Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) review | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

The Kindle Paperwhite offers a solid display and intuitive software packed in a sleek blueprint, but it suffers from random crashes.

For

Sleek design
Good display and backlighting
Intuitive software
Long battery life

Confronting

Occasionally freezes (Fixed now - Run across Editor'due south Notation)
Ability adapter non included

Laptop Mag Verdict

The Kindle Paperwhite offers a solid display and intuitive software packed in a sleek design, but it suffers from random crashes.

Pros

+
Sleek design
+
Proficient display and backlighting
+
Intuitive software
+
Long battery life

Cons

-
Occasionally freezes (Fixed now - See Editor's Annotation)
-
Power adapter not included

The holidays are right effectually the corner and cozying up by the fire with a book in mitt may seem nifty until you light your pages on fire, so it's a skilful matter Amazon released a new Kindle Paperwhite.

This new due east-reader runs for $139 ($159 without ads) and offers a adept brandish backed by intuitive software, long battery life and a sleek design. However, Amazon gives y'all the curt end of the stick past not including a power adapter, and the Kindle Paperwhite was prone to crashing in my testing.

I love the Kindle Paperwhite, and remember it's an awesome piece of tech for people who want to read on the go or even at home without a clunky book weighing them downward. However, it's hard to become by the crashes, so possibly wait until these become sorted out.

Editors Annotation: Amazon recently updated the Kindle Paperwhite to fix the freezing effect, then we adjusted our scoring from 3.v to iv.0.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) price and configuration options

There are three models of the Kindle Paperwhite. Starting time, the regular Kindle Paperwhite, which is outfitted with 8GB of storage and runs for $139 ($159 without ads).

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition comes with 32GB of storage, Qi wireless charging, and an auto-adjusting light sensor all for $189 ($209 without ads). There's also a Kindle Paperwhite Kids Edition, which costs $159 and comes with a kid-friendly comprehend, a year of Amazon Kids Plus, and a ii-year extended replacement plan.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) design

There'southward not a lot going on with the Kindle Paperwhite's design, and I'one thousand okay with that. The black slate is clean and simple. The face features average-sized bezels and a Kindle logo at the very lesser.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) review — (Image credit: Rami Tabari)

The screen curves around a soft plastic shell, and each of the sides are bare apart from the bottom edge, which features a ability button and USB Type-C port for charging. Meanwhile, the flat dorsum surface features an engraved Amazon logo. The chassis is likewise waterproof, boasting an IPX8 rating, which means you tin can take this baby into the bath with you.

The Kindle Paperwhite comes in at 6.9 x 4.ix x 0.32 inches and 7.23 ounces, making information technology thin, lightweight, and — most chiefly — portable. The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is the same size, but is iii grams heavier.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) display

The Kindle Paperwhite rocks a 6.8-inch, 300 ppi (pixel-per-inch) glare-costless display. It's larger than the previous generation and ten% brighter at the max setting. You tin transition between a warm calorie-free and a dark style.

I love the look of the warm low-cal because it gets the page closer to looking like a real book, and it also helps with eye fatigue. However, I'm non a fan of dark mode, mostly because of the limitations of the Kindle Paperwhite. A pitch-black background paired with white text isn't corking for reading, merely if you lighten up the groundwork a few shades, information technology'll look more natural. I hope Amazon can tweak dark mode in the futurity.

The warm lite likewise features a scheduler, which lets you lot adjust when it turns on, similar to what you find on a smartphone. The brightness scales betwixt 0 to 24, 0 being no light, which looks as close as you lot can get to a existent volume, and 24 being the one that produces the most low-cal in a dark space.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) interface

For better or worse, the home page hasn't changed much on the new Kindle Paperwhite. You lot get a small snippet of the book you're currently reading, your library, your reading lists, and a glimpse at best sellers included with your Amazon Prime number account.

Scrolling downward reveals an ad for Kindle Unlimited, books featured in Prime number reading, top page turners, most-read non-fiction books on Amazon charts, a recommended for y'all section, books pop this month, a last take a chance in Prime number book option, and most read fiction books on Amazon charts.

At the summit is the search bar next to your cart and the settings bill of fare. There'southward also a tab at the bottom that lets you lot switch over to your Library. You can filter your library betwixt the types of books as well as books y'all read or haven't read. And yous can even sort them.

Overall, the interface is pretty uncomplicated if a chip chaotic. Information technology does feel similar Amazon is trying to shove paid books and services down your throat.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) reading feel

I absolutely honey reading books on the Kindle Paperwhite. I had been reading the physical copy of The Witcher: Sword of Destiny, but I wasn't motivated to choice it up again until I got the Kindle Paperwhite.

There are a ton of customization options for the text on screen while you're reading. For those who don't want to fuss effectually with settings, at that place are 4 options: Compact, Standard, Big and Low Vision. But if yous're so inclined, y'all can jump into the options to customize the font, layout and more than.

In the Font tab are options for the Font Family, Boldness (1 to 5) and Text Size (1 to 14). The included fonts are Amazon Ember, Amazon Ember Bold, Baskerville, Bookerly, Caecilia, Caecilia Condensed, Futura, Helvetica, OpenDyslexic, and Palatino. I'm surprised there are no common fonts, like Times New Roman or Arial. You tin also easily change the font size with the compression-to-zoom gesture.

In the Layout tab, you can configure the orientation of the text (landscape or portrait), conform the margins (edge-to-edge, narrower and narrowest), change the alignment, and shrink or aggrandize the spacing.

In the More than tab are options to track your reading progress, show the clock while reading, identify volume mentions, testify info about the book, brandish popular highlights, reveal the highlight menu, enable page plough animation, enable Word Wise, and turn on Pinyin, which can reveal pronunciation guides in a higher place Chinese characters.

I love the Page Turn Animation because it feels so natural when yous're flipping through a book and getting to the next 1. And if there's ever a word that I don't recognize, I can press and hold it, and a dictionary or Wikipedia entry volition popular upwards. However, it can be difficult to hit smaller text, and sometimes the Kindle mistakenly highlights an entire sentence as opposed to 1 give-and-take.

You can also bookmark, flip through the contents, word search and even disable the touchscreen. The bookmarking is not as make clean as information technology could be, since you lot accept to double-click to bookmark a page and y'all take to click to bookmark a page in order to come across your bookmarks. Turning off the touchscreen ways the only inputs the Kindle will annals are those for flipping the pages, which is neat for those who need to grip onto the screen itself.

1 of the coolest things about the Kindle Paperwhite is the Ten-Ray characteristic, which provides some data about notable clips of dialogue, characters, terms and images.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) operation

The Kindle Paperwhite is bully when information technology works, but frustrating as hell when information technology doesn't.

The Kindle Paperwhite responds to my gestures and movements swiftly, merely with merely plenty latency to remind you that you're using an e-reader. Meanwhile, the web browser might also exist useless due to how deadening the tablet is.

I also experienced a number of crashes while navigating through the Kindle Paperwhite. The due east-reader would crash every fourth dimension I quickly flipped through the settings while reading a book. I had to hold the power button to turn it off and reset it in social club to get it to piece of work once more. That was frustrating because whatever notes or bookmarks I fabricated were not saved. And as I tried to replicate this by adjusting the brightness of the Paperwhite, the e-reader crashed on me.

I reached out to Amazon near these issues, and a representative stated that it'south the offset that the team has heard of crashes happening. I promise this is something that tin be resolved with a software update or that this issue is express to our review unit of measurement.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) battery life

Thankfully, Amazon had the foresight to switch the Kindle Paperwhite to USB Type-C charging. The company's endurance claims for the Paperwhite are bold, boasting upwardly to x weeks of bombardment life.

That may be true if you're using the device at low brightness, which almost no 1 does. After putting three hours into my reading, I saw a drib of 20% in battery life when using information technology close to maximum brightness. So, by my estimate, that's roughly 15 hours of battery life, which is still good.

Amazon also claims that the Kindle Paperwhite can charge from 0 to total bombardment in 2.5 hours when using a 9W adapter. Unfortunately, the adapter isn't included.

Kindle Paperwhite (2021, 11th Gen) software and warranty

While it's piece of cake plenty to use, there'due south a lot going on in the groundwork of the Kindle Paperwhite.

When diving into the settings, you can adjust things nearly your business relationship, the household and family unit library, and the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Bluetooth in the Kindle Paperwhite lets you connect to a speaker so those with a visual impairment tin apply the VoiceView Screen Reader feature.

In the Device Options tab, you can display the embrace of the book you're reading (super helpful to remind you lot that you need to go along), reveal device info, adapt the warmth schedule, set a passcode, and restart or reset your Kindle.

The Reading Options tab provides ii options for Page Refresh (refresh the display with every page plow) and Vocabulary Architect (remember dictionary lookups). I recommend enabling both of these, especially page refresh if you desire to avoid those screen fire-in moments.

Yous can adjust your language in the Language & Dictionaries tab, or enable VoiceView Screen Reader (provide spoken feedback when you lot touch items on the screen) and capsize black and white in the Accessibility tab.

At that place are even a gear up of parental controls on lath that lets you restrict access to the web browser, store, cloud and Goodreads on Kindle. You tin likewise create an Amazon Kids profile, which will allow space for upwards to four children. Through this version of the account, yous can add together content from your library, set reading goals, track progress and give your kids badges for reading.

The Kindle Paperwhite comes with a one-year limited warranty. If you get with the Kindle Paperwhite Kids Edition, you'll become a ii-year warranty.

Bottom line

The Kindle Paperwhite is a great e-reader for people looking to simplify their reading experience for an affordable price. It's sleek, vivid, long-lasting and easy to utilize -- well, when information technology doesn't crash.

I would expect a calendar week or 2 until Amazon gets the bugs figured out before ownership the Kindle Paperwhite (bold the company is working on a prepare), unless you don't listen dealing with potential crashes.

The Kindle Paperwhite has helped me become back into reading, so overall, I would recommend it to anyone considering making the switch from newspaper to screen.

Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and course of a laptop as well equally all sorts of cool tech. You tin find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a hoarder's dream of laptops, and when he navigates his mode out to civilization, you tin can catch him watching actually bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He'due south the all-time at every game and he simply doesn't lose. That's why yous'll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-like challenge.