I do the vast majority of my reading at home, a lot of it in bed while falling asleep. If I was using public transportation a lot then a full blown tablet might be a better choice. When I travel, I'm pretty happy with my phone + e-reader. Since the battery life on the Kindles are so long I have one less thing to worry about keeping charged. Still, there's reasons for both and I can see times where having either one would be preferable.

 

[Mike64]

The paperwhite backlight is able to get very dim to help not throw too much light at your face. I can't say I've compared sleeping habits so I can't give much of a comparison, but I haven't noticed much difference between nights I read and nights I don't.

You do have a point with the music. For me, I'd always have my phone on me which has all my music so that wouldn't affect me, but it's still a good point to warrant having a full blown tablet in some situations. I do the vast majority of my reading at home, a lot of it in bed while falling asleep. If I was using public transportation a lot then a full blown tablet might be a better choice. When I travel, I'm pretty happy with my phone + e-reader. Since the battery life on the Kindles are so long I have one less thing to worry about keeping charged. Still, there's reasons for both and I can see times where having either one would be preferable.

I suppose what I really need to do - d'uh - is remember to check out the Paperwhite in person the next time I'm in or near a Best Buy, which is actually pretty often, including later this afternoon when I finally manage to drag my butt out to do some errands...

That's also a good point about the phone. So far, I've resisted moving to a smartphone since I don't have any real "need" for one and am really not all that far from some sort of web access most of the day anyway (not to mention that I have somewhat of a (perhaps excessive<lol>) attachment to the "Quick Search" contact-lookup feature on my flip phone<lol>), but sooner rather than later I suppose I really should join the 21st century, in which case I'll have that as a music player, too...

 

[biostud]

Only reason I got a smartphone, was my mp3 player died in a washing accident an my p/s camera got stolen.

 

[jhansman]

All I can tell ya is I got my wife and daughter Paperwhites, and they love me.

 

[Demo24]

The paperwhite backlight is able to get very dim to help not throw too much light at your face. I can't say I've compared sleeping habits so I can't give much of a comparison, but I haven't noticed much difference between nights I read and nights I don't.

You do have a point with the music. For me, I'd always have my phone on me which has all my music so that wouldn't affect me, but it's still a good point to warrant having a full blown tablet in some situations. I do the vast majority of my reading at home, a lot of it in bed while falling asleep. If I was using public transportation a lot then a full blown tablet might be a better choice. When I travel, I'm pretty happy with my phone + e-reader. Since the battery life on the Kindles are so long I have one less thing to worry about keeping charged. Still, there's reasons for both and I can see times where having either one would be preferable.

Pretty much this, the paper white can turn it's light off if you don't need it or adjust up to pretty bright. This helps avoid any kind of eye strain for me, which after looking at LCDs all day can be a factor. Best thing really is I feel like I'm reading an actual book due to how the screen looks with text.

Also the Kindle is lighter and smaller than most tablets if that's of concern.

 

[Kaido]

Looks like they just came out with a new Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00REQKWGA/

The Kindle Oasis:

http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/13/amazon-kindle-oasis/

I got my wife the new Paperwhite. The screen is great, it's crazy lightweight, and the backlight is a must-have feature imo. However, I don't really care for the way it changes pages (it looks like a B&W computer glitch from a Hollywood movie...it's fairly quick, but it always looks like the screen is scrambling Matrix-style for a split second) & I also kind of hate the ergonomics. It's hard to hold in just one hand without touching the touchscreen. imo, the second-gen Kindle had the best design: a nice thick bezel for your fingers, plus click buttons for your thumbs, plus the bottom keyboard area for holding with one hand (your thumb could go over the keyboard area to hold it single-handedly):

They added a hump on the new Oasis model to make it easier to hold it one-handed. Only downside is it costs $289! I'm not really sure why it costs so much...it has the same screen as the Voyage & new Paperwhite, which is literally half the cost.

 

[gorcorps]

Looks like they just came out with a new Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00REQKWGA/

The Kindle Oasis:

http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/13/amazon-kindle-oasis/

I got my wife the new Paperwhite. The screen is great, it's crazy lightweight, and the backlight is a must-have feature imo. However, I don't really care for the way it changes pages (it looks like a B&W computer glitch from a Hollywood movie...it's fairly quick, but it always looks like the screen is scrambling Matrix-style for a split second) & I also kind of hate the ergonomics. It's hard to hold in just one hand without touching the touchscreen. imo, the second-gen Kindle had the best design: a nice thick bezel for your fingers, plus click buttons for your thumbs, plus the bottom keyboard area for holding with one hand (your thumb could go over the keyboard area to hold it single-handedly):

They added a hump on the new Oasis model to make it easier to hold it one-handed. Only downside is it costs $289! I'm not really sure why it costs so much...it has the same screen as the Voyage & new Paperwhite, which is literally half the cost.

Wow, they've quite often suckered me into their new kindles but that's a lot more than I'm willing to swallow. I do like the new form factor as it looks easier to hold in one hand that way. I'm not impressed that they shrunk the battery down, then had to include a power cover to make up for it... and then of course force you to buy it by including it from the get-go. I'd rather have it be cheaper and give me an option to get the cover when I want.