The most popular reader of electronic books in the world just became better for a generation – Amazon introduced the new Kindle devices, adding some important functions, but also deleting options that weren’t used that much. Down below we have the Kindle Paperwhite.

 

In the computer industry things often go in circles. Kindle has succeeded on the market because, unlike the Tablet and Smartphones, it doesn’t have background lighting. Because of that your eyes don’t tire that easily, and the battery lasts almost forever. Now comes a new, improved Paperwhite generation whose most valuable asset is background lighting. But that doesn’t decrease the performances of this device. How is that possible?

 

Kindle Paperwhite uses a new screen with the same dimensions of the old one (6″), but with a greater resolution (1024×768) and a stronger contrast. Four LED lights enlighten the screen just as much you want it – you can select up to 25 different lighting settings.

 

Background lighting hasn’t made the eyes more tired (actually it made them more rested because of greater resolution and contrast) and it hasn’t decreased the battery life – the time between charges is still 8 weeks. Of course, if your WiFi is always active you should keep your charger at hand.

 

When you turn up the lighting to maximum and stare at the bottom of the screen you can see a slight unbalance in the lighting, maybe even the glare from the LED diodes. The Home key has also been removed so you get to the home screen with a touch.

 

Kindle Paperwhite comes with a new software that has removed a lot of unnecessary functions. No more voice text reading, no more headphones. You can go a page forward, a page backwards but you can’t skip chapters anymore. In the spirit of minimalism, the memory has been reduced to 2 GB, but that is still enough for more than a thousand books. There is some new stuff: next to the size of letters you can choose the font, margins and space between letters. The reading speed calculator is also interesting. Kindle follows the speed of reading and at every moment gives you the estimated time to the end of the chapter and the book. For some books there is also the X-Ray function that tells you where your selected character is mentioned in the book – useful for some complicated detective novels. On the down side, the button for turning the WiFi on and off is buried in a lot of sub-menus.

 

Kindle is still a light and small ( around 210 grams) device that you can use with one hand – it is much easier to read of of it than a massive book. The material that the Kindle is made of has been changed so you will have a felling of holding a hard rubberized thing, that some will like and some will not. The screen gives a similar felling like before, but it reacts better to touch which enables much easier typing than in the Kindle Touch. All in all everything is made for the purpose of easy reading.

 

Kindle Paperwhite is is sold in two versions – the WiFi version in America costs $119, a WiFi+3G version $179. 3G looks like a cool option, because it enables (almost anywhere in the world) communication with Amazon – but in real life it isn’t really necessary because you will probably carry your books with you instead of buying them. You can also pay an extra $20 to not see the Kindle advertisements, but that is also unnecessary because Kindle displays them only when it is shut down. So it is best for you to buy the cheapest version of Kindle Paperwhite and enjoy all the books in the world!