Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was lucky enough to have been invited to be in the "What Kindle Owners Think" video and I was able to get a sneak peak at the product and got to use it for about an hour. I am the guy in the pink shirt. Ever since then, I have been itching to tell people about this device. It is simply amazing. UPDATE: I have since gotten my own Kindle Paperwhite and have updated my review with any new insight. HARDWARE: From the minute you pick it up you can tell that this is a device that has gone through a lot of revisions to get to this stage. It feel incredibly solid and comfortable in the hands. The entire back has a rubberized plastic coating so it feels very grippy and makes it easy to hold in just one hand. I have had no issues with the smaller bezel, I am still able to comfortably hold it with one hand. The device itself is a bit smaller which makes it easier to hold and carry around. I really liked that the screen is far less indented into the device than the previous model, it makes the reading experience a whole lot better. The screen has a new type of coating on it that gives it a more tactile feel. It feels incredibly similar to the way a page feels in a book. I was planning on putting a screen protector on, but now I am second guessing it because I do not want to lose the tactile feel. You really have to feel it to believe it. There is now no more home button, the only button on the device is the on/off button on the bottom. In place of the home button there is now a Kindle logo on the bottom bezel. To go home you press on the top of the display and click the home icon. This seems fine with me since on a pure reading device you do not need to go to the homescreen very often. The battery-life on this thing is stellar. 2 months of reading on one charge with the light set to half, are you serious, that's amazing. That is as good as the previous Kindle Touch model, which is really impressive considering the Paperwhite is lighter, thinner, and has a light. That is a really big plus for me, because I do not want to be charging my device often, I like to do it after I have finished a book, I am a slow reader. The color choice was a really good call. The black Kindle looks amazing and after reading it for a bit the device just disappears as you sink into your reading. This is exactly what a device like this should do, it shouldn't get in the way of the experience, but almost become unnoticed as it brings forth your content. SCREEN: Let's talk about the screen. Obviously this is the biggest and best change that they made. The illumination looks fantastic on it, it is a very even light and does not strain the eyes at all. It is without a doubt the best lit e-ink display (I have yet to see the Kobo lit screen, so exclude that). It is far better than the Nook with Glowlight and better than any booklight or reading lamp, bar none. With the contrast of the black border, it really makes the text pop. No matter what angle you look at it, the text is crisp and you can't really find where the light is coming from. I have since heard that if you look really hard you can see the light from the bottom of the screen, but I did not notice when I got to use it. With my Kindle I can only see the lights if I have the Kindle flat and parallel to my eyes and look from the top of the device down at the bottom border. I personally never read my books in this upside down way, so it never really bothers me. Since it is a front-lit device, it makes it really easy to read. It doesn't reflect much light away from the Kindle so it's an easy reading experience, very similar to having a good lamp right behind your head only shining on the page. The light is controlled by a clicking in the menu and dragging the dimmer up and down. There is really a lot of control you have over how bright the light is, I think I remember around 25 levels. Overall the light looks a lot better then the Nook GlowLight that I have seen, its a stark difference. I don't know if its the light or the new screen, but the contrast on the thing is amazing. The pages are truly white and the text is very black, unlike the old Kindle's newspaper-esque coloring. The resolution of the screen has improved a great deal. The fonts look a lot smoother on this device than they did on the previous Kindle. The screen now is capacitive touch instead of using infrared technology. The only difference this makes to me is that ordinary objects like my blanket or cover no longer trigger page turns, so that's a big plus for me. From what I could tell the new capacitive screen did not make the text look any worse. SOFTWARE One huge improvement that I am really going to appreciate is how much faster this Kindle is at turning on and flipping pages. It is really stunning to see how fast it can turn on. I remember with the previous Kindle it would take a good second or two to turn on, which was very noticeable. With this one its on a whole lot faster, to the point where you don't notice the annoying lag. My jaw actually dropped when they showed me how fast it turns on, so happy that they worked to improve this. The software has also improved a good deal. My favorite addition is the 'time to read' feature. It sits in the bottom left corner of the screen and tells you how long it will take you to finish the chapter or the book. It calculates this based on your historical reading speed so it is constantly getting better. You can click the bottom left corner to switch from 'time to finish the chapter', 'time to finish the book', or 'percentage read'. Now you also have a lot more choices as to what fonts you want and you can even change the margin and line spacing sizes. You can really customize the device to be just how you like your reading. I personally really liked the Helvetica font. The homescreen is also a whole lot better now. They now show you covers of your books and the books available to buy, this gives it a much better look compared to the previous list style homescreen. Along the bottom they now show you recommended books from Amazon based on your reading history, its a nice touch to explore some new reading. There have been a few more small changes made to the software that I have noticed while using the device more. Now, when you wake your Kindle from sleep you have to push the power button and then swipe the bottom of the screen to the right. This adds a nice layer of protection from your Kindle accidentally being turned on in your bag or purse. I noticed that Amazon has also removed the ability to swipe up or down to skip to the previous or next chapter. I would rarely use this feature on my Kindle Touch to skip through the book faster to find my place, but most often it accidentally went off while trying to swipe to the next page, so I am not sad that the feature is gone. One disappointing thing they have done is made it a lot more difficult to turn the wifi on and off. You now have to go to the homescreen, hit menu, hit settings, and turn the airplane mode on. This is kind of confusing and too cumbersome. This is not a deal breaker though because I mostly read with my wifi off and will only turn it on between books to sync my content. CONS Two minor annoyances are that they took away the audio functionality, I however never used it before so its no big lose to me. There are no more speakers or headphone jack, so if that's something you really liked and used a lot then it will be a bit of a disappointment. This means you cannot do speech-to-text or listen to audiobooks on the device. They also have not improved the on/off button. I always got annoyed that it stuck out the bottom of the device. I sometimes hit it with my finger or while it was packed away in my bags and this would turn the device on or off, which was just a bit frustrating. I was hoping they would have changed this in the new model, but they haven't. They also shrunk the storage space by half, but that does not seem to be an issue for me since you won't put any music on it anymore. That's still around 1000 books you can store on the device. Its more then enough for me and plus Amazon stores all your Amazon content for free on their servers. All in all this is an amazing device. I was so excited to see it so early and have had such a pleasure using my own Kindle Paperwhite. I highly recommend this reader. I think it is the best lit touch screen e-reader on the market. Aside from a color display there is nothing more I want in an ebook reader. I think I am gonna have this device for a long long time, because it is almost perfect for me and there is not much more that I want in it.