Gadgetory

hey this is Josh from the verge and we're taking a look at the Kindle paperwhite the device itself is not really that notable it's a small black rectangle with rounded corners it feels really good in your hand actually it's a little bit thinner than the previous Kindle Touch and the display is a bit less sunken down in the plastic housing which is good because it's a touchscreen display it's kind of reminiscent of holding a book in your hands it's the right size the right weight and it feels really good when you're holding it there are a couple of small drawbacks to the hardware the previous Kindle Touch had four gigs of storage this only has two gigs and the previous version had a headphone jack this has no headphone jack and no audio output so there's no text-to-speech or anything like that what it lacks an audio it makes up for with its display though the device uses Amazon's new paperwhite technology and you can adjust it using on-screen controls it can get very bright and get very dim the screen of course can be used in direct sunlight or under regular household lighting and this display is actually higher resolution than other Kindle models as I said touch responses is really quite good on this display and the ink refresh rate is the fastest that I've ever seen on an inked device turning pages on books happens almost instantaneously and navigating around the device using the latest version of the Kindle software is pretty snappy the software itself is a lot more like a tablet OS than the previous Kindles it has a home screen which is somewhat reminiscent of the fire and Fire HD home screen it shows the last book that you were reading and the items that you have stored in the device that you can swipe through you can also flip it over to the cloud and grab stuff from the cloud that you've not downloaded yet and it gives you recommendations down below your content you know for things that you might want to purchase because Amazon loves it when you purchase things the software definitely has capabilities that older Kindles don't for instance you're able to read comic books on this device you can even zoom in on the panels and flip their panels the way you can on the Fire HD and other fire models like other Kindle products this is an ad-supported device though you're able to opt out of the ads for an additional $20 the battery life on this device versus older models was excellent in fact amazon says it gets about the same battery life as a standard Kindle and in my testing that was definitely true the device doesn't come with a charger it does come with a micro USB cable and you can plug it into your computer to charge it the device retails for $119 with ads and 139 dollars without ads for the non 3G version the 3G version comes in at 179 dollars which is pretty pricey for an e-reader and then of course another $20 if you want to opt out of ads and some more money if you want a charger for your wall in all the Kindle paperwhite is a terrific ereader the software is fast and intuitive the display is crisp and the battery life is outstanding Amazon's taken an already good product and made it a great product and I strongly recommend this device for people who really love reading