Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite

The hardware&#x27;s fine, but software-wise Kindle is still a horrible ereader. It still refuses to read epubs, the de-facto ebook format used by the rest of the world. Its native formats are terrible: mobi is an ancient, horrible proprietary binary format. If you get a nicer modern mobi but use &quot;send to Kindle&quot; to transfer it, Amazon inexplicably and silently removes all advanced formatting, effectively downgrading it to a mobi from 2002. azw3, its own proprietary format that competes with its other two proprietary formats (the third being kfx), is kind of a repackaged epub but more annoying to create, not open source, still lacking in many of the formatting features we expect from ebooks in 2021, and <i>incompatible with &quot;send to Kindle&quot;!!</i> The fact that Amazon has three competing proprietary ebook formats, each more terrible than the last and one of which literally can&#x27;t be sent to its own devices, should be telling.<p>Kindle software is software made by people who hate reading. If you want an ereader, get literally any other device. Don&#x27;t support Amazon&#x27;s disdain for the market it has a stranglehold on.

So let me give my review of using kindle for the last three years.<p>I feel like kindle have two kinds of users:<p>- Orthodox user: only buy amazon books<p>- Unorthodox user: sideload books because doesn’t agree with drm or any other valid reason.<p>Ways in which amazon mess with unorthodox users:<p>- you can only sync using mobi and now you have a completely crippled book with horrible formatting;<p>- you have an almost good enough formatting with azw3 + calibre css kung fu but now you don’t have sync;<p>- want to see the cover on your sideloaded book? You need to either use it offline or use calibre workaround disconnecting the usb and reconnecting after sideloading it.<p>- Want to jailbreak your device? if you’re on the newest firmware you’re absolutely out of luck<p>So, if you’re an unorthodox user, do yourself a favor and buy any other brand of ereader. God knows whatelse amazon will do to nudge us into their walled garden on the years to come.

Very nice to see they finally moved to USB-C. I will buy it (broke my previous paperwhite trying to hack a usb-c component into it) since that&#x27;s the last piece of hardware I own that still hadn&#x27;t upgraded to USB-C. It&#x27;s still bonkers to me that I can charge my macbook, android and kindle with the same cable but if you are &quot;all Apple&quot; you need at least 3 different cables. It seems that even Apple is slowly moving over though, the holdouts used to be &quot;Apple and Kindle&quot; and now it&#x27;s just &quot;some Apple devices&quot;.

I&#x27;ve been using a 2nd gen Paperwhite for a long time. This might be the one I upgrade to (for the waterproofing and the warm light).<p>I really don&#x27;t like Amazon though, so it&#x27;s been a hard justification. Kindle is the only thing left I use that is Amazon.<p>I&#x27;ve thought about switching to Kobo, but I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s worth it with how easy everything is on the Kindle.<p>I run a docker container with Calibre, and I use it to send all my books to the Kindle over e-mail. I would lose that functionality on the Kobo. I&#x27;d have to go back to manually syncing which would be a pain.

<i>Amazon has shrunken down the bezels on the new Paperwhite. Given that the bezels are the primary place that you generally hold a Kindle, we’ll have to see the new device in person to gauge how that change works, although generally smaller bezels are a good thing in the tech world.</i><p>In my experience thin bezels are a liability in an e-reader. The thin bezel means I often accidentally touch the screen and it advances (or goes back) to another page.

One thing I hate about my Kindle: How it handles photos. Books have photos, even nerdy history books (like I read). Photos on the Kindle are small, difficult to enlarge&#x2F;zoom and just plain terrible.

An apparent major increase in battery life is good to see, because the battery life on Kindles has been going downhill for a while.<p>It doesn&#x27;t help that Amazon insists on marketing them &quot;based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13&quot;. This doesn&#x27;t align with my reading habits, so there&#x27;s always a bit of subliminal disappointment at misleading-promises.

Pumped for this, I had the most basic model for a long while but unfortunately left it on a plane and haven&#x27;t been back to the US&#x2F;EU to replace it.<p>Anyone who used the previous Paperwhite version have thoughts on the tradeoffs of this versus the most basic version or an Ipad? I read a lot and might use something like an Ipad for netflix but I basically perpetually have my laptop with me anyways (just don&#x27;t enjoy reading on it as I like something I can slip in my back pocket).

I bought an Oasis for the warm light option and it was well worth it. My use case is reading in bed and the old Paperwhite would hurt my eyes no matter what setting I used. The Oasis, with the the ability to use warm light and invert to light text on a dark background made it possible for me to read comfortably in a dark room.<p>The problem as always is not being able to quickly navigate around a book. Not a huge problem for linear fiction but for anything else, even more complex fiction (I&#x27;m currently reading The Divine Comedy), it&#x27;s really annoying when you want to jump forward and back through the text. End notes are getting better with links that open up an overlay on the page but if I want to reference a previous section of the book I have to figure out where that section is and how to get there, sometimes using the search function -- all of this means I rarely bother.<p>I have a book light that was too bright so I wrapped a few layers of masking tape over it to make it much dimmer and warmer. I&#x27;m going to start using that with physical books I think.

Are page turns near instant yet?<p>I&#x27;m on a 6yr old Paperwhite Kindle still, still have another 9yr old one that works too (these things last forever).

Guess who bought a Paperwhite 2 months ago?<p>Anyways, despite the new model I&#x27;m still fairly happy with my purchase. I don&#x27;t read a lot (in fact I bought the Kindle just to use it while on a vacation), but I have to admit that epaper in general is something I never had the need to use - until I tried the Kindle.<p>The software still sucks though, but that will probably not change with an upgraded HW release :)<p>As other people mentioned here, Amazon is really locking in their users on formats that are beneficial to them only - but for its price I guess that these kind of limitations are okay-ish

For anyone looking for a more open experience, I have had only positive things to say about the Likebook P6. It&#x27;s a 6inch android powered eink ereader that is around 120-140. It only has 1gb of ram and aggressive background task sleeping so it&#x27;s not going to competing with any regular tablet, but it&#x27;s a lot better than kindle in my opinion. You can run the kindle android app, libby, overdrive, scibd, and my favorite app for reading Moon+ Reader.<p>It&#x27;s not going to be as simple as a Kindle but for anyone who understands what sideloading is (books or apps), I strongly recommend it. There&#x27;s are larger screen p78 (7.8&quot;) and p10 (10&quot;) as well. And if you care about having stricter quality control and are willing to pay, Boox products also an option. Boox also run android.<p>After I jailbroke my kindle keyboard and then my kobo glo hd, there&#x27;s no way I could ever go back to limited reading formats. The most useful app in each situation is KoReader.<p>KoReader runs on Android and so before you decide on a ereader, try our that software and see if it&#x27;s something you want to live without. It supports &quot;(PDF, DjVu, CBT, CBZ) and reflowable e-book formats (EPUB, FB2, Mobi, DOC, CHM, TXT)&quot; and runs on Kindle with jailbreak, Kobo without Jailbreak, Remarkable, and android so Likebooks and Boox.<p>And Calibre is the useful regardless od what ereader you have, it&#x27;s even great for iOS.<p>Kobo has dropbox sync and Android has a native app as well as apps like foldersync to do native syncing.<p>If you&#x27;re okay spending a little time setting things up how you like them, Kindle is the least competitive device on the market in terms of features.

My theory is that it&#x27;s easier for a company to lose customers, than it is to gain customers, with product updates.<p>Its overall dimensions are 0.3&quot; taller and 0.3&quot; wider than the current Paperwhite. At that size it will no longer fit in my pockets (my current one just barely fit), and thus will no longer be convenient to use, meaning it&#x27;s worthless to me.<p>I never used my Paperwhite and though, &quot;Gee, I wish the screen was bigger.&quot; I guess I&#x27;m not their target audience. I like to read wherever I go, and that means being able to take my Kindle wherever I go.<p>I wish Amazon kept it small, I need a new eReader and was holding out for Amazon&#x27;s update, but now I am going to have to look elsewhere.

I have high hopes for PineNote by PINE64. A lot more than a reader. They&#x27;re promising a lot, hope they deliver. Some might not like the large size, or lack of robustness you find with dedicated ereaders like Kobos.

With all these updates, I really hope Rakuten takes note and releases a true Paperwhite competitor this year. I&#x27;m leaning towards Kobo for the more open ecosystem, and the fact that you can sync books via Dropbox officially or via big standard Linux applications sideloaded onto the Kobo. However if Kobo even updates any of their readers this holiday season, I suspect they&#x27;d only update the Forma, which has a form factor more similar to the Kindle Oasis than the Paperwhite (and a price to match).

&gt; With the waterproof Kindle Paperwhite, you’re free to read and relax in more places—from the beach to the bath. Kindle Paperwhite is IPX8 rated to protect against accidental immersion in up to two meters of fresh water for up to 60 minutes, and up to 0.25 meters of seawater for up to 3 minutes. Learn more about waterproof features.<p>I wish companies would start getting challenged on this. It is NOT water PROOF. It&#x27;s water RESISTANT.

As a daily kindle book reader there are two things I would like to see in a future model. The first is page turn buttons like the ones they had in the oasis. Touch screens are great, but the ones on kindles are not state of the art. And they work terribly if the device gets wet. Page turn buttons just work.<p>Very old kindles had a headphone jack. This was also always a nice thing to have.

Is there any reason why Amazon doesn&#x27;t license out their store (or make it accessible) to non-kindle ereaders like the kobo? I&#x27;d love to be able to read a kindle ebook on some of the other readers on the market. For a company that doesn&#x27;t typically balk at making their products available on other platforms, Amazon is surprisingly locked down here.

I&#x27;m still looking forward to an e-reader that will allow me to comfortably read academic papers. The usual two-column format on pdf is very uncomfortable on small readers. The obvious choice is to use an A4-sized reader. While I haven&#x27;t tried one myself, I think that to some extent it defeats the whole purpose.

USB C and colour temperature? I gave up waiting for this and ordered the Paperwhite with a leather cover a couple of months ago on special. I had the strongest feeling I&#x27;d regret not waiting longer, and it has thus been proven correct.<p>Have been using Kindles since the DXG, which I still have.

Would this one support using Bluetooth audio control to turn pages?

This is a beautiful device. I wonder how much it improves over the existing one, though.<p>Thinking about it, usb-c cable and faster ui are valuable. Larger screen, probably not a big deal.

you can get an old ereader at a thrift store for about six dollars. usually they don&#x27;t have a screen light, but that just means i go to bed on time. they&#x27;re often rootable but i don&#x27;t even bother, i just side-load epubs and keep any wireless off. online services are all eol anyway. i keep around a couple at a time and give them out if someone mentions they need a thing to read. the batteries all still last forever.<p>what&#x27;s the advantage of a new device? somebody convince me.

Is USB-C new here? I still cringe at the number of devices using older micro-USB. Those cables are probe to breaking multiple times a year.