Hasta La Gadget!

A few years ago, British e-readers were expected to wait months before Amazon’s latest reading slab managed to swim across from the US — but no more. The refreshed Kindle Paperwhite is set to launch on October 3rd, just slightly over a week later than its scheduled release in America. Higher resolution, higher contrast text and next-gen lighting technology can be yours for £109 — reservations are being accepted at the source.

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Source: Amazon UK

Amazon peppered its second-gen Kindle Paperwhite announce yesterday with the usual marketing fluff: whiter whites and blacker blacks! But, it turns out, those boasts do have some grounding in reality. E Ink has a new screen tech and, surprise surprise, it’s the one that’s powering the refreshed Paperwhite’s improved readability in sunlight and increased contrast. And the company has some numbers to back those claims too, marking this new “formulation” as offering a 50 percent improvement in contrast over older Kindles, and 20 percent boost to whiteness. It’s an accurate claim by our estimation, considering we recently had some eyes-on time with the second-gen Paperwhite. Still, it doesn’t beat the Kobo Aura HD‘s screen, but not everything niche can be so nice.

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E-book readers, also known as e-Readers in certain quarters, are not exactly the fastest moving tablet-like device in the market at the moment, and neither has it been that way for a long time. In fact, the iPad and a plethora of Android-powered tablets are dominating the market at the moment, and e-book readers occupy just a small percentage of the share. This has not fazed Amazon though, as they have just announced the sixth generation Kindle Paperwhite reader, where it will boast of new display technology with a higher contrast, next generation built-in light, a faster processor, in addition to all-new reading features such as Kindle Page Flip, Goodreads, Kindle FreeTime, Smart Lookup, and Vocabulary Builder among others.

Granted, a dedicated e-book reader like the Kindle Paperwhite is definitely not going to come with the kind of processing muscle that your regular iPad or Android-powered tablet would, but it does perform as a wonderful substitute if you love reading books on the move, and do not want to get weighed down by the many pages. Some other folks love their books to remain in pristine condition all the time, and dog ears are anathema. Well, the new Kindle Paperwhite solves all those issues by delivering an uncompromised reading experience. Being different from tablets, it is a snap to read in bright sunlight, and neither will your eyes tire out in the dark. Boasting of a chassis that weighs a mere 7.3 ounces, it is light enough for you to read with just a single hand, and comes with an amazing 8 weeks of battery life, now how about that?

It is said that the new processor is 25% faster than its predecessor, allowing your books to open faster, while pages turn in a more fluid manner. There is also integration with Goodreads, where it will combine the world’s largest e-reading community alongside the world’s largest community of book lovers. This means you have a pool of more than 20 million other readers to check out what they are reading, to be able to share highlights with one another and rate the books that you have already completed. The asking price for the new Kindle Paperwhite? A mere $119 onwards a pop.

Press Release
[ All new Kindle Paperwhite announced, brings e-reading to the next level copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The most striking difference you’ll notice in the just leaked announced new Kindle Paperwhite isn’t something on the device’s screen — it’s on the backplate. AMAZON. That brand, once so subtly tied into the company’s game-changing e-reader, is now big, bold and garishly displayed in gloss across the upper part of the Paperwhite’s posterior. Why? Well, the answer is quite simple really: compared to the Kindle brand, Amazon’s brand equity is much stronger in overseas markets. If you’re a longtime Kindle user like me, you’ll probably find this design tweak annoying, but that’s about all it is. The rest of this new Paperwhite is a matter of finessing the tried-and-true Kindle experience, not disrupting it.

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Earlier today the next-generation Kindle Paperwhite was posted briefly on Amazon’s website, only to be pulled a short while later. Now it is time for its official unveiling, with Amazon sending out a press release containing the details, some of which we already saw this morning, as well as more information about the Goodreads integration […]