Kindle Paperwhite (8 GB) – Now with a 6.8″ display and adjustable warm light + 3 Months Free Kindle Unlimited (with auto-renewal)- Black

2 reviews for Kindle Paperwhite (8 GB) – Now with a 6.8″ display and adjustable warm light + 3 Months Free Kindle Unlimited (with auto-renewal)- Black

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Cody Stephens – September 1, 2023

   
   I am someone who believes that there is something profound and special about a physical book. My favorite part about a book is its smell. It’s not wrong to describe the smell of walking into a Barnes & Noble as pure euphoria. New books smell like potential, beginnings, and the possibility of something grand. Old books smell like legends, ancient wisdom, or forgotten secrets. Books have a weight to them as well. It’s reassuring to know that this book you’re holding is real — it takes up physical space in the world and this makes it undeniable. It’s as if the power of the stories and ideas within are so strong that they have materialized into matter out of the aether. It’s hard for me to hold, say, a Bible without a sense of reverence and awe. Even today when I walk into a large library I can’t help but feel like I have walked into a holy place — a place of worship. Being surrounded by books has the same effect on me that a Xanex has on others. Books have an impact on me. I love them.This is why, when I started reading on a Kindle over a year ago, it felt like I was committing adultery. This nasty little plastic screen inspired none of the feelings that books gave me. It took the magic of books and sacrificed it on the altar of consumer electronics. Despite these feelings, I continued to use it.Now I have read a little over fifty books using my Kindle. I still believe that the Kindle kills the magic that physical books have, and it does. But for the first time in a year, I decided to pick up a book in paperback and read it. This experience of going back to real books has made me realize a few things about the Kindle and myself.First off, I realized with horror that I am addicted to my Kindle and its features. The people who designed the Kindle did so with intent. The Kindle’s sole purpose is to read books — there are no other apps on it, there are no intrusive ads, and there is nothing to distract you from reading. Honestly, the device is relatively primitive compared to other consumer electronics, but that is a design choice and not a flaw. I would argue it is even easier to get lost in a book using the Kindle than it is with a physical book.And then there are the features — the glorious features. My favorite feature by far is the built-in dictionary. When reading a physical book and coming across a word I didn’t know the meaning of, assuming I couldn’t intuit the meaning from context, I would have to mark my place in the book, put it to the side, pull out my phone, and Google the word. This is tedious. It also breaks my train of thought and forces me to use my dreadful phone with all of its notifications and apps and stuff that sends me into a panic and introduces into my reading time the potential to sidetrack myself. I hate that. With my Kindle, all I have to do is touch the word and a popup with the definition appears and is dismissed just as easily, and then I’m off reading again — an interruption that is barely even noticed and my attention remains intact. Even better is the fact that my Kindle keeps a list of all these words that I’ve looked up over time, and I can review them anytime. I look at it occasionally and quiz myself — this is my idea of ‘fun’.Now I’m a big fan of writing in my books — I underline, highlight, and write in the margins constantly. If I ever need inspiration or if I’m trying to remember something I’ve read, I will thumb through the book I found it in until I eventually find it. Sometimes when I get bored I will sit in front of my bookshelf and go through the books I’ve read looking at all the passages I highlighted to refresh my memory on all those inspiring things that I read in years past. It’s a little tedious but not too bad. This habit of highlighting is not lost to me while reading on my Kindle. You simply press and drag your finger across the passage which will highlight it. But that’s not the best part: Kindle will keep up with everything I have highlighted and organize it all for me by the book it was found in. So at any given time, I can see all of my highlights in any of the books I have read, and I can even share them to my Goodreads profile! This gets me visibly excited.The last feature I want to talk about is the backlit screen. If you do any of your reading in bed then you probably have a bedside lamp or a flashlight or some other novel light source designed for books. Maybe it’s just me but I find it difficult to get comfortable in bed and read a paperback at the same time. Either my spouse is annoyed by the light while she is trying to sleep or I can’t find the perfect position that makes it both comfortable and easy to read. The Kindle has a backlit screen with adjustable lighting and a “warm” light setting. This means all other light sources in the room can be extinguished and I can still get my reading done. No book-light required. The Kindle is so lightweight that I can lay or recline in any position comfortably. No more fighting with those books whose binding is stiff and unyielding.So now we come to the point of this post. A confession. It’s a confession to myself and the world. As much as this pains me to say: The Kindle offers a far superior reading experience over books. I said it. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it is simply true. The onboard dictionary, the highlights, the backlit screen, the insane battery life (I charge this thing once a month), all of it together creates the most consuming and productive reading experience available. I still feel subtle pangs of guilt when I look at my bookshelf. I don’t think that will ever go away for anyone who truly loves books. But now my bookshelf has become a kind of “greatest hits” display. I still buy all the best books I read, and I now consider my bookshelf as a place of honor for all the greatest books. But I think of my Kindle as another appendage on my body — I never go anywhere without it.I love books. I love my Kindle. To my fellow book lovers out there who are still opposed to the idea of a Kindle, I say that you can love both. It will be okay. The Kindle isn’t evil after all.

2. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   LastGas – July 23, 2022

   
   OK, I fouled up with my Kindle Paperwhite 11th edition purchase. It was Prime Day and the Kindle was marked WAY DOWN, and I opted for the bundle: Kindle + Charger + fabric cover. Now don’t get me wrong, the Charger is nice and the fabric cover is very nice, but for a device Amazon says you only need to charge 5 times a year, getting a premium charger doesn’t really make much sense. I already have plenty of chargers, and the Kindle will charge overnight whether I use their super-fast premium charger or something else. And while the case is undeniably nice, you can get one for less than half the money from other sellers on Amazon.I did not make the mistake of getting the ad-free version. The ad appears on the lock screen and as soon as you swipe the screen, it goes away and stays away for your entire reading session. It’s 100% unobtrusive. Other people have given the Kindle one star because they bought the ad-free version, and were angry there are still “suggestions” on the Home screen that they consider ads. All I can say is that you get that no matter what, and the solution is to switch to the Library screen rather than the Home screen; that’s very easy on the latest software version.The other huge mistake I made over 4 years ago was subscribing to Kindle Unlimited and somehow not knowing that it was automatically renewing silently every month (for $9.99). I paid enough to buy several Kindles. I guess I thought it was part of Amazon Prime or just something that comes with a Kindle. You can bundle Kindle Unlimited “Free” for 3 months with your Kindle purchase, but just watch out when that 3 months are over. I have generally found Kindle Unlimited books second rate (with a few exceptions).I bought one of the original Kindle Fire versions and the first Kindle Fire HD. They were cool, but I didn’t end up using them much. They didn’t have good battery life, they were hard to read outdoors, and Kindle software on other portable devices was fine. I think the first one eventually failed, and I gave the HD away to someone who needed to do something that required a Kindle. I have a nice Windows tablet.But I have always wanted a Paperwhite because of its long battery life and superb readability outdoors. Plus it was heavily discounted on Prime Day and I bought one.So how did it live up to expectations? Pretty well. The “10 weeks” battery life claim seems exaggerated, but still if you pick it up to go somewhere, it will probably be charged and last another day. Outdoor readability is simply amazing.After receiving the device, the software updated. I think it updated twice. My “Experimental Web Browser” turned into the “Web Browser” and the navigation improved markedly (addressing issues I read in other 1-star reviews). The web browser is still very limited and doesn’t display some web pages correctly (like the Internet Archive), and error messages still mention the “Experimental” browser. You can’t access YouTube, for example, Twitter doesn’t seem to work at all, and the New York Times is not readable.On books, three-level table of contents don’t work on the Kindle, although they work on Kindle for PC.I had a very good experience emailing a PDF document downloaded from our local Planning Commission to the Kindle. Things you send to the Kindle arrive very fast. Amazon did, however, require me to verify myself as a sender before it would deliver email attachments to the Kindle, even though my email address is on the approved senders list at Amazon. Also plugging the Kindle to a PC lets you drag and drop supported document types (notably MOBI and PDF) to the Kindle where the immediately appear in your Library. The Send to Kindle for PC app is currently broken as reported by me and others on Amazon forums.The device is somewhat sluggish in general with a 1-second delay for most things: swipes, scrolls and navigation. That’s certainly not something that would interfere with reading a book. There are so many different ways to navigate, that it can appear jumbled and confusing, plus the software updates I got changed everything, making me re-learn the UI. I think in the end that I will be accustomed to it and it will appear more natural.One severe limitation is that you cannot play audio files in general. While it supports Bluetooth headphones for books from Audible, it cannot play music or audio books in general. (I hope this is enhanced in a future software update.)So should you buy one of these? If you want to sit outdoors under a tree or at the beach for hours on end reading a book, a Kindle Paperwhite makes a lot of sense. The reading experience is good, it’s visually sharp and the charge lasts a long time. If you want to listen to music, or do much of anything else you can do on a phone or a tablet computer, you’re out of luck.