The holidays must be approaching. The air outside is getting cooler, Starbucks probably has some new drink with fall-flavored syrup, new iPhones are about to ship, and new Kindles have just been announced.
The new Kindle Voyage looks awesome. It’s Amazon’s new, top-of-the-line Kindle device. The Paperwhite from last year is still available and has remain unchanged except it now has more internal storage. And the bottom-of-the-line Kindle now has a touch screen.
Three years ago I bought a Kindle Touch when it first came out and instantly fell in love with both the hardware and the ecosystem. One year later, I upgraded to the Paperwhite because I do most of my Kindle reading in the evening and having an illuminated display was a no-brainer.
Today’s new Voyage is a significant step up from the Paperwhite. It’s thinner, it weighs less, and it also has some great new hardware features which improve on the three areas I have most wished for improvement in my Paperwhite.
- The Voyage has a higher resolution display. The Paperwhite’s 212 PPI display is great, but 300 PPI is better. That’s equivalent to print resolution.
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Better lighting. I have a first-generation Paperwhite, and the lighting is uneven at best. In my review from two years ago I wrote:
By far, my biggest complaint against the Kindle Paperwhite is with the way the lights illuminate the bottom of the screen. Underneath the bottom bezel of my Kindle are four LED lights, shining upwards to light up the screen. Yet they shine like spotlights, and it’s not until about 3/4 of an inch up the screen that their light beams blend into one another and you get a soft, even lighting.
This is common. All the Paperwhites have it and nobody likes it. The darker your reading environment, the more pronounced the uneven lighten is. It’s unfortunate for sure, but it is what it is and by no means is it a deal breaker.
The 2nd generation Paperwhite improved on this with a more (though not completely) uniform lighting. And though Amazon doesn’t say anything about the actual lighting (the display is still lit by a few LEDs along the bottom), but the new Voyager does have a sensor that auto brightens / dims the lighting based on the ambient light in the room. And so, the lighting is probably not yet perfect, but the best it’s ever been.
- In the two years which have passed since I wrote the above, my “biggest complaint” has changed. It’s no longer the lighting, it’s the lack of a hardware page turn button. The way the Kindle Paperwhite works is that you tap on the screen itself to turn the page. The problem with this is that if you are reading with one hand — it’s quite easy to hold the Kindle with one hand, and so it’s common to be reading with one hand — it’s not easy to roll your thumb over onto the screen to turn the page. It’s even worse if you’re holding the Kindle with your left hand, because the left-side margin is where you tap to go back a page, not forward.
Turning the page is arguably the single most common interaction you will perform with the Kindle, and it’s just not super great on the Paperwhite.
The new Kindle Voyage is now the only Kindle with a dedicated button for turning pages. They call it a “PagePress” button and it’s a pressure-based turn sensor with haptic feedback that (should) make it easier to turn the pages when holding the Kindle with one hand.
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If you’re someone who enjoys reading, the Kindle is a delightful device.
I stare at lit-up computer screens almost all day long. And though I could read my Kindle books from my iPad mini, having a paper-like e-ink screen and a single-purpose little lightweight gadget is a most welcomed change of pace in my day.
But that’s not all. Dedicated hardware aside, there is another huge advantage to reading Kindle books over iBooks. And that is the Kindle Highlights library.
Log in to kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights and there you will find all of your highlights and notes from all the books you’ve read. This is, by far, one of my favorite features of the Kindle ecosystem.
I mostly read nonfiction books, and I highlight stuff like crazy. These highlights are how I revisit and rediscover the books I’ve read.
Additionally, when I’m browsing on the Amazon Kindle store and see a book I’m interested in, I don’t buy it right away. Instead I send the sample to my Kindle, and my Kindle’s Home screen doubles as both my library and my queue.
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The Voyage is the flagship Kindle for a reason. It has refined and improved on all the “shortcomings” of the Paperwhite. However, if $200 bucks is more than you want to spend on a Kindle, then get the Paperwhite. Unless you really just want the cheapest possible Kindle, I would not recommend you get the new (plain) Kindle. I owned a Kindle Touch when they first came out, and though it was pretty great, paying an extra $40 is well worth it for having a higher-resolution, illuminated screen.
As for with or without 3G — only you can answer that question, but I bet you don’t need it. There are a lot of places where having LTE on your iPad is handy, but how many places do you really need cellular connectivity for your Kindle? For me, it’d only be when I’m going on a camping trip where I’ll be without wi-fi. But it’s easy enough to make sure my Kindle is in sync before I walk out the door, and it’s not like I’m going to plow through my entire queue of unread Kindle books over a weekend outdoors. And even if I did, my iPhone doubles as a wi-fi hot spot, so if I desperately needed to connect my Kindle to the internet then I could just do so via my iPhone.
And as for with or without Special Offers, get your Kindle with them and you can always pay the extra $20 later to turn them off. I’ve had them displayed on mine since 2011 and they kinda bug me but not that much. There’s no point in paying the $20 extra now when you can just as easily pay it later.
And so, if you decide to get a Kindle, do me a favor and use one of these links. I’ll get a small kickback from Amazon which helps me keep the lights on here. Thanks.