Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsSo much better than print
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2022
If you’re considering this, and reading this review, you’re probably considering your first foray into Kindle reading. Good choice. A few things to note about this.
The ads are not pop ups. I know some dead tree fans would have you believe, right in the middle of a tense scene, an ad will interrupt the page. That’s not how this works. What happens is, when you put the device in sleep mode, rather than say the cover or the portrait of a famous author, you see an ad. If you use the physical cover to turn on and off the device, you won’t see much if any of the ads. And yes, you can dog ear a page.
I have no idea why memes keep popping up to say you can’t. Actually, the things you can do with a print book that you can’t with a Kindle book are: Donate them to the library if the library starts taking books again, give used copies to a friend, sell used copies, have a bookmark accidentally fall out, and use them for, well, kindling. Kindle can do everything else. Things you can do on a Kindle and not a print book are: read in the dark, search for text, carry dozens of books in your pocket, create notes of virtually unlimited size (you run out of room in the margin of a print book), pick up a new book nearly anywhere, anytime, and instantly convert your entire library to large print.
Most library systems can send any borrowed e-book directly to your Kindle. And your place and notes are stored in case you borrow the book again or buy a copy. You don’t get that with print.
Amazon recently improved their send to Kindle features with a drag and drop web page that makes moving your own documents to the device extremely simple.
This comes with a USB-C cable, but not a charger (aka wall wort) so if you don’t have one lying around (I think the expectation is most of us do) you will need to pick one up.
16 gig might not sound like a lot, but most books fall under 2K. I’ve seen public libraries (I’m looking at you, Florida) with fewer books than this can hold. Audible eats the memory a bit more, but I find this to be more than enough.
You don’t get cellular connectivity with this, but that’s only with the premium Oasis line now. Scribe even missed out on that. I find it convenient, but I understand wifi is ubiquitous enough these days it’s not a big deal for most users. I have an annoying habit of finishing a book on the crosstown bus, then needing the next in the series. Yes, the cell phone tether works. No, that’s not as convenient as built-in cellular.
It has fewer LEDs than most, but that’s not a big deal. Four lets you read in the dark. The scribe has 35. Guys, it’s an e-reader, not a disco, no one needs that many separate lights on that small a device. The absence of a warm light and auto adjusting lights are a bigger issue here. The warm light makes a big difference when you’re reading before bed.
It doesn’t have the waterproofing, which I thought was a bigger deal when that first came out, but in all the time since I’ve yet to (knock wood) get a Kindle wet. It’s a nice to have, not a have to have.
The size can throw people at first. The screen approximates two things – an index card turned portrait and a mass market paperback page. The occasional “ghosting” mirrors the see-through element of the cheaper mass market paperbacks, except on the device it refreshes quickly, and the ghosting goes away.
There were some studies done that suggest memory is improved from reading from print rather than e-book. I want to point out a few issues and cite my own experience. First, all the studies I could find cite pop ups and other distractions as the primary issue. That is, the test is on a general-purpose tablet, not a single purpose e-reader. When they either do a study on an actual e-reader or compare with pop ups on the tablet vs someone coming over just as often and tossing brochures on their print book I’ll believe it. Unless all factors are equal, the study is inherently flawed. To my experience, my ability to absorb and either use the information (if it’s non-fiction) or retain it over time (if it’s fiction) is nearly identical in both, with the slight advantage of the e-book being able to search back in the text for prior information. It drives me nuts when a quote resurfaces in a print book, and I can’t find the prior mention again. Or when I need to find a code snippet in a shelf full of computer books rather than just search on device and have it in seconds.
So, if you’re comfortable with the mass market paperback format, the size, the quality, then this is a huge step up. If you want to lay your hands on information quickly, then this is a huge step up.
If you want portability, then this is a huge step up. I just had to help an elderly woman move into assisted living and the loss of space cost her nearly all of her much-loved library. I find it comforting that nearly all of mine fits in my purse. No more culling the library for space, then finding you need to buy a new copy. If you delete an e-book from your Kindle, you can download it again for free. I remember, in the dark days before the Kindle was invented, being stuck on a flight from Arizona to New York with nothing to read but the most misogynistic, worst written mystery novel I’d ever encountered. If I had a Kindle, I’d have had at least a dozen better choices at hand, not to mention rereads.
The downside here is twofold. First, Dune and The Great Gatsby look the same size on the reader, so it’s hard to eyeball that one is a super-fast read and the other a meaty novel. It’s also a little too easy to build up a massive TBR pile, given it takes no physical space, the device memory is ample, and Amazon keeps offering free books to Prime members every month, sometimes more than one, and a crazy number of deeply discounted books Prime or not.
If you are concerned about the environment, then this is a matter of economics of scale. On the last study I checked, the magic number was 20. At 20 books the manufacture and transport impact of the e-reader ties the impact of manufacturing and transporting print books. At 21 and beyond, the e-reader has almost no further impact as compared to the printing and transporting of physical books. E-readers have boasted substantial improvements in reducing their carbon footprint since that study, but I can find no more recent information. Even at 20, the worst number, it’s clear that e-readers are a pure win for the environment.
It’s a great device. If you want to go with this one as the entry level, you won’t be disappointed.
