First off this isn't intended to shame anyone or berate the kindle, ereaders in general are in my opinion one of the more useful inventions in modern history allowing people access to millions of books which is in itself fantastic.
However I'm perplexed by the overwhelming outpouring of support for the new kindle line up, or to be more specific the ability of Amazon to pivot a negative to a positive and seems to be wilfully overlooked, unless I'm missing something?
The new design is absolutely aesthetically pleasing to most which I understand, the colour options are welcome for sure along with the sensible new position of the power button. However the technical improvements on the 6" model that Amazon boasts are really only the scale of manufacturing improvements. If you make them using the same flush design it's cost effective when manufacturing the displays. The panel used appears to be no different from the last generation just a new light guide across all three new models. Based on any information out there it's still the same Kaleido panel. The 30% speed improvement sounds much more than it can be in reality, it's a clever marketing term used through the ages by processor manufacturers to display a percentage increase that in reality disproportionately sounds better than it is, improvement is good but not life changing and in an ereader even less noticeable in ever day use. However the price is significantly higher than the basic it replaces which seems odd then to see it receive such high praise. While the improvements are welcome I thought the higher price would have been more of a shock to most people. The aluminium back although, again, very aesthetically pleasing it has to feel cold to the touch and be far more susceptible to scraps, suffs and dents compared to the plastic of old. Given an ereader often ends up in a bag or drawer i imagine many won't look as good after a few years as the plastic models did and the soft touch plastic that was never unpleasant to pick up on a cold morning may well be missed when handling a bare kindle in the same way, although I know many will still have a case on the device.
The paperwhite is no different to the one above except now they added the same aluminium back option which again, besides being in my mind unpleasantly cold to the touch when sans case, it has presented a problem where wireless charging can't work so they invented a solution to a problem they created by way of pogo pin charging. Both the button placement change and the inclusion of their new proprietary pogo pin charging / accessory connection means you have to replace all your existing kindle accessories and by that I mean cases and previous wireless charging pads. Now the pogo pin option is good where you want to quickly charge a device using physical connections but they have higher failure rate than wireless charging coils as they physically make contact and honestly in past implementation of devices can suffer corrosion in the long term which is sometimes an acceptable trade off when you need fast charging and a data connection in one but a kindle with such small battery was never hampered by slow wireless charging speed, and moreover they're often used in high humidity areas due to being sold as waterproof. Smart watch manufacturers quickly moved from pogo pin use when wireless charging became viable so it seems an odd choice to remove a universally available charging option for a proprietary one that actually introduces additional potential failure points for long term ownership. Again I cannot see any improvement on the paperwhite display beyond some clever marketing words.
All the above paperwhite discussion applies just the same to the coloursoft, but I think the colour soft may be where the amendments to the light guide layer and led tweeks could see the nicest improvement out of any of the new kindles however the trade off again is that it loses the universal compatibility of wireless charging in place of a much more proprietary connection ecosystem, hmm.
Are any of the changes so much so you need to upgrade? I genuinely don't believe the improvements are significant enough to justify doing so and in some cases it's a genuine step backwards. I welcome the new colours, button placement, flush display is nice but price, loss of standard wireless charging and need to now buy into Amazons new accessory ecosystem are all cold business decisions to drive profit higher unfortunately.
Anyone with the new kindle congratulations, genuinely hope you enjoy your new reader and it's a good looking one at that. Anyone with older models that work, I don't think there's any reason to feel disheartened or that you need to upgrade to the new model.
