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Reviewed / Séamus Bellamy
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Credit:
Reviewed / Séamus Bellamy
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The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is one of the best e-readers around. Read More
The 2019 Oasis comes with buttons for turning the page, adjustable display-lighting temperature, a headphone jack, and a waterproof body. Read More
While the standard 2019 Kindle is an affordable option, we don’t recommend it. The display is lackluster, unevenly lit, and can lead to eye strain. Read More
An Amazon Kindle provides readers with the ability to carry thousands of books, magazines, and comics with them, wherever they go. The fact that a Kindle has a display that can be read in any lighting conditions, outstanding battery life, and the ability to purchase and down books on-the-go is the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, while years of reading will have informed which books you enjoy the most, it won’t have prepared you to pick which Kindle is best. Don’t fret! The bookworms at Reviewed have your back.
We’ve spent years—in and out of the office—testing Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. Right now, the best Kindle for reading, for most people is the Kindle Paperwhite (available at Amazon) . With a design overhaul and a number of desirable new features, the latest version of this device will keep book lovers happy, for years to come. It offers a bright, crisp display, loads of storage, and can be used to read a great book downloaded from the Amazon Kindle Store or, through the use of a Bluetooth speaker or earphones, to listen to one via Amazon’s Audible audiobooks service.
While the Paperwhite might be the best Kindle for most people, there are more luxurious options and more affordable ones to consider which we've also reviewed for this guide. We also have a guide to [the best e-readers] if you prefer learning about other, similar devices.
These are the best Kindles we tested ranked, in order:
Our favorite Kindle, the 2021 Kindle Paperwhite, features a larger display, lighting temperature controls and, fast USB-C charging
The only way to test a Kindle is to use one—a lot.
I’m Séamus Bellamy. I’ve always been a voracious reader with a large library. A few years ago, my wife and I decided to invest in a nomadic lifestyle and moved into a 40-foot long motorhome, with the intention of travelling, full-time. This meant, in the name of space-saving, saying goodbye to scores of the paperback and hardcover books that we collected over the years. To feed our reading habits, we turned to using e-readers.
Over the past few years, I’ve tested and reviewed dozens of e-readers from a wide range of companies. I want to channel my passion for these devices into helping you find the perfect Kindle for the bookworm in your life—especially if that bookworm is you!
There’s only one way to test an e-reader like an Amazon Kindle: you’ve got to read a lot of books.
Over the years, we’ve spent months of quality time with Kindle e-readers, absorbed in good books for hours at a time. We used the products in this guide in direct sunlight, with the lights out in bed, and during the day in well-lit rooms to ensure that the ebooks we were devouring were legible no matter the conditions.
Where waterproofing was claimed, waterproofing was tested: We took waterproof Kindles into hot tubs, pools, and, for the sake of consistency, submerged them in a sink full of water for 45 minutes. Finally, we tested battery life. As everyone’s reading habits and preference for page illumination differ, we don’t feel comfortable in quoting you exact figures on how long a Kindle will last between charges. We can tell you, however, that all of the devices in this roundup can go for a week or more before you’ll need to juice its battery up again.
The 2019 Kindle Oasis has been discontinued, but can still be found as a used or refurbished device, online.
Tablets are a great choice for consuming content from services like Facebook, Twitter, and sites like USA Today or Reviewed. By installing Amazon’s free Kindle and Audible apps, you can even download ebooks and audiobooks to your tablet, just like you would on a Kindle. Given that a tablet can also be used to watch movies, stream music, chat with friends via a service like Signal or be used to plow through email and other productivity tasks, investing in a one-trick pony like a Kindle might feel like a waste of money to you. We’d argue, however, that the fact that a Kindle is designed to focus on one task—letting you read or listen to a good book—is what, for bookworms, makes it such a sound investment.
An Amazon Kindle is smaller and lighter than most tablets, making them easier to hold during hours-long reading sessions. As Kindles don’t come packing dozens of apps, designed to fracture your concentration with notifications and updates, you’ll find that using one allows you to become immersed in the books you love, in a way that a tablet simply can’t afford.
A tablet’s beautiful high-resolution display might be gorgeous for streaming Netflix with—provided you’re indoors. If you want to take the show outside, you’ll discover that your display is hard to enjoy in direct sunlight. Not so on a Kindle with its E-Ink display. No matter the lighting conditions, you’ll be able to read without difficulty. That studies have shown that blue spectrum light, like that produced by the display of a tablet or laptop, can disrupt your body’s melatonin production, makes reading on a tablet before bed, less than desirable. Amazon’s most recent Kindle, the All-New Kindle Oasis, features a display with adjustable color temperature; a feature that puts the fear of nighttime reading to bed.
Finally, there’s battery life: even with moderate use, a tablet-like an iPad needs to be charged every couple of days. A Kindle, with its low-powered display and front lighting, processor, sips power by comparison. Depending on your reading habits, you may be able to go for weeks at a time between charges.
Kindle Unlimited is a relatively new subscription service offered by Amazon that is sort of like the Apple Music of reading material. For a subscription fee, users receive instantaneous access to a huge, ever-expanding library of books, audiobooks, and magazines.
Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited both function in the same basic way: as subscription-based services that offer users access to books and periodicals. That said, it's worth understanding their differences.
Prime Reading is available to anyone with an active Amazon Prime subscription. It's not limited to Amazon Kindles and can be accessed on any device that supports Amazon’s Kindle app. This includes iPhones, Android phones, iPads, and Android tablets. Reading materials can be "checked out" of the Prime Reading library, but users are limited to 10 publications at once. Amazon claims that the Prime Reading library contains over 1,000 books and magazines.
Kindle Unlimited is a little different. It requires a monthly subscription. So, if you have an Amazon Prime account and want to access Kindle Unlimited, you’ll have to fork over an additional monthly fee for the privilege. For voracious readers, it could be a smart investment. While you’re only allowed to have 10 books downloaded from the service at any one time, Kindle Unlimited users have an incredible one million different books to choose from—that’s enough reading material to last a lifetime.
Right now, the only Kindles that are waterproof are the 2017 and 2019 editions of the Kindle Oasis and the 2021 Kindle Paperwhite. All three have an IPX8 water resistance rating, which means they can be submerged in up to 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) of fresh water for an hour at a time.
You should know, however, being waterproof doesn’t make your Kindle corrosion-proof. If you plan on using your Kindle in a saltwater pool or at the beach, try to avoid getting it wet as the salt can eat away at the device’s USB port and in the case of the Kindle Oasis, its aluminum body. If your device is exposed to salt water, don’t panic: rinse it off as soon as you can with fresh water and you’re good to go.
'Special offers' is a nice way of saying that while using your Kindle, you'll be fed occasional bits of advertising. If you opt for a Kindle that comes with special offers, you'll pay a little less than you would for one that ships without them. It is possible to pay Amazon to remove special offer content from your Kindle, down the road.
With its waterproof, aluminum body, physical page turn buttons, and glass display, the All-New Kindle Oasis’ form and features feel luxurious when compared against the dependable functionality of a Kindle Paperwhite. As with the last two generations of this device, the 2019 Oasis’ wedge-like design and page-turn buttons make one-handed reading super easy.
The latest iteration of the Oasis brings readers a minor reduction in weight and a small increase in battery capacity over previous iterations of the device. These changes are slight enough that users of the last generation of the device likely won't notice. More significant, is the introduction of front lighting with varying colour temperatures on this flagship e-reader. Text read on the Oasis can be lit up with the traditional bright, blue spectrum light that Kindle users have become accustomed to, or with warmer, yellow hues that in testing, proved easier on our eyes. As blue-spectrum light can stymy melatonin production, this upgrade is a huge win for anyone that enjoys reading before they nod off for the night. The illumination level of the Oasis’ 12 LEDs can automatically change thanks to a built-in ambient light sensor, which makes this luxury buy feel all the more decadent. You won’t find better e-reader lighting, anywhere. Period. Additionally, if you love listening to podcasts and audiobooks, the Oasis has your back. As with the other Kindles in Amazon’s current lineup, it allows users, via a pair of Bluetooth headphones or a wireless speaker, to listen to content from Audible.
You’ve noticed that we use the word luxury in this review—as you may have guessed, the price of All-New Kindle Oasis is steep. In fact, it can cost almost twice as much as a current-generation Kindle Paperwhite. Given that the Paperwhite performs almost as well and comes packing many of the same features as the Oasis, it’s hard to recommend this device to anyone but the staunchest of ebook aficionados.
Did I mention it's waterproof?
Waterproof
Page-turn buttons
Well lit
Pricey
Séamus Bellamy is a senior editor on Reviewed's Electronics Team. Before coming to Reviewed, his work was featured in The New York Times, The Globe & Mail, BBC World, Macworld and Maximum PC.
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