New Kindle Paperwhite hits September 30, starts at $119 (hands-on)
The new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader looks the same as the original Kindle Paperwhite until you turn on the screen. So how much better is it?
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Editors' note (September 27, 2013): In addition to the new video above, we'll be updating this to a full rated review of the Paperwhite. Check back later today.
Think of Amazon's new Kindle Paperwhite as the iPhone 5S of e-readers -- it looks nearly identical to the
On sale today for preorder and expected to ship at the end of the month, the new Paperwhite is the first shipping product to feature E-Ink's Pearl 2 display, which offers better contrast, along with 1GHz processor (25 percent faster than the 800MHz found in the original Paperwhite), a next-generation built-in light, and a more responsive touch-screen display that has a 19 percent tighter touch grid. It's also a hair lighter, weighing in at 7.3 ounces instead of 7.5 ounces.
I got an early look at the device and while the two models look the same (there's an Amazon logo on the back instead of a Kindle logo), the most immediate difference you notice is that the display looks whiter and the lighting is more uniform (the light is brighter at its highest setting). On the original Paperwhite, there was a bit of murkiness (sort of a clouding effect) at the bottom of the display when using the light, particularly at night. The light now displays more evenly across the bottom, though I'm sure some people will find some imperfections.
Compared side-by-side with the original, the old Paperwhite's display does look a little dull and gray. The official company line is that the "whites are whiter and the blacks are blacker, so pages are virtually indistinguishable from a physical book." Amazon doesn't offer up an exact percentage of how much it's managed to increase the contrast, but Peter Larsen, VP of Kindle product management, told me it's "double digits," though it varies slightly with each batch of e-ink so it's hard to put an exact number on it.
It's also worth mentioning that the new display requires less refreshing, which is sometimes referred to as flashing (e-ink screens need to be refreshed every so often to eliminate artifacts or "ghosting"). The previous model refreshed every six page turns and this model will refresh "about 50 percent less," according to Larsen.
As for battery life, it remains the same at up to 2 months with Wi-Fi off despite the bump in processor speed. I only had about 20 minutes with the device (Amazon didn't allow me to take pictures or video of it), so I can't verify that number, of course. It comes with the same 2GB of integrated storage (1.25GB available for user content), which Amazon says allows you to store up to 1,100 e-books. A Japanese version will include 4GB of storage.
The rest of the changes involve feature upgrades that Amazon has -- or will -- add through software updates.
These include Goodreads integration (Amazon bought the popular social reading and review site earlier this year), a Smart Lookup feature that streamlines the Dictionary, X-Ray, and Wikipedia look-up interface with a single, easy-to-access set of tabs, Kindle Page Flip (a sort of picture-in-picture page-scanning feature), and Vocabulary Builder, which keeps track of all the words you look up in the dictionary and allows you to create flashcards to help you learn those those words.
There's also a new In-Line Footnotes feature ("with a single tap read the complete text of each footnote in-line without changing the page") and Amazon will bring its kid-centric Kindle FreeTime feature to the device in a couple of months. FreeTime allows parents to lock their kids out of the Kindle store, create reading lists and goals, as well as track progress.
Some of the new software features will be available at launch while others, such as FreeTime and the Goodreads integration, will be released later this year.
Like the previous Paperwhite, the new model will start at $119 for a WiFi-only Special Offers version (it shows ads on the home screen when the screen goes to sleep or you power the device on). You can opt out of the ads for $20 extra, and a Wi-Fi + 3G model -- which lets you access Amazon's store over a cellular network at no extra charge -- will ship on November 5 for $189.
While I only had limited time with the new Kindle Paperwhite, it seems like a nice, if unspectacular upgrade that clearly improves on the previous Kindle Paperwhite but isn't loaded with wow factor (the new features seem pretty nifty, but the sizzle usually comes from design upgrades).
In other words, Amazon took a very good product and made it about 20-25 percent better. I have a feeling something similar will be said when Apple unveils the successor to the iPhone 5 next week.
Separately today, Amazon also rolled out its new Kindle Matchbook program, which lets customers purchase Kindle editions of certain print books purchased from Amazon -- past, present, and future -- for $2.99 or less. Larsen said that Amazon's in-house publishers were on board as well as Harper Collins. He expected other publishers to join the program soon as it was a no-brainer way to add incremental revenue.No word yet on Amazon's next-generation tablets, but we expect them to be unveiled soon. And for those hoping for an upgrade to the entry-level non-touch-screen Kindle ($69), Amazon didn't have any news there other than to say that the device will remain on the market. Perhaps we might even see it for less than $50 sometime this holiday season.