Amazon’s New Kindle Paperwhite: A extra subtle Rival To Paper

In 2012, Amazon offered the Kindle Paperwhite, an e-reader with a remarkably vibrant, white monochrome show. It remained the gold usual in e-readers for a couple of years, unless the company released the Kindle Voyage, a variation with an excellent higher show, with 300-dpi decision that at last matched the crispness of ink on lifeless bushes.

Now Amazon is upgrading the Paperwhite with display and typography improvements that should end in a more paper-like expertise—and, at $119, make the tool a candidate for the corporate’s highest e-reader in relation to bang for the buck. (The Voyage retains an part in industrial-design panache, however goes for $199.)

just like the Voyage, the revamped Paperwhite sports activities a 300-dpi reveal, for razor-sharp text and monochrome pictures which, in contrast to those on earlier E Ink units, really look like images. It uses Amazon’s new typeface, Bookerly, which is tuned for on-display readability. And with a free instrument update which Amazon says shall be to be had “in the coming weeks,” it will additional handle a protracted-standing Kindle deficiency—inexplicably crude typography—with the aid of formatting a half-million books (for starters) with greater justification, spacing, hyphenation, and kerning. (My colleague John Brownlee looked at Bookerly and Amazon’s other typesetting upgrades, which can be rolling out across the Kindle line of devices and apps, closing month.)

I maintain worrying that the tech business will decide that monochrome e-readers designed for studying—and handiest reading—are an anachronism in the technology of splashy color drugs such as the iPad and Amazon’s personal fireplace models. Amazon’s erstwhile archrival Barnes & Noble, as an example, hasn’t up to date its Nook GlowLight in a few years. So it can be all the time a aid when the Kindle line will get a refresh—and it is good to understand that the new Paperwhite will compete with Kobo’s new Glo HD edition, any other 300-dpi e-reader which sells (at least in the intervening time) for $130.