There are very few examples in tech that lend credibility to sustained relevance, generation after generation. We can put the Apple iPhones in that basket. Perhaps even the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops. All have been around for at least a dozen years, if not more, defining their respective categories.
There’s another one we can certainly add to this rather compact yet curated for relevance list – the Amazon Kindle, which is now in its 11th generation. This is as good an e-reader as one can get if you don’t want the additional bells and whistles of the more expensive siblings.
The Kindle has itself grown more expensive over time. You’ll now be parting with around ₹9,999 for this generation. There’s the familiar black colour option, but more so, a new ‘denim’ colourway is now a choice too. My vote will be for the latter, purely because it’ll look different. In case you’re still wondering why the prices have gone up – the new Kindle has adopted a lot of the Paperwhite’s functionality, including the front light, the USB-C for the longer stamina battery, more base spec storage (16GB, in addition to the cloud) and the software adopting dark mode functionality.
I am, for one, a staunch supporter of dark mode as the default in smartphones. Yet, for an e-book reading environment alone, I’m not so sure if the white text on a black canvas really works. It tends to strain the eyes a bit more, though a fine balance can be achieved if you are really persistent and patient with the front light adjustment. You may be better off leaving it in the white page default setting, for flexibility.
The features list gap between the entry spec Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, which is next in line, has reduced over the previous few iterations. It is the closest now. But there are still a few things which this Kindle misses out on – there is no colour temperature setting (the ability to tweak the warm light is missed), it lacks a water resistance rating, and the screen still sits at a different height (read, lower) compared with the bezel.
The screen size remains the same (that’s 6-inches), but there is a significant bump for the pixel density – it is now 300dpi, compared with 167dpi for the predecessor. That means you’ll be reading on a crisper display. That’s great for visibility, comfort and also any graphics or visuals that find their way into some titles.
This screen, however, has 3 LEDs powering the front lighting, compared with 17 that the Paperwhite gets. It is definitely not as bright, but to be fair, the Kindle’s screen absolutely doesn’t feel any inferior to the Paperwhite’s, as perhaps the difference in LEDs would suggest.
You’ll be in a pretty comfortable spot as far as storage is concerned. There is 16GB on board, and e-books take up very little space. You’ll be carrying around more books than you can imagine, and still have lots of storage left.
While Amazon hasn’t changed the overall design philosophy of the Kindle (the new denim colour aside), there are a few observations from my time with this e-reader. The frame around the screen is a fingerprint magnet, even though I’ve been super careful about it. Secondly, the frame tends to catch scratches rather easily. It isn’t a big problem, but you’ll notice this tends to not remain isolated as you read. Be careful with the Kindle from the outset.
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The switch to USB-C shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the benefit of that is slightly faster charging speed. And that keeps you in the reading game, for weeks – Amazon indicates around 6 weeks on a single charge, for 30 minutes of reading per day. I’ve managed to average better than that, with a slightly higher daily reading average, but with a lower light illumination setting.
Not a lot has changed with the Kindle on the software side of things. You’ll still interact with relaxed animations. New layout options for reducing page margins for instance, but that’s about it. The rest of the stuff, your library included, is largely where you’d have found it on your previous generation Kindle e-reader. There is of course the positive side of keeping things consistent, in a rapidly evolving world.
Even though this is the entry-spec Kindle, it feels nothing like a base model. The important things have moved forward a generation, particularly the front lit screen with more pixels, as well as the charging port and battery charge speed.
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