| Amazon won the ebook reader war. Like the iPod, the Swiffer, or Jell-O, the Kindle is just what you buy when you want what it does. Barnes & Noble and Sony went down swinging trying to compete, and Kobo and Iriver are but gnats to be swatted by the great Amazon behemoth. Last year’s $119 Kindle Paperwhite was the best ebook reader ever made, the default choice, the one I recommend to everyone without a second’s thought and 12 months later it still is. There isnt even viable competition at this point. |
| Yet there’s still a new Paperwhite this fall, a new $119 E Ink reader with a series of hardware upgrades and some new software as well. A few things have been changed, but this is very much the same device it was a year ago. It’s Amazon at the height of its powers, with nothing to prove and nothing to lose. The question now: when you win a market, when no one else even really puts up a fight anymore, what do you do next? | | In the Kindle’s case, you make sure the Paperwhite never gets stashed in a drawer somewhere, a forgotten impulse buy. You find new and clever ways to make sure people keep right on reading, and buying, books. | | It happened repeatedly: I would pick up a Paperwhite to test it out, read for a while, and then discover that I was holding the device I bought a year ago instead of my review unit. Only the most discerning of readers will notice the differences in hardware here: a slightly changed Kindle logo, a slightly higher-contrast screen. The only obvious change, the only way I could reliably identify one device from the other, is by the logo on the back. Where there was once a subtle, muted Kindle logo, there’s now a glossy black "Amazon" etched into the soft-touch black back. | | Otherwise it’s the same size, the same weight, the same months-long battery life, the same everything. It’s still comfortable, easy to use in one hand, and as handsomely understated as ever. It’s sturdy enough that you don’t need a case like the leather folio Amazon sells, but I’ve grown to love the case with a magnetized flap that turns the device on when you open it, and a nicely rough texture, opening up the case feels like opening up a well-loved hardback. It’s wonderful. |
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