Which Kindle should you buy? What to look for in an Amazon e-reader

For starters, you’ll rarely have to worry about battery life. You should only need to charge your e-reader every couple of weeks or so.

Second, all these Kindles come with at least 8 GB of storage, enough room for thousands of e-books. Some variants go up to 32 GB, which is overkill for most people.

Third, the screen resolutions are the same across the board. They all have nice screens, so the difference comes down to how they’re lit (more on that in a bit).

Let’s take a look at these Kindles model by model:

Kindle: $100

Amazon’s entry-level Kindle has fewer compromises than ever, so it’s an excellent choice at $100.

You get a six-inch screen, 16GB of storage, and four LEDs to light the screen.

Unlike the other Kindle models, the base Kindle’s screen doesn’t sit flush with the rest of the body: it’s ever so slightly sunken. That’s never bothered me in the slightest, but Amazon touts the flush screens as a benefit of its more expensive Kindles.

The biggest knock against this model is that it’s not waterproof, while all the other models are. If you’re not going to take it in the tub, to the beach, or around the pool, who cares?

The four-LED lighting setup is another knock. That lights the screen for reading in bed at night, but the results aren’t as even as on the pricier models, which have 17 or more LEDs and let you adjust the lighting more precisely.

Kindle Paperwhite: $140 (8GB) or $150 (16GB)

The differences between the regular Kindle and the Paperwhite used to be more noticeable, but today, an extra $40 gets you a slightly larger screen (6.8 inches), better and more adjustable lighting (17 LEDs), a flush screen, and waterproofing.

You only get 8GB of storage, though, compared to the base Kindle’s 16 GB. Hardly anyone should find this to be an issue, and there is a 16GB Paperwhite model available for an extra $10.

Lots of people will be happy to get the regular Kindle and save some bucks. But if you’re ready to splurge a bit, the better lighting and waterproofing still make a decent argument for the Paperwhite.

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition: $190 (32GB)

This is an interesting one. It’s the Paperwhite, but at a $50 premium for features most people won’t use.

You get a whopping 32 GB of (arguably excessive) storage, auto-adjusting lighting (the regular Paperwhite must be manually adjusted), and wireless charging.

The wireless charging is neat, but for something you hardly ever need to charge, it’s more of a novelty. And if you can really fill 32 GB of space with books, you’ve already stopped reading by now and called me an idiot for suggesting 8GB is more than enough for most people.

That leaves the auto-adjusting light. Great, but it’s not super painful to adjust the lighting manually, and if you leave your Kindle on the bedside table and read in the same spot most of the time, you really just need to set it once.

Of the four models, this is the last one I would buy.

Kindle Oasis: $250 (8 GB) or $350 (32 GB + Cellular)

My wife and I have his and hers Kindles. Mine, a basic Paperwhite and hers, the very sleek Kindle Oasis.

They fit our personalities: I, a mild-mannered, plain Midwesterner and she, an impeccably dressed, refined East Coaster.

Look. The Oasis is really nice. At $250, it should be.

It’s made of aluminum, whereas the others are plastic. The aluminum gets slippery, though!

It’s got 25 LEDs, which light the device beautifully. Better than the 17 LEDs on the Paperwhites? Marginally.

It’s got a nice little bevel on the back to conform to your hand. Necessary? Who knows? Again, it’s slippery.

The screen orientation rotates automatically! It’s got page-flipping buttons! The screen kind of has to rotate automatically if the thing has buttons, because if you switch hands, everything would be upside-down otherwise. People love the buttons, though, my wife included.

The screen itself is also seven inches, slightly larger than the 6.8-inch Paperwhites, which are slightly larger than the 6-inch base Kindle.

In the photo accompanying this post, you can see my 6-inch Paperwhite (it’s an older model; they used to be six inches) up against her 7-inch Oasis. Not a huge difference if you ask me.

Money to burn? For another $100, you can get built-in, free cellular connectivity and 32 GB of arguably unnecessary storage. The cell connectivity is a neat trick when you want to download a book and there’s not a Wi-Fi network available, but … it’s 2022.

Oh, and the Oasis, premium though it may be, is getting a bit long in the tooth. It was released in 2019 and still uses a micro-USB charging cable, for example. All the other Kindle models use the now-ubiquitous USB-C standard.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is the second to last Kindle I would buy.

So, which one should you buy?

Enough chit-chat, right? You will have very few, if any, complaints about the $140 Paperwhite model. If it doesn’t break your budget, have at it. If it does, the new base-level Kindle is a really good value.

However, these things also go on sale all the time, so if you’ve got $100 to spend on the base model and you’re not in a rush, wait for the Paperwhite to dip. It’s dropped to $105 twice in the past year and will likely go on sale around the holidays as well.

Yes, it has half the storage. But you’ll probably never come close to filling it up. The lighting is much nicer, and the waterproofing could come in handy in the event of spills and splashes.

Also, all of the prices I’ve listed here include ads on their lock screens that can be removed for an extra $20. The ads generally amount to a book you might like being shown when your Kindle is in sleep mode. Wake it up, swipe the screen, and the ad is gone. If it becomes really bothersome, you can pony up to remove the ads right from your new Kindle itself.