Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2013 - My First eBook Reader
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,179 words · ~5 min read
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The Cooler Master Glacer 240L CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an
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all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler. Click now to learn
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more. So, I must be the only person on
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Earth who had never really used a Kindle before I bought this one. Consider this
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a review not from a seasoned ebook reader perspective, but rather from
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someone who has mostly relied on dead trees for the enjoyment of novels in the
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past. Yes, I am just old-fashioned like
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that, I guess. The first thing I noticed about the Kindle was the guaranteed or
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certified frustration packaging. I laughed and then opened it up. Inside, I
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found a charging cable, but no wall wart, a quick start guide, which I
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didn't really need because the thing only has one button, and the quick start guide basically says push the button,
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and the paper weight itself. Basic specs wise, it's got a 6-in e-aper display
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with a 212 pixels per inch density, 16
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levels of grayscale for maps and illustrations, and a blue tinted
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brightness adjustable backlight. It's got 2 gigs of storage for up to 1,100
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books, plus free cloud storage of books on Amazon if you actually have more than
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that. And Amazon figures it'll do about 28 hours of continuous battery life. But
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with my low backlight preference and slow reading, I actually got more out of
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it than than that. So, let's start with the screen. E-aper is really really
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cool. The screen saver on it, which stays on at all times. Remember, it
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doesn't take power to maintain an image only to change it. actually looked like
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a sticker that was over top of the screen and I initially tried to like
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peel it off before realizing what a dunce I was being and turning the thing
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on. The screen does still have a bit of
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a yellow cast, but it's much better than other e-aper devices that I've seen and
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really is more white. When it came to benchmarking, um I don't know, Amazon
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says it's faster than the old one or something. I I don't know. I still
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couldn't type my wireless password at full speed. So, I figured, what is there
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to do with this thing other than read some books and see if the actual speed
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bothers me or doesn't bother me? The quick start guide made it easy to get
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started within about 8 minutes. It had walked me through all the functionality
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I needed, connected me to my Wi-Fi, and I had purchased a book. I decided to
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skip the whole Facebook and Twitter integration thing, though, so maybe that would have taken a bit more time. And
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then, of course, you can't benchmark without comparative testing. So, I read
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The Hobbit on my iPad 2 to cleanse myself of that second movie. I read I
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Hope They Serve Beer and Hell on Paper, followed by the first book and about a
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third or so of the second one of A Song of Fire and Ice on the Kindle. The
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higher display density contrasts sharply with other e-readers and significantly
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reduced my eye strain compared to my iPad 2. I see well closeup. So, smaller
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font sizes with fewer page flips is more comfortable for me as long as the
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resolution is high enough that the text doesn't look distorted. And I found the
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pixels weren't very noticeable to me unless I was closer than about 4 in.
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Speaking of page flips, one thing that drove me crazy was that referring back
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to things like maps or family trees in a
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fantasy novel like I was reading was nearly impossible and very flowbreaking
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compared to being able to keep my pinky in the appropriate appendix for quick
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reference or my thumb. I'm willing to trade my appendices, however, not my
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appendix, my appendices for the quick dictionary feature on the other hand
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that lets you look things up either in the dictionary or on Wikipedia and have
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it defined for you. That is extremely handy. The backlight was also super
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convenient. I found on a setting of about four or five, I couldn't tell it
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was on with the bedside lamp on in my bedroom, but when I ventured into the
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darkened house to retrieve a reading snack, the setting was perfect for that
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as well. So, I actually never really adjusted it. Now, Amazon touts this as
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optimal for reading with one hand, but I call bollocks on that. It can be as
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light as it wants to be, but it's not balanced. In portrait, the bezel is so
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narrow. In fact, if you look at the picture on Amazon's website, no one can
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hold it like that. They've got the thumb like way off to the side here. The bezel
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is so narrow that you couldn't hope to actually use it that way unless you're
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also resting it on your lap or bed or something. And for right-handed folks,
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this was really frustrating. The only way it works in landscape mode, here we
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go, is this way with the narrower side
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in your right hand. Most people are right-handed, Amazon. I mean, it's great for the lefties. They have that nice big
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bezel that I could actually legitimately call suitable for one-handed reading,
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but until Amazon gives you the option to go either way with landscape mode, I I
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can't really let that one go. I mean, I know a book is heavier, but the thing
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about it is that it's also inherently balanced unless you're just starting out
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or just finishing it up. So, I guess that's it. It's not the
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most complete review I've ever done, but the conclusion isn't likely to change
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with more experience with the product. So, while it doesn't compare to holding
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a book for me, and I think it's the biggest scam ever, that ebooks cost the
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same as physical books given their digital distribution cost savings and
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the fact that they don't let people lend them more than once for 14 days, which
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is ridiculous. I'll still probably be
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continuing to buy books on Kindle rather than paper. Your mileage may vary, but
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the space savings and convenience of only having one device to keep track of
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outweighs the superior experience of the
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smell of paper and turning actual pages for me. Thank you for checking out this
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video on the Kindle Paper White 2013 edition. Don't forget to like this video
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if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment. Let me
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know books or ebooks, which do you
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prefer? And as always guys, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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