Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2024) review: The best Kindle for most people

Telegraph

13-03-2025

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Our rating: 9/10
We like:
A great reading experience
IPX8 waterproof
Heroic battery life
We don't like:
No page-turning buttons
£30 more than predecessor
£10 surcharge to remove ads
What is the Kindle Paperwhite (2024)?
The Kindle Paperwhite is the second rung on Amazon's e-book reader ladder, packing in a few extras that the regular Kindle can't match. Design-wise, it's an inch larger, measuring seven inches from corner to corner and it has an e-ink display that sits flush with the bezels, rather than being slightly indented.
From a functional point of view, it doubles the estimated battery life from six weeks to 12, comes with an adjustable warm light to avoid eye strain associated with blue light reading and benefits from IPX8 protection, meaning you can leave it in two metres of fresh water for up to an hour without damage.
These additional features will set you back £159.99 (or £169.99 for an advert-free lock screen), which is a £30 increase from the previous version. If you want to push the boat out, you can also buy the £189.99 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. It's largely the same but includes an auto-adjusting front light sensor, supports wireless charging and doubles the internal storage from 16GB to 32GB.
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How we test e-readers
With limited functionality by design, testing e-readers like the Kindle Paperwhite largely boils down to a whole lot of reading. With their e-ink screens, battery life generally reaches weeks rather than hours, which makes for plenty of page-turning.
Along the way, we're looking for the important aspects that impact the reading experience. We assess how the hardware feels in the hand, the battery life, the quality of the screen, how fast and usable the software is and whether the storefront book library has everything we might want to read.
Though none of these can magically turn a turgid book into a gripping virtual page-turner, we do like our e-book readers to enhance, rather than hinder the experience. That means we're looking for comfort, stamina and as few distractions as possible.
Design and features: 9/10
The 12th generation Kindle Paperwhite looks identical to the previous model, which was released back in 2021. Were it not for the fact that my older review model is scuffed from travel and use, I might have grabbed the wrong one when taking pictures and video for this review. I'm convinced you wouldn't have noticed the difference, even though it is marginally smaller with a 6.8-inch screen instead of the 7-inch panel in use here.
Why change a winning formula, though? The Kindle Paperwhite is a great-looking device that is well weighted and comfortable for one-handed reading over long periods. Not only does it have a 16% larger screen than the entry-level Kindle – enough for around 30 more words per page at font size five – but the screen is flush with the bezels for a more premium all-in-one look.
On the inside, the capacity has doubled over four years, going from an initial 8GB of internal storage to 16GB. That may seem like an unnecessary upgrade but once you realise that Kindles can now play your Audible books, it makes a lot more sense. 16GB is enough for around 8,000 text-based books but only 50 or so audiobooks.
That's the same capacity as the cheaper Kindle, but the Paperwhite has one big design ace up its sleeve: it's waterproof. The IPX8 rating means it's built to sit in two metres of fresh water for up to 60 minutes. This drops to 0.25 metres and three minutes in seawater, but if your Paperwhite is deeper underwater than that, then you probably have more pressing problems to deal with.
The only downside to the Kindle Paperwhite's design is the lack of physical page-turning buttons. However, as these haven't been a feature on Amazon's e-readers since the discontinued Kindle Oasis, it's hardly surprising they haven't been reintroduced here.
Display: 10/10
The other big advantage the Kindle Paperwhite has over the basic Kindle is its adjustable warm light. This lets you tweak the white balance of the screen for a more comfortable reading experience, as blue light has been linked with eye strain and sleeplessness. In other words, if you read to help you drift off at night, the Paperwhite should help rather than hinder.
The Kindle Paperwhite warm light can be adjusted across 24 levels, ranging from white to a sepia tone and if you don't want a yellow tint all the time, you can schedule the colour shift to change with the time of day. By default, automatic scheduling will kick in at sunrise and sunset, but you can set it for any time of your choosing in the settings.
Even as someone who spends most of his life no more than a metre from a blue-light-packed screen, I've never had any trouble sleeping and it seems some people are more affected than others. Nonetheless, the customer reviews section of the various Kindle Paperwhites is packed with testimonials from those who swear by it and at the very least it's a nice option to have.
Otherwise, the Kindle Paperwhite's screen has the same 300 ppi resolution and 94 nits of brightness as the other models. Text is crisp and easy to read and the paper-like look and feel of e-ink displays beats tablet and phone screens any day of the week.
Battery life: 10/10
Other than readability, the other big advantage that e-ink screens have is their enormous battery life. Each page turn works like an Etch-A-Sketch, where content is removed and rewritten. Other than page-turning, the battery on e-readers is only sipped for the backlight, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, meaning they can last for weeks on a single charge.
Even by e-reader standards, the latest Kindle Paperwhite's battery is impressive. Amazon says that it will last 12 weeks, which is twice that of the basic Kindle and 14 days more than the Kindle Colorsoft.
Of course, usage will vary wildly depending on how much you read, but Amazon is transparent with how it calculates that figure. It assumes the average user will read for half an hour a day with Wi-Fi disabled and the screen brightness set to 13 out of 24.
Even without the small-print mitigations, this largely matches my experience of the Kindle Paperwhite's battery life. After an hour of reading, the battery fell just two per cent, though audiobooks can be harder on stamina thanks to the added demands of enabling Bluetooth. That said, you may not notice a real difference: an hour's Audible use with the screen off saw the battery drop from 32% to 30%.
Storefront: 8/10
The Kindle relies on Amazon's own book store which is both extremely liberating and rather restrictive. On the one hand, the choice of books is second to none with millions of titles available. Amazon's algorithms are also very good at guiding you towards titles that may be of interest. Unless you're hunting for something very obscure, chances are that it's here and competitively priced as well.
For readers who aren't sure what they want, Amazon also offers the Kindle Unlimited service, which gives users an all-you-can-eat Netflix-style buffet of books to read for £9.49 per month. Add in the regular 99p daily deals and the fact that you can get free samples of books to try before you buy, it's easy to forget that the undeniable convenience comes at the cost of flexibility.
That's the downside of the Kindle hardware. Unlike rivals from Kobo, which allow you to shop around storefronts for the best price, Amazon pushes you towards its own storefront. Yes, you can send other files to your Kindle, but it's more fiddly than just using the store and this is likely by design. In the great Kindle vs Kobo battle, that's a win for the plucky opposition.
Software: 9/10
Aside from some note-taking specifics exclusive to the stylus-wielding Kindle Scribe, there isn't much difference in terms of software between Kindles. While it can take a little while to get your bearings, the features that are included are sensible and add to the reading experience without bogging you down in too much choice.
A tap at the top of the screen reveals a handful of options related to different fonts and text sizes, notes, bookmarks and the ability to search within the title you're reading. Notes can be added to the page by touching and holding the text you want to highlight. By default, the Kindle will highlight text that's been seen as noteworthy by a sufficient number of other readers, too. It's a nice touch, highlighting details you might otherwise miss, but you can turn it off if you think you run the risk of foreshadowing plot points or seeing other inadvertent spoilers.
You can also look up words you're unfamiliar with by highlighting them. This will provide either a dictionary definition or a Wikipedia summary of notable people and places.
The only real annoyance about the software is that Amazon still insists on charging £10 extra to remove lockscreen adverts at the time of purchase. To be clear, these aren't the obnoxious pop-up ads that you might be accustomed to online but are instead book covers for titles you might like when the Kindle isn't switched on. However, it still feels cheap for a product costing over £150 to be ad-supported, no matter how discretely said ads are implemented.
Technical specifications
While the Kindle Paperwhite's more expensive siblings introduce a colour screen and handwritten notepad functionality, the closer comparison is the basic Kindle, which sells for £65 less. While it shares the capacity and screen resolution, it has half the battery life and no waterproofing to speak of. It also lacks the warm light, making it a poor choice for bedtime readers. Still, its smaller size does make it the best Kindle for travel.
Telegraph verdict: 9/10
For most people, the Paperwhite is the best Kindle you can buy. While it shares a lot of its DNA with the cheaper basic Kindle, I'm satisfied that the extras it provides add up to £65 of value. With double the battery life, a larger screen, waterproofing and warm lighting, these are all great additions for e-readers, making the Kindle Paperwhite more flexible than its cheaper cousin.
In short, it gets the balance right and while fans of graphic novels may want to spring extra for the Kindle Colorsoft (£269), if you just want the best e-reader for reading text, then you should look no further.
FAQs
Is the Kindle Paperwhite waterproof?
The Kindle Paperwhite has IPX8 protection, which means it can survive in up to two metres of fresh water for up to an hour or 0.25 metres of seawater for three minutes.
Does the Kindle Paperwhite support audiobooks?
Yes, the Kindle Paperwhite audiobook support comes via Amazon-owned Audible if you have an account. If you own both the Kindle and Audible versions of a book, the e-reader will sync them to the same spot, so you can mix and match your reading habits without worrying about keeping track.
How long does the Kindle Paperwhite battery last?
The Kindle Paperwhite's battery will last up to 12 weeks, based on half an hour of reading per day. Our testing found that using the e-reader for audiobooks will drain it at a similar rate.
Is the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition worth the extra money?
The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition costs £189.99 and is £30 more than the ad-supported regular Paperwhite.
For the extra money, the storage doubles to 32GB, the lighting adjusts itself automatically and it adds support for wireless charging. It also doesn't have lockscreen adverts. Whether these changes add up to £30 of value depends on how many books and audiobooks you have and if you would spend £10 removing the ads anyway.
Can you adjust the brightness and warmth of the Kindle Paperwhite's screen?
Yes, both screen brightness and warmth can be adjusted on the Kindle Paperwhite on a scale between 1 and 24.