Pick of the Month this month is the Kindle Paperwhite and it is by far my favorite product so far this year.
First impressions
I bought the Paperwhite on December 30th so this is long overdue.
It is a wonderful device. It seriously is.
It is light and I can hold it one hand. E-ink is a terrible technology, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The screen refresh rate is horrendously slow, navigating and page turning lags a lot. But the reading experience is better on a Kindle than on an iPad.
E-ink is superior for books
I am a voracious reader and a picky one; I like to fine tune my reading experience to my liking, adjusting the fonts, have curated shelves, different backgrounds, and other integrations. My app of choice for this on my iPad since I’ve had an iPad was Marvin. That app isn’t getting updated anymore so I switched to MapleRead SE which is an interesting alternative. It has a dated interface and a quirky way of adding multiple books but I settled on it for its power user features. I still miss that app and reading on it.
But the e-ink makes reading so much better in sunlight and the Paperwhite also has a backlight so I can read at night in my bedroom without needing my head light or light from my lamp.
Lightness makes this portable
The portability of the Paperwhite is one of my favorite features. I hated lugging either one of my iPad Pros around because they are heavy and unwieldy but I can just throw the Paperwhite into my coat pocket in the winter or in a bag that isn’t my work bag and go. That’s important to me. Be it at appointments or during travel, I can just throw it in a bag or pocket and read wherever I’d like.
Closing thoughts
Power readers and general readers alike will like this reader. It’s light and portable. It will definitely take some getting used to the lag if you are coming from an iPad Pro and this may be a deal breaker for some people. But it is right for me at this point in time.
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