Jalen Sigh Tech

Verdict

The Kindle Paperwhite 2024 nails the balance between having the best, largest display without being a giant tablet-sized device. It’s a pleasure to read on, it lasts for weeks on a full charge and it’s waterproof. This could be the perfect Kindle.

Introduction

At any point over the past few years, if anyone asked me what my favourite gadget was my answer was always the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

Likely expecting me to mention one of the best phones or best laptops, it’s always a bit of an anticlimactic response, but it’s true nevertheless. The Kindle Paperwhite 2021 has been one of my most-used pieces of technology that’s ever landed in my house. 

And now, there’s a new version. The Kindle Paperwhite 2024 picks up from where the last one left off, but is it worth it?

Pricing

The Kindle Paperwhite 2024 starts at £159.99/$159.99 – however, this is with ads which appear when the reader is locked. If the ads bother you, there’s a £169.99/$179.99 option that eschews them completely.

There’s only one 16GB storage size available, however there is a Signature Edition which doubles that to 32GB and adds in an automatic light and wireless charging. This costs £189.99/$199.99 and ditches the ads. 

Compared to the other Kindle models, this is the mid-tier. The Kindle (2024) is £94.99/$109.99 and the Colorsoft is £269.99/$279.99.

Design

• Two new colour choices
• Slightly larger overall footprint
• A little curvier than before

There isn’t a huge amount to delve into when talking product design on a Kindle. Anyone familiar with Amazon’s reader range will know what they look like. The latest Paperwhite is a fairly standard-looking plastic rectangle with a black and white screen on the front.

There are mainstay features of the Paperwhite, however, which differentiate it from the cheaper, basic Kindle (2024). It’s bigger, featuring a 7-inch display versus the smaller 6-inch display on the basic Kindle. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing depends on whether you’d prefer the most nimble and portable Kindle or a larger display for easier reading. 

The Paperwhite also has a more premium finish than the cheaper model, and its water-resistant design ensures moisture can’t get inside. If you read a lot in the bath, or maybe by a pool. This is reason enough to spend the extra cash.

Look at the bezel around the display and you’ll notice it’s all flush underneath the surface of the Kindle itself, rather than having a lip with a plastic frame sitting above and around the screen. This differentiation has been pretty consistent over the past few years and it does give the Paperwhite a more modern feel. I prefer it.

This isn’t a huge redesign compared to the outgoing Paperwhite, although there are some changes. The screen is slightly larger for one, and the rounded corners on the 2024 model feature a more generous curve, as do the edges around the four sides of the device. These changes give it a softer, friendlier look and feel. That friendly vibe is only helped further by the addition of some vibrant colour options. 

My Raspberry review unit is a visual delight, but there’s also a Jade green model and the usual black variant to round out the set. 

Being a relatively affordable device, the finish here isn’t especially luxurious. However, the Paperwhite’s rear has a soft-touch, smooth finish which is nice to hold.

It doesn’t feel as ‘sticky’ as the previous generation either, so I’m hoping that three years down the line it doesn’t end up looking as grimy and beaten up as my 2021 unit has. Without extended testing, however, I can’t verify whether or not there is any improvement here. 

Still, I’d very much recommend getting a case if you’re worried about the soft, plastic finish getting ruined over time. 

It is worth noting – that as with most Kindles, the lack of a glossy, oleophobic glass on the front does mean it collects smears and smudges from being touched and swiped without any encouragement. 

Otherwise, it’s a nice product to hold and use. It’s still only got one button on it, for locking, waking up and powering off the Kindle. And the positioning of that power button – right on the bottom, next to the USB-C port – is consistently frustrating as it leads to so many unintentional presses.

All other interactions, whether it be swiping to turn pages, or just navigating the Kindle Store or your book library, are done using the touchscreen. Which does mean a little more friction than if there were buttons for turning pages like the Kindle Oasis had.  

Screen

• New 7-inch panel
• Light for night reading
• Easier on the eyes than a tablet

The reading experience of the Kindle Paperwhite 2024 is about as good as it gets on a device like this. In some relatively minor ways, it’s better than the previous one. Maybe not enough for you to upgrade if you have one in really good condition still, but perhaps enough to tempt you if yours is old, scuffed and has seen better days. 

That said, it’s very much a case of refining the experience and improving on subtle things that make a difference. 

One of those is the anti-reflective properties of the transparent display surface. It appears to cope better with bright sources of light directly reflecting off the surface, and so disperses, and softens that light better than before.

Similarly, the LED front lighting system has been upgraded to make it feel more natural. That means when you adjust the warmth to its lowest setting, it’s not as blue or cool as previous Paperwhite screens and retains a more natural look, designed to mimic how paper in ambient lighting looks, rather than appearing unnaturally cool. It’s also not quite as red/orange looking when you crank it up to its maximum warmth level.

The warmth levels can be set to a schedule, so you can have it come on at a specific level at a specific time. Personally, that meant setting it around the 10/11 mark when I’d typically be reading in bed before sleep. 

Also useful at night time is the dark mode. In fact, given that bedtime is typically when I would use the Kindle the most, it was in the dark mode about 70% of the time I was testing the Paperwhite. 

This standard model I have here, sadly, doesn’t have automatic brightness on it, so you do need to manually change the brightness to a level you’re happy with. However, if you pay extra and get the Signature Edition, you’ll get auto brightness and wireless charging. 

There is a slight inconsistency I noticed with the latest display. Perhaps down to the positioning and how the display is lit, I did notice when looking at a clean blank screen with little text, that the lighting and colour of the lighting weren’t perfectly consistent and even across the entire panel. 

I can’t say it’s something that bothered me while reading, particularly not with the dark mode enabled, but just something minor I spotted when I started looking closely. The bottom left corner, for instance, seemed to be a little warmer, more yellow than the rest of the screen. 

E Ink being E Ink, during the day or in any area with good light, the lighting isn’t needed at all. And the slightly increased contrast means that the Kindle is very easy to read in any environment.

One important improvement – at least for anyone not familiar with E Ink displays and how they work, is that the screen refresh time has been improved, as has general speed and performance. I noticed it mostly when loading the store home pages, or moving within the different areas of the software’s interface. 

Those times when the screen needs to do a full refresh and goes all black for a split second seem to take less time. That effect which may seem ‘glitchy’ to some who have never used a Kindle or E Ink display before isn’t as obvious or jarring. 

It’s clearly never going to be as smooth and instant as the OLED or LCD on your smartphone or tablet, but it’s a slight improvement that might help that transition to the slower display type less off-putting. 

Similarly, store pages load faster, and it takes less time to load when you switch from the ‘Home’ screen to ‘Library’. Basically, anything that isn’t just turning a page in a book and requires more processing is zippier than before. 

Features

• The battery lasts for weeks
• Charging is via USB-C
• Excellent book store

E Ink may have its downsides, but the one reason it still makes the perfect display type for Kindles is that it’s incredibly power efficient. It only uses battery juice when it refreshes, when you turn a page in your book. The rest of the time while you’re reading, it’s using very little of the battery’s capacity. 

Amazon claims that this battery can last up to 12 weeks on a full charge. But as with all claims, how much mileage you get from it will very much depend on how you use the Kindle. 

If you read it at night time, or in low light, and always have the light on, and set to a high brightness level, it will use more battery. Similarly, if you use a large font size, and turn pages in your book frequently, that will also drain the battery faster.

In my testing – which included reading for an hour every night, reading over the weekends and also lots of extra store loading, navigation within the interface and all sorts of other extra bits to test animation speeds and such – I managed to drain about 25-30% of the battery in 10 days. 

Of course, my usage during the testing period likely doesn’t fit how you’d use it in a regular, everyday way. But to give you an idea of battery drain each reading session; with the screen brightness set to 6 – which is 25%, and the warmth set to 7 and dark mode enabled – a one hour reading session used about 2% of the battery. 

That indicates you could get about 50 hours of reading time with the screen light before needing to plug it in. Read with the light switched off during the day, and you’ll almost certainly get a lot more.

There is Bluetooth, for connecting a speaker or headphones, to stream Audible audiobooks and 16GB of onboard storage. If you plump for the Signature Edtion, that storage doubles to 32GB. For most, 16GB is more than enough as that’ll hold thousands of books. You only really need 32GB if you plan to store huge audiobooks and lots of them.

The reason to plump for a Kindle over rivals – like the very good Kobo Libra Colour – is Amazon’s ebook store. It’s full of new titles, indie-published choices and consistent sales. There are benefits for Prime members too, and Kindle Unlimited gives you a buffet of certain titles to read every month for a fee.

It is missing Libby integration in the UK, something available on Kobo’s readers, for borrowing books from your local library. It’s also a bit of a faff to get your own ePub files onto the Kindle – but it can be done.

Latest deals