Kindle Paperwhite Review
I decided to upgrade my Kindle Keyboard to the new Kindle Paperwhite. I wouldn’t usually replace a device so soon (just two years after buying it), but my girlfriend was thinking of getting the basic £69 Kindle. I used that as an excuse to let her have my old one so I could try out the new model with the built-in light.
My first impression is that the lighted screen is beautiful to read from, and it makes it easy to read in complete darkness. That’s the real benefit here. Whether in bed at night or outside in the sun, the screen looks great. You may read reviews complaining about some unevenness in the lighting along the bottom of the screen. Yes, I noticed that, but it’s really not an issue, since that part of the display only shows progress information, not the book’s text.
Unfortunately, the touch screen is a major step backwards for page turning. Instead of two large buttons on each side of the device for backwards and forwards, there’s an invisible grid on the screen: tap on the far left to go back, tap in the middle or right to go forwards, and tap at the top to bring up the menu. It feels clumsy and keeps this device from being the perfect reading tool. The touch screen does make the virtual keyboard easy to use, so buying books is much simpler. However, I spend about 0.0001% of my time on the Kindle inputting text, so I’d be happy to do without that. I often find myself losing my place in a book because I’ve gone forwards instead of back by mistake.
So I’m mixed about this one. A great screen, but missing physical buttons. I guess Amazon needs to save something to tempt people into upgrading again next year 😉