Amazon Kindle E-Reader - more books for your bucks

10/10

Summary

Amazon Kindle E-Reader REVIEW

With the new Amazon Kindle you can load a whole library onto the e-reader and its battery will last almost long enough to read them, enthuses PAT PILCHER.

$199.95

If you’ve ever travelled, you’re probably familiar with just how much of a chore lugging around a pile of heavy and bulky paperback novels can be. Because of this, I’ve long been an advocate of e-readers. They can hold hundreds of books while taking up a fraction of the space consumed by a single paperback, and they weigh practically nothing. In short, there’s plenty to like.

My favourite e-reader is Amazon’s Kindle. In 2019, I waxed lyrical about it in Witchdoctor’s travel tech guide. Now, Amazon is back with their latest Kindle.

With a pin-sharp 300dpi e-ink screen, Amazon has also added many useful updates. So, is it a must-have affordable e-reader?

One of the first things that grabbed my attention when I powered it up was its display, which is almost twice its predecessor’s resolution, offering up super crisp, laser printer-quality text. With the ability to tweak the space between lines, margins, text size, and fonts, the extra screen resolution makes a huge difference for extended reading sessions.

Further helping its readability along is a glare-free screen coating. Being an e-ink display, it was readable even in direct sunlight, making it perfect for holiday reads. It also packs LED backlighting for night reading, but there’s no adjustable lighting temperature. That said, its cooler white LED backlighting worked just fine.

Design-wise the new Kindle is petite enough to stow in carry-on luggage or a laptop bag. At just 1547.4mm tall, it was small enough to slip into my jacket pocket. As it weighs just 159 grams, doing so wasn’t accompanied by the sound of tearing fabric. This handily also makes it light enough to hold in one hand, which is ideal for extended reading sessions.

The other downside of the new Kindle is its lack of water resistance, which might limit its appeal for poolside holiday reads. This is a minor niggle, and short of reading while swimming/in a spa/bathtub/pool (don’t try this at home, kids!), it’s unlikely to be a real show-stopper.

A killer bonus is that the new Kindle’s base spec starts at 16GB of storage (an added cost with the Kindle Paperwhite). With e-book files typically measured in kilobytes, 16GB is a tonne of room. Because of this, the new Kindle allows you to have an entire library in the palm of your hand.

The other good news is that the new Kindle delivers a whopping six weeks of use with its battery life. The inclusion of USB-C also makes it faster to charge. I could go from 50 percent to 100 percent charge in just over an hour and 55 minutes using a spare USB power brick and the supplied USB-C cable.

In use, the Kindle felt responsive. While it lacks the physical page turn buttons of the Paperwhite, its touchscreen was quick. Swiping or tapping to turn pages soon became second nature, and the lack of physical buttons also means there’s one less thing to wear out or break.

Previously getting e-books purchased (or borrowed from the public library) outside of Amazon involved fiddling with apps like the rather excellent calibre. Not anymore, though. Amazon has created a send-to-Kindle email feature accessible via the Kindle management web page. You can email ePub book files to your Kindle’s custom email address. Amazon will do all the work converting it into a Kindle-friendly e-book format and transferring it to your Kindle.

The new Kindle takes what wasn’t great with the base model kindle and fixes it while keeping the price at a wallet/purse-pleasing $199. More storage and the easier transfer of non-Amazon e-books to the Kindle are killer bonuses. Add to this its super-sharp display and USB-C support, and you get a lot of bang for your e-reader buck.

www.amazon.com.au/kindle