New, Sweet and Cheap(ish): The Kindle Paperwhite 2015

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Amazon has recently announced that they will start selling the new Kindle Paperwhite on the 30th of June 2015.

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Source: http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/dp/2012/KC/popup-paperwhite-diff.jpg

This is news. At a reduced price of only $119, it is a real candidate in the heavy weight class. The current Amazon eBook Reader flagship is the Kindle Voyage and it is available at $199.

Voyage is a great eBook Reader with a myriad of sensors, lights, bells and whistles that make it worth every dollar.What we love about the new Paperwhite is that it has a lot of the Voyage features, for way less money.

Display

At 300 ppi or pixels per inch, nearly double that of the still available 2014 model, the text is much crisper and clearer. The Voyage also offers 300 ppi.

Zenscribe observed that that the print is so clear in Voyage, it is as though, they stuck real paper in there.

For the sake of perspective, I am still using my old Kindle Touch which only has 167 ppi. I can still read it clearly and easily, and it is not as if I suffer from burning eye-syndrome after reading a quick 8 hours to finish a 20 book series, The Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, to be more precise.

I cannot argue that the higher amount of pixels per display makes the text “easier to see” but I also wonder to what extent it makes any material difference for an average reader. Could higher ppi have just become a marketing war? Remember the Kobo Aura HD also has a 300 ppi display. This gave Kobo the upper hand in the marketing games.

Bookerly Font

The new Paperwhite is the first Kindle to feature Amazon’s especially designed Bookerly font. Amazon has this to say about their new font:

Kindle Paperwhite now offers Bookerly, an exclusive font designed from the ground up for reading on digital screens. Warm and contemporary, Bookerly is inspired by the artistry of the best fonts in modern print books, but is hand-crafted for great readability at any size. It introduces a lighter, more graceful look and outperforms other digital reading fonts to help you read faster with less eyestrain.

We look forward to that. And hope that they make the same font available in older devices too!

More Specs

Like the Kobo Glo HD, its main rival, the Paperwhite 2015 has 4 GB of internal memory, a touch screen and a front light.

Conclusion

The Kindle Paperwhite 2015 is better than the 2014 version. Yes it is also better than my Touch, especially when it comes to page turning.

Kobo or Paperwhite? This is more a philosophical question than a factual question. Technically the two are much the same, although the Kobo Glo HD will set you back $10 more, at $129.

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