While the company is so much more than books now, its Kindle line remains the go-to eReader range for casual and avid readers alike. The Paperwhite isn’t the cheapest or dearest in the range but it marries good design, fair price and a much-needed backlight to make it the best Kindle for most people. Though if a backlight is really what you’re after, check out our review of the Kobo Clara HD. For the uninitiated, an eReader is a tablet intended purely for reading eBooks. Unlike a standard tablet almost all eReaders have e-ink rather than backlit displays. These look like paper and can be read for a long time without developing eyestrain. The best tablets are thinner and lighter than a paperback, and have luminescent displays so that you can read in the dark without putting on the light and disturbing your partner. And, to make it all worthwhile, an eReader can store thousands of books, and access hundreds and thousands more, needing a charge only once every few months or so. So they need decent storage and connectivity options. The Kindle Paperwhite satisfies all of this and more. But it doesn’t come especially cheap in some options.
Kindle Paperwhite price and availability
There are actually four price points for the Paperwhite though, as you can pay £119.99 for it to not have adverts on the lock screen. Should you not want to rely on a Wi-Fi connection for all your book downloading and syncing, there’s also a £169.99 version that has free, global 3G connectivity. This is actually amazing, meaning you can download books anywhere in the world where there is a 3G signal, completely free (apart from the cost of the books, obviously). Pay an extra £10 for no ads on this model and you have yourself a £189.99 Kindle Paperwhite. This is the model I was sent for review, but most buyers will be perfectly happy with the Wi-Fi only, ad-screen £109.99 model, because the essential reading experience on both is exactly the same.
Kindle Paperwhite design and build
At this price, then, we expect the best. And by and large we get it. The 2015 vintage Kindle Paperwhite is a thin and light black slab, with roughly the footprint of a paperback book, but much thinner and lighter. To be exact it measures 169 mm x 117 mm x 9.1 mm, and the Wi-Fi and 3G model we tried we weighed at around 219g. The Wi-Fi-only Kindle Paperwhite is a few grammes lighter. That 9mm thickness is enough to make the Kindle Paperwhite comfortable to grip. This is helped by the slightly rubbery feeling of the Paperwhite’s back, offering additional grip. And, of course, it is light. I read on this Kindle for hours, lying on my back, and never once felt uncomfortable. And I also put the Kindle Paperwhite through the mill, somewhat. It lived in the bottom of my work back, amongst the detritus, keys, smelly gym kit and discarded tech that I consider my critical work-related kit. Two weeks on and there is the odd faint smudge on the back cover, but nothing that doesn’t quickly rub away with a finger. The Kindle Paperwhite is built to last. For additional protection for your device, check out our selection of best Kindle cases and covers. It’s not a thing of beauty. But that is okay. The Kindle Paperwhite is good at what it does. Its ugliness stems from the thick black bezels that surround the display. If this was a smartphone you would be annoyed by the wasted space, but in my use I found the Paperwhite to be the right size to hold and use. And the pixels didn’t bother me when I was using it to read.
Display
This, ultimately, is the critical aspect of any eReader. What is the screen like, and how does it feel to read, read, read? In laymen’s terms that means it is an e-ink display that is backlit and super sharp. It is a beautiful reading experience, and when I was reading in bed next to my sleeping wife (and intermittently sleeping baby daughter), the backlit screen was great too. Clear, comfortable, but adjustable so that I could find a light that was not too bright for me or my bedroom partners. Indeed, my one complaint was that by default the backlit screen was too bright. You could use that thing as a torch. Reading outside in direct sunlight is also great. A real advantage of this kind of eReader over a general tablet. And the Kindle’s fonts are truly excellent, in the sense that – again – the reading experience is so comfortable.
Kindle Paperwhite features
Without leaving the page, you can query words you don’t understand in order to build your vocabulary and learn about characters within books. To be honest, although these features work well in my experience, I don’t have much use for them. You may!
Kindle Paperwhite battery life and connectivity
I found that I had to charge it around once every 10 days. In once case, after a week. I commute for two hours every day and read for most of that, and I tend to read for half an hour or so in the evening. The backlight is on at least once a day, and I never got around to switching off the wireless. All of these things will have legitimately hurt the battery life, but they are also part and parcel of using a well-loved device. Clearly 10 days is not six weeks, and I will admit to being mildly disappointed with the battery life. Irrationally so, because a week is a long battery charge, the Kindle warns you in good time, and there are myriad USB chargers at home. I can happily read in bed attached to a charging plug. I suspect slightly less than stellar battery life is a direct result of that amazing display resolution. Honestly, I would rather better battery life. Matt Egan is Global Editorial Director of IDG, publisher of Tech Advisor, and a passionate technology fan who writes on subjects as diverse as smartphones, internet security, social media and Windows.
