Kindle Paperwhite Review

The Kindle Paperwhite could be the most advanced e-reader around with its patented built-in light, 62% more pixels for a higher resolution, an eight week battery life and room for over 1,000 books. Matt Mira and Rob Huebel test out the features on Amazon's latest e-reader for Gadget Pr0n.

What You Need To Know

• The new Kindle Paperwhite has a 6" eInk display with a higher contrast and higher resolution than the previous model.
• It features a new LED lighting system that simulates bright white paper.
• The design has only one physical button for the power.
• The weight of this was surprisingly a little heavier than expected.
• The Paperwhite feels very balanced with the extra weight feeling evenly distributed.
• The back has a slight texture which helps with the grip.
• The front plastic really tends to ipck up the oil on your fingers.
• The advantage of the Kindle ofr a tablet is that the screen is easy on the eyes.
• In this case, the Paperwhite screen is excellent: the contrast levels are perfect for tricking your eyes into thinking you are actually reading ink on paper.
• Our problem was the touch screen itself: the screen is broken up into sections where touching different portions will do different things.
• For example, turning the page requires you to hit either the left or the right side of the screen.
• The inclination is to read with one hand, so this function made changing pages somewhat of an annoyance.
• The touch screen was also very sensitive when we didn't want it to be and not response enough when we needed to select specific things, such as text size.
• The Paperwhite has new software that can tell you slowly you read, which you can access by hitting the very bottom of the screen.
• It gauges the reading time to tell you how long you have left in the chapter or even the book itself.
• When you hit the top of the screen, you find other controls, including X-Ray (just indexes the book on available titles).
• The backlight is a welcome addition and we found ourselves using it even when there was a lot of light around.
• We did find it to be a bit uneven and sometimes the contrast on the lettering towards the bottom was weaker than at the top.

Price

• $119

Rating

• 4 Seals of Approval out of 5. (How do we rate gadgets?)
• The price is competitive with the Barnes & Noble Nook but still feels a little expensive.
• Their option for cloud storage is great.
• Amazon's content library is still unmatched.
• If you're looking for a great e-reader with a backlight and Amazon's new software, this is the way to go.

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