Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2015) review

All about that screen

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2015) review

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The Kindle store is packed full of content, with millions of books available, though actually navigating it is easier from a computer than the Kindle Paperwhite itself, with its greyscale display and slightly slow to respond touchscreen.

The good news is that you can easily send a book straight to your Kindle when shopping on another device, though. Still, if you do want to shop on the Kindle itself that's an option, and if you go for the 3G version you don't even need a Wi-Fi network.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2015) review

Prices are generally pretty competitive too. You'll know what to expect here if you've owned a Kindle before, but books are rarely more than about £5 (US$8, AU$12) and can often be picked up for as little as around £1 (US$2, AU$1), especially if you get them in one of the many Kindle store sales.

Battery life

The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is a device which can supposedly last for weeks on a single charge. However, that's an estimate which seems to assume you don't read for long each day and don't leave data connections on.

That said it certainly doesn't seem lacking in life. As an example after my first three days of use it went from a full charge to a half full indicator (sadly it doesn't get more precise than that).

That doesn't mean you can only expect a week out of it though. In order to test the Paperwhite out the screen was inevitably on a lot of the time. I spent around four hours actually reading and lots more time testing out the various functions. The brightness was also more than half way up at all times, Wi-Fi was on most of the time and when it wasn't 3G was.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2015) review

With more typical use of around thirty minutes to an hour's reading each day, but leaving Wi-Fi on and the screen at half brightness, it was able to last roughly two weeks on one charge.

That's not too bad a showing and it seems fairly comparable to my first generation Kindle Paperwhite, despite the fact that this one has a far sharper screen. Keep Wi-Fi off and Amazon reckons you can get up to six weeks out of it, which isn't totally unbelievable.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.