Hasta La Gadget!

Sep 11

Meet Kindle Paperwhite

In addition to announcing the family of Kindle Fire HD last week, Amazon also announced the arrival of the Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite 3G, the latest Kindle e-reader. The Kindle, and its competition that followed, have revolutionized how many of us read. I admit, when presented with my first Kindle I balked. But in the course of business travel or downtime at the beach I saw the light. Despite the onslaught of tablets with pretty color and backlight, an e-reader will continue to be a necessity for some of us. Which is why the Paperwhite units are big news.

Contrast, reading in the dark and references are what Amazon brings to the table this time. The Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite 3G add 62% more pixels and increases contrast 25%. Meaning whiter whites and blacker blacks – more true to the paper reading experience. These newbies also have a built in front light for night time reading – a negative on the previous Kindle versions that I heard from many owners. You can control the level of brightness too. Some of the more fun additions to the unit include an X-ray feature that points you to additional mentions of characters or ideas in your book so you can explore more. And, Kindle Paperwhite will also help you track your reading via Time to Read. The concept is that your Kindle will know the pace of your reading and inform you how long it will take to finish the chapter or book. Perfect for those of us that lose sleep by not setting the book down.

One of the best benefits is the price. Staying competitive, the Kindle Paperwhite starts at $119 and begins shipping the week of October 8^th with the 3G version, listed at $179, shipping the following week. Other features of previous generation units continue including memory for over 1,100 books, 2 month battery life (at 30 minutes a day) and easily adjustable fonts. So for you die hard Kindle users get ready, and if have thought about an e-reader user, these are units are a good place to start.