


There’s still room for improvementĭespite the fact that its display lighting levels are adjustable, the latest Paperwhite lacks the ambient light sensor that would enable it to automatically adjust its luminosity according to ambient conditions. It’s perhaps 80 percent as capable as more sophisticated e-readers-the Kobo Aura One and the Kindle Oasis, for example-which cost far more. There’s not much to dislike about the Kindle Paperwhite-it excels at fulfilling its raison d’être. Interacting with the service on the device, however, leaves much to be desired. It’s also possible to wirelessly download Instapaper clippings to the Paperwhite.

You can also borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and Amazon Prime members can read books in the Prime Reading catalog at not additional cost.Īs for content from outside of Amazon’s walled library, anyone with a computer can transfer DOC/DOCX, ePub, MOBI, PDF, RTF, and TXT files to their Kindle via USB-but the reading experience for such documents typically isn’t as smooth as what you’ll get from publications curated by Amazon. If your reading habits border on the voracious, it’s also possible to sign up for Amazon’s all-you-can-read Kindle Unlimited service for $10 per month. The good news is that Amazon makes it possible to share your purchased content with your family members. The bad news is that any book you purchase from the Kindle Store is DRM protected-locking you into using Amazon’s devices and apps in order to read them. Amazon’s collection of available electronic publications is arguably the largest in the world. With 4GB of onboard memory, the Kindle Paperwhite has the capacity to store thousands of books-a definite win for anyone taking a long trip off the grid. That covers how you’ll read on the Paperwhite. It even supports OpenDyslexic-a typeface designed to mitigate some of the issues that can cause dyslexic individuals reading difficulties.

In addition to the clarity that the Paperwhite’s display and lighting afford, Amazon’s type engine ensures that readers who require larger text in order to read comfortably, prefer a different font than the default one their book was downloaded with, or who prefer different line spacing (depending on whether or not the document can support it) are accommodated. The Kindle Paperwhite has the same amount of storage and the same display resolution as the Kindle Oasis, but at a fraction of the cost.
