**A Review of the Kindle Voyage: Worth Upgrading from Your Paperwhite?**

As I sit here with my brand new Kindle Voyage, I have to say that it's a real treat. The device is sleek and compact, making it easy to carry around wherever you go. And at $200, it's definitely an investment worth considering if you're looking to upgrade from your old paperwhite.

But before we dive into the details of this amazing e-reader, I want to talk about something that's been bugging me lately - the offers that come with new Kindles. Apparently, when you buy a new Kindle, you'll get access to some free books and other digital content. Sounds great, right? Well, there is one catch: these offers are actually just ads for other books and products. And if you want to turn them off, it's going to cost you an extra $20.

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of this feature. As someone who values their peace and quiet while reading, the idea of being bombarded with ads every time I hit the power button is just annoying. But hey, it's ultimately up to you - if you don't mind seeing those ads, then go for it! Just be aware that you'll have to pay extra to get rid of them.

**Choosing Between Wi-Fi and 3G: What's the Difference?**

So, what sets apart the different Kindle models? Well, for one thing, there are some options when it comes to connectivity. You can choose from a Wi-Fi-only version, or upgrade to a model that comes with 3G - which allows you to download books without needing a Wi-Fi signal.

But here's the thing: the 3G add-on costs $70 on top of the device itself. And if you're not planning on using it all that much, maybe you should just stick with Wi-Fi. After all, most people don't need to download books while they're out and about - and besides, your phone's hotspot will probably be more than capable of getting the job done.

**The Benefits of Upgrading from Your Paperwhite**

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Do I really need to upgrade my paperwhite?" Well, let me tell you - this Kindle Voyage is a game-changer. The addition of a backlight makes it perfect for reading in bed or on a plane (yes, even if the lights are off!). And the new design is just more comfortable to hold than its predecessor.

If you're already invested in the Amazon ecosystem and have other devices that use the same software, then upgrading your paperwhite to this Kindle Voyage might be worth considering. After all, it's not like you can't get books on your old device - but with the new Kindles, you'll have access to all sorts of experimental features and content.

**Using Your Old Kindle: Can You Still Read Books?**

One question that came up during my research was whether I could still use my old Kindle to read books. The answer is yes! Lithium-ion batteries on these devices do have a limited charge cycle, but it's not like they're going to expire anytime soon. In fact, as long as the battery is still good, you can keep using your old Kindle to buy and download books.

That being said, there are some caveats to consider. For one thing, experimental features on older Kindles might not be available - and that includes things like web browsing (more on this later!). But overall, if your old Kindle's battery is still in good shape, it's definitely worth sticking around for the sake of reading.

**Kindle Voyage vs. The Paperwhite: Which One Should You Choose?**

Ultimately, whether or not to upgrade from your paperwhite to a Kindle Voyage depends on what you're looking for. If you want all the bells and whistles (including that amazing backlight!), then this is definitely the device for you. But if you're happy with your old paperwhite - or just don't feel like shelling out extra cash for a new one - then there's no need to upgrade.

That being said, I do think that this Kindle Voyage is worth considering as a "next-gen" option. The addition of 3G connectivity and the ability to turn off those pesky ads make it a more premium offering than its predecessor. And at $200, it's definitely not cheap - but hey, you get what you pay for!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys i'm will from testing i'm north from sustain norman chan i love reading but not books i love reading books when i say books i mean physical books books or books the delivery format is is uh relevant um a connoisseur of the e-ink i have been testing this guy right here for the last about two weeks now um i feel like i've used it enough to have pretty strong opinions about it it's the new kindle voyage it is the high-end kindle it doesn't replace the old paperwhite this guy right here um but it's a it's it's just the it they introduce the new introduce a new tier exactly it's at the it's a two it starts at 200 bucks um which puts it about 70 more than the paper white which previously was the high-end e-candle i absolutely love the paper white i found it i've been using them for two years now two generations the first generation second generation essentially the script saying the screen's a little tiny bit better in the second generation um but this new one came out and i wasn't exactly sure where it fit you thought the paper white many people thought the paperwhite end-all be-all aside from having you know maybe even faster refresh rate even higher contrast or color you don't really need it's much more it's it's the definition of good enough right um if you look at the paperwhite the page refreshes is fine it's very fast um the it has the automatic it has the backlight which means that you can lay in bed in the dark and read you know it makes it a little bit easier to read in in even bright rooms because the backlight stays on all the time the battery life is really good um i charge my kindle my paperwhite usually like maybe once i would say one and a half times a month if you look out over the course plenty of reading reading every single night um the the voyage which is the new one uh is a new design it brings back some old features that we're missing from the touch based kindles we've seen over the last few years um compare them side to side yeah so here's here's the side-by-side picture it's a little bit smaller is the first thing you'll notice it's smaller thinner and lighter i don't find it to be an important distinction so for example if someone was with not a lot of experience with kindles those look almost exactly the same the screen size is the same the the resolution is different on the new one the new resolution is i think 300 pixels per inch the paperwhite was 212 i think so it's it's you know it's a substantially higher resolution screen i don't think it matters that's the big selling feature that's one of the big selling pieces one of the biggest features one of the reasons they can charge 80 more is because they say that this is the sharp the text on this is the sharpest you've seen so far on a e-ink an e-book reader so it was really sharp before and because of the fonts that they choose that are available on the on the ian greeters on the kindle you're limited in your font choices so they're only putting fonts on that are going to look good at higher pixel density screen at lower pixel density screens because the cheap kindle the 70 version is only 167 ppi screen so it's a much lower resolution than even the paperwhite and like the only time i notice the difference between the the two screens is when i'm on the very smallest font setting and we're going to drop a a close-up shot in here so you guys can see this but it's just not like it's not any more legible because of the higher resolution i still can't read the smallest text comfortably i end up going actually up uh two sizes typically to the to the third setting um so like in that regard it's kind of a wash like it's nice this high resolution screen i don't i don't really think it matters that much it's definitely not comparable to the jump on uh phones and tablets from you know the first few generations that were 640 by 320 screens on the iphone and and into 1080p screens that are four inches and five inches across 40 yep yeah because it's not you're not looking at graphics you're not looking at graphics text is fairly legible we're only dealing with two colors i think that there's a little bit of font analysing happening here anyway so you see grayscale villains it's really not like it's not something you notice because the way your brain works your brain recognizes shapes of text and does half the work of recognizing what a word is from that shape and then like you said typography fixes half of that so the interesting thing about this though is that 300 ppi is of course the the same resolution as like a laserjet printer inkjet printer or something like that when you print on the on the fine detail so i assume that this is the high end of what we'll see on e-ink screens for the foreseeable future with no real measurable benefit between 212 and 300 i can't imagine that we're going to see 300 600 900 ppi screens in the future and i not looked at this before today and we did a blind test um and we compared and after you switched around a couple times i was able to identify you were able to tell you had to study you took it several moments um i adjusted the backlight and the font sizes a few times just to kind of trick you but you know what cues were you seeing were you actually seeing the font or were you looking at the screen being a little bit wider on the no i was looking at exa the letter y i'm just aliasing on on a word so this is a serif font that it's set on right now and you can see the little the little serifs are are just a little tiny bit crisper on the on the new screen yep um the things that i do i really do you know just to be clear i really do like this kindle it's a nice kindle it's lighter it's lighter it's thinner um you're not be able to see how much thinner it is because of the beveled edges it picks up some of the industrial design from the from the newer kindle tablets so it has these beveled edges that are straight edges um and then it has a clear translucent spot on the top power buttons on the back which is actually a really convenient place to hit it why is that clear on the back uh there's a light sensor in there so it can tell uh it picks up ambient light around you and can adjust the backlight automatically which is one of my favorite features of the of the new device and i'm gonna go ahead and switch that so i had uh these are both set on the same backlight level now you can see they're kind of indistinguishable on camera the new screen is a little bit wider the contrast ratio between the white and the black is a little bit better you're not going to notice unless you set them side by side um i'm going to switch it to the auto brightness and it's going to brighten up because we're in the studio we've got studio lights on the auto brightness is really good um it means that i don't have to fiddle with the brightness ever when i go from say a well-lit living room i go back to bed turn the lights off it automatically dims all the way down until it's just you know one or two notches above does it get dark enough it definitely gets dark enough um that was one of my complaints with the first generation kindle they fixed it with the second generation kindle that moves on and that's something that people don't realize when you talk about brightness everyone assumes being brighter is a good thing especially when you talk about laptops or cell phone screens but with an e-ink reader you want to get dark enough so when you're reading it's not overwhelming well with anything you know you you don't want to be whether it's a tablet a phone or or an e-book reader you don't want to be laying in bed and have that illuminating glow blasting you in the eyes on the edge of the screen or anything like that and there's none of that here the screen the lighting's very even it's around the edge um on the design side they changed a couple of other things that i think are really nice since the dawn of the touch-based kindles they've done this thing where they recess to the screen you can kind of see it here but there's it's basically like a couple of tenths of a millimeter that the screen is sunk down into the into the device there's just an edge and that's because the the sensor isn't actually a capacitive layer it's from the edges you know they don't talk about what the sensor is now originally it was a series of an ir grid that was across the whole thing and it would tell where your finger was by the interruption of the light going across the face i i don't think that they've used the ir sensors for any of the paper whites um i think they're capacitive touch screens based on how they respond but the new one but the problem with this sunken in design is that it catches things right so whether it's crumbs or flakes of dead skin or whatever the corners and the edges of this thing get crusty and really gross very quickly i should have crumbled up a cookie we can we i mean i can just rub my face and all the skin mites that come off we'll take care of that uh the new one's flat across the surface so um i i i actually so it has you can tell it has some sort of touch thing because you can swipe the fonts up and down with three finger gestures um there's no place for skin and stuff like that to get it's a smooth face across the front it's much easier to use you don't actually need the context of that edge to know okay that's going to make me go back a page this is going to make me go forward god it looks so it looks almost like a sticker it's fake it it does it looks like um when you buy a new tablet or something and they have that sticker with the fake screenshot on the front tonight it's an ikea prop it does look a lot like that um so it's primarily i find myself using the touchscreen controls for this and it works the same way as as every touch kindle ever has um basically if you look there's three main zones on the screen there's this big huge rectangle here that's that that makes you go forward anywhere in that general vicinity there's a smaller rectangle here that makes you go backwards a page uh and then there's the top section that lets you pull down menus and and you have to get your library and stuff like that you can also swipe you know it does it does gestures you can go forwards and back that stuff works really well you can do it with either hand i find myself if i'm using touch controls almost always holding the left hand just in case i have to go back now many people did not like the new kindles because they're touch only so originally the kindles had uh two big buttons one one big button on either side that made the page turn forward so you could hold it left-handed or right-handed and one smaller button up above that was the back button and they were big friendly tactile buttons they had a good click feel um and that went all the way through the third generation kindle and i think the 79 kindle is a non-touch version as well i'm not sure about the new ones but previously they have we didn't we didn't look at them last year um they brought the side buttons back but they're uh haptic buttons so you can see these this white stripe on the side is the big represents the big button then there's a little tiny dot up here that represents the back button so do they actually depress they don't actually depress but you kind of squeeze them and you feel a little bit of a bump it's just a little haptic bump it's a vibration um a little tiny vibration uh it's just enough to let you know you pressed it i don't like these buttons at all i actively dislike them because you have to be you can't you can kind of do the back button just by hitting it but you really need to kind of squeeze it's not just a graze it's not uh you you don't know when you pressed until it's too late give it a squeeze see what i'm saying oh it feels nice but you never use it in practice i feel it feels like it gives the illusion there's you're depressing something yeah exactly i mean it's a haptic response it's designed to mimic an actual button press it just doesn't work very well um and you have to press a little bit harder than i think you would if you they actually just put a physical button i don't like the ergonomics of that it's real close to the edge it's there's not enough you know the old kindles that had physical buttons the bezels were a little bit bigger they were bigger devices in general you know a big chin that you can exactly into your palm and with no chin yeah there's even less chin on this than there was on the paper white so you know the buttons should be way higher than they are if they're going to do them at all i i don't okay i feel like a lot of the the the pro this device the design decisions were made because they looked at the feedback they've gotten from previous kindles and the changes that came with the touch and the paperwhite and they're like look let's give the people what they want and i don't know that it's necessary anymore the touch stuff is really fast really responsive it's very easy to use um maybe the the big difference is that this will probably work with gloves on and the touch screen may or may not i didn't actually test that probably what about the software do they change anything a lot um the software is more or less the same i mean they have the same kind of x-ray features let me go back and get into the fiction part of the of the app of the book here um back back back back back back back back back then the page the page turning is as fast as you can tap basically um so it has x-ray they're adding some new stuff that isn't in the initial oops that isn't in the initial software but i'm going to click on a character's name and um oop here we go oh this book doesn't have x-ray um if you have a book that has x-ray then you can you can select a character name and it'll give you a brief rundown of the character you can go to all the pages of the character shows up so if you're reading like a neil stevenson book that has 50 million characters and you can't remember what who's who it helps with that i find i actually do use that stuff so also the great examples of game of thrones when chapters are three different characters yeah or when you when all of a sudden in the middle of the fourth book they introduce a an entire house that we've never heard of before it was one of the seven houses um it has the dictionary stuff you have to download the dictionary for your language that's i i i find myself actually using those features um some of the stuff is available in kindle apps for your phones and tablets um like the dictionary and the wikipedia lookup the x-ray stuff is exclusive to kindle devices so the the e-ink reader the paper white the the um uh voyage and the tablets now is because the screen's brighter and smaller is the battery life the same so the screen's not really brighter the backlight is the same seems like it gets to be about the same level bright which which you never really use the full brightness um the screens the the actual surface itself is a little bit wider um like i said i've had it for two weeks i didn't plug it in when i got it it came to me with about a half charge which seems to be what they ship kindles at uh i had to recharge it two nights ago so it's been 14 days on half a battery literally using it every day reading three or four bucks in that time period so um it's your battery life is it's it's it's a really good balance it's better than say a smart watch which you have to charge infrequently enough that you can never find the charger when you need it but frequently enough that you that it's always a hassle um with this and because it's a micro usb cable you can just plug it into anything and it just works yeah the only people that's going gonna really uh worry is travelers like month long travelers and then you can always have a usb power you know battery pack yeah i mean with the nice thing about it is it's a relatively low um low power device so you can charge it off of any usb device even plugging into the port on your laptop is enough and everybody should carry a micro usb charger with them everywhere they go pretty much um i think that's pretty much it for the kindle yeah i mean if you have last year's paperwhite it's not really something you need to upgrade yeah i don't i mean i don't think if you have if you have any of the paperwork if you have an ink reader with the backlight and even if you use it every day this isn't a device that you need um this is if you want to get something nice as a gift for someone and you don't want to get them the cheap one i think that's why this product exists a guy or if you want to find an excuse to you know if you have the third gen kindle or even yeah and you have extra 200 bucks and you really love using it like i i think that this is something like the the smaller size is actually pretty nice the buttons are you don't buy it for the buttons if you've been pining for lost buttons on the kindle for the last three years this isn't gonna suit your your needs um you know if they were going to make a premium product i would much rather see them release a waterproof version you know nano-coated something that you can put take in the tub with you and not worry about splashing something you can take to the beach that's much more exciting to me than a slightly higher resolution screen in a you know something that weighs four ounces four tenths of an ounce less than how the previous device how unwaterproof is this um i mean if you look at it the surface is sealed the front sealed i don't worry about taking it you know i'll read while i'm brushing my teeth and if i splatter toothpaste on it i just wipe it off i don't worry about that um you know the the the poor man's waterproof case for a kindle of course it's a different size so all of the previous generation kindle cases don't fit anymore um the poor man's waterproof kindle case is a ziploc bag yep uh i would still take it in the in the tub with a ziplock bag if you like laying on the tub in reading uh it's 200 bucks though and and to me the difference between 120 bucks for the paper white and 200 bucks for this is this is something that i cherish and this is something that i would be sad if i broke but i wouldn't probably hesitate to replace now if someone's getting their first awesome kindle do they buy the wi-fi or they buy the the connected seller so that's the other thing there's a bunch of different purchasing options uh you can buy the wi-fi only version you can buy one that has 3g that has no contract it's free to use you can download books pretty much anywhere you have a 3g signal um the 3g add-on is 70 bucks on top of the device so it's an expensive add-on it's the same for the paperwhite although i'm not sure that they're doing the 3g paperwhite anymore i think that that might have gone away with the addition of this um i find you know i have a phone that has a hotspot yeah so i don't need i don't need the paper i don't need the 3g and the 70 is better spent on i mean that's a month's phone bill basically and you said it still comes with offers it still comes with offers which i find kind of distasteful on a 200 ebook reader you can always pay for it you it's 20 bucks to remove the offers you can buy it with the offers rude you can remove the offers using the manage my kindle page this is what the offers look like um so this is literally just an ad for another book that's out i'll turn it off on and then you get a different one every time sometimes they're local stuff like it knows that i live in near san francisco so every once in a while i'll get a day spa invite the thing that annoys me about this is that you hit the power button and you always see the ad you have to swipe to unlock the the device it's just a couple extra seconds whereas the paperwhite which i unlocked last year on the stream when you hit the power button it just goes straight into your book it gets it's it's literally pay the 20 bucks a couple of tenths of a second it's not a big deal sometimes i actually see books that i would that i'm interested in would like to buy on the offers page you can't turn it off and turn it back on you can turn it off and turn it back on i mean you can pay for it you can pay for it and then turn it back on if you want if you're if you miss the offers i i just i just don't like the hey we want to make sure you look at this so you have to swipe too it just annoys me but it's a small thing that's their business model 200 bucks 200 bucks they should be able to you know you should not have to look at ads for 200 bucks make 180 one with no ads with ads that's an accounting thing so that's it it's the kindle voyage um i i really like it don't upgrade your paperwhite don't upgrade your paperwhite to if you bought the 70 kindle and you use it all the time this is a wonderful upgrade the addition of the backlight is an amazing amazing thing uh especially if you like playing and reading you can always hand me down or the 70 one is your beach kendall i mean kindles don't expire it's not like you can't get books on your first generation kindle today right that's a good question can you use your first or second generation kindles and still work still i mean assuming the battery is still good um lithium ion ion batteries have a definite charge cycle so you know 1500 charges in it's not going to hold to charge for very long but you can still buy the books and you can still read the same books and you still get the same updates um one thing to note is that they don't have the experimental stuff on the newer 3g kindle so the x-ray and the no no x-ray is there the the they used to have like an experimental web browser so you could buy a 3g kindle and then theoretically have free international 3g web browsing anywhere that that thing works that that they don't do anymore that's fine yeah it's all good you always get to use kindle also a used kindles are a perfectly reasonable thing to buy so that's it it's a kindle voyage it's 200 bucks plus 70 bucks plus 20 bucks if you want to get fully loaded with the 3g and everything turned off i don't think it's worth that i wouldn't upgrade my paperwhite but but it's a really really nice e-reader if you're just getting into the market so i'm well i'm norm see you guys later byehey guys i'm will from testing i'm north from sustain norman chan i love reading but not books i love reading books when i say books i mean physical books books or books the delivery format is is uh relevant um a connoisseur of the e-ink i have been testing this guy right here for the last about two weeks now um i feel like i've used it enough to have pretty strong opinions about it it's the new kindle voyage it is the high-end kindle it doesn't replace the old paperwhite this guy right here um but it's a it's it's just the it they introduce the new introduce a new tier exactly it's at the it's a two it starts at 200 bucks um which puts it about 70 more than the paper white which previously was the high-end e-candle i absolutely love the paper white i found it i've been using them for two years now two generations the first generation second generation essentially the script saying the screen's a little tiny bit better in the second generation um but this new one came out and i wasn't exactly sure where it fit you thought the paper white many people thought the paperwhite end-all be-all aside from having you know maybe even faster refresh rate even higher contrast or color you don't really need it's much more it's it's the definition of good enough right um if you look at the paperwhite the page refreshes is fine it's very fast um the it has the automatic it has the backlight which means that you can lay in bed in the dark and read you know it makes it a little bit easier to read in in even bright rooms because the backlight stays on all the time the battery life is really good um i charge my kindle my paperwhite usually like maybe once i would say one and a half times a month if you look out over the course plenty of reading reading every single night um the the voyage which is the new one uh is a new design it brings back some old features that we're missing from the touch based kindles we've seen over the last few years um compare them side to side yeah so here's here's the side-by-side picture it's a little bit smaller is the first thing you'll notice it's smaller thinner and lighter i don't find it to be an important distinction so for example if someone was with not a lot of experience with kindles those look almost exactly the same the screen size is the same the the resolution is different on the new one the new resolution is i think 300 pixels per inch the paperwhite was 212 i think so it's it's you know it's a substantially higher resolution screen i don't think it matters that's the big selling feature that's one of the big selling pieces one of the biggest features one of the reasons they can charge 80 more is because they say that this is the sharp the text on this is the sharpest you've seen so far on a e-ink an e-book reader so it was really sharp before and because of the fonts that they choose that are available on the on the ian greeters on the kindle you're limited in your font choices so they're only putting fonts on that are going to look good at higher pixel density screen at lower pixel density screens because the cheap kindle the 70 version is only 167 ppi screen so it's a much lower resolution than even the paperwhite and like the only time i notice the difference between the the two screens is when i'm on the very smallest font setting and we're going to drop a a close-up shot in here so you guys can see this but it's just not like it's not any more legible because of the higher resolution i still can't read the smallest text comfortably i end up going actually up uh two sizes typically to the to the third setting um so like in that regard it's kind of a wash like it's nice this high resolution screen i don't i don't really think it matters that much it's definitely not comparable to the jump on uh phones and tablets from you know the first few generations that were 640 by 320 screens on the iphone and and into 1080p screens that are four inches and five inches across 40 yep yeah because it's not you're not looking at graphics you're not looking at graphics text is fairly legible we're only dealing with two colors i think that there's a little bit of font analysing happening here anyway so you see grayscale villains it's really not like it's not something you notice because the way your brain works your brain recognizes shapes of text and does half the work of recognizing what a word is from that shape and then like you said typography fixes half of that so the interesting thing about this though is that 300 ppi is of course the the same resolution as like a laserjet printer inkjet printer or something like that when you print on the on the fine detail so i assume that this is the high end of what we'll see on e-ink screens for the foreseeable future with no real measurable benefit between 212 and 300 i can't imagine that we're going to see 300 600 900 ppi screens in the future and i not looked at this before today and we did a blind test um and we compared and after you switched around a couple times i was able to identify you were able to tell you had to study you took it several moments um i adjusted the backlight and the font sizes a few times just to kind of trick you but you know what cues were you seeing were you actually seeing the font or were you looking at the screen being a little bit wider on the no i was looking at exa the letter y i'm just aliasing on on a word so this is a serif font that it's set on right now and you can see the little the little serifs are are just a little tiny bit crisper on the on the new screen yep um the things that i do i really do you know just to be clear i really do like this kindle it's a nice kindle it's lighter it's lighter it's thinner um you're not be able to see how much thinner it is because of the beveled edges it picks up some of the industrial design from the from the newer kindle tablets so it has these beveled edges that are straight edges um and then it has a clear translucent spot on the top power buttons on the back which is actually a really convenient place to hit it why is that clear on the back uh there's a light sensor in there so it can tell uh it picks up ambient light around you and can adjust the backlight automatically which is one of my favorite features of the of the new device and i'm gonna go ahead and switch that so i had uh these are both set on the same backlight level now you can see they're kind of indistinguishable on camera the new screen is a little bit wider the contrast ratio between the white and the black is a little bit better you're not going to notice unless you set them side by side um i'm going to switch it to the auto brightness and it's going to brighten up because we're in the studio we've got studio lights on the auto brightness is really good um it means that i don't have to fiddle with the brightness ever when i go from say a well-lit living room i go back to bed turn the lights off it automatically dims all the way down until it's just you know one or two notches above does it get dark enough it definitely gets dark enough um that was one of my complaints with the first generation kindle they fixed it with the second generation kindle that moves on and that's something that people don't realize when you talk about brightness everyone assumes being brighter is a good thing especially when you talk about laptops or cell phone screens but with an e-ink reader you want to get dark enough so when you're reading it's not overwhelming well with anything you know you you don't want to be whether it's a tablet a phone or or an e-book reader you don't want to be laying in bed and have that illuminating glow blasting you in the eyes on the edge of the screen or anything like that and there's none of that here the screen the lighting's very even it's around the edge um on the design side they changed a couple of other things that i think are really nice since the dawn of the touch-based kindles they've done this thing where they recess to the screen you can kind of see it here but there's it's basically like a couple of tenths of a millimeter that the screen is sunk down into the into the device there's just an edge and that's because the the sensor isn't actually a capacitive layer it's from the edges you know they don't talk about what the sensor is now originally it was a series of an ir grid that was across the whole thing and it would tell where your finger was by the interruption of the light going across the face i i don't think that they've used the ir sensors for any of the paper whites um i think they're capacitive touch screens based on how they respond but the new one but the problem with this sunken in design is that it catches things right so whether it's crumbs or flakes of dead skin or whatever the corners and the edges of this thing get crusty and really gross very quickly i should have crumbled up a cookie we can we i mean i can just rub my face and all the skin mites that come off we'll take care of that uh the new one's flat across the surface so um i i i actually so it has you can tell it has some sort of touch thing because you can swipe the fonts up and down with three finger gestures um there's no place for skin and stuff like that to get it's a smooth face across the front it's much easier to use you don't actually need the context of that edge to know okay that's going to make me go back a page this is going to make me go forward god it looks so it looks almost like a sticker it's fake it it does it looks like um when you buy a new tablet or something and they have that sticker with the fake screenshot on the front tonight it's an ikea prop it does look a lot like that um so it's primarily i find myself using the touchscreen controls for this and it works the same way as as every touch kindle ever has um basically if you look there's three main zones on the screen there's this big huge rectangle here that's that that makes you go forward anywhere in that general vicinity there's a smaller rectangle here that makes you go backwards a page uh and then there's the top section that lets you pull down menus and and you have to get your library and stuff like that you can also swipe you know it does it does gestures you can go forwards and back that stuff works really well you can do it with either hand i find myself if i'm using touch controls almost always holding the left hand just in case i have to go back now many people did not like the new kindles because they're touch only so originally the kindles had uh two big buttons one one big button on either side that made the page turn forward so you could hold it left-handed or right-handed and one smaller button up above that was the back button and they were big friendly tactile buttons they had a good click feel um and that went all the way through the third generation kindle and i think the 79 kindle is a non-touch version as well i'm not sure about the new ones but previously they have we didn't we didn't look at them last year um they brought the side buttons back but they're uh haptic buttons so you can see these this white stripe on the side is the big represents the big button then there's a little tiny dot up here that represents the back button so do they actually depress they don't actually depress but you kind of squeeze them and you feel a little bit of a bump it's just a little haptic bump it's a vibration um a little tiny vibration uh it's just enough to let you know you pressed it i don't like these buttons at all i actively dislike them because you have to be you can't you can kind of do the back button just by hitting it but you really need to kind of squeeze it's not just a graze it's not uh you you don't know when you pressed until it's too late give it a squeeze see what i'm saying oh it feels nice but you never use it in practice i feel it feels like it gives the illusion there's you're depressing something yeah exactly i mean it's a haptic response it's designed to mimic an actual button press it just doesn't work very well um and you have to press a little bit harder than i think you would if you they actually just put a physical button i don't like the ergonomics of that it's real close to the edge it's there's not enough you know the old kindles that had physical buttons the bezels were a little bit bigger they were bigger devices in general you know a big chin that you can exactly into your palm and with no chin yeah there's even less chin on this than there was on the paper white so you know the buttons should be way higher than they are if they're going to do them at all i i don't okay i feel like a lot of the the the pro this device the design decisions were made because they looked at the feedback they've gotten from previous kindles and the changes that came with the touch and the paperwhite and they're like look let's give the people what they want and i don't know that it's necessary anymore the touch stuff is really fast really responsive it's very easy to use um maybe the the big difference is that this will probably work with gloves on and the touch screen may or may not i didn't actually test that probably what about the software do they change anything a lot um the software is more or less the same i mean they have the same kind of x-ray features let me go back and get into the fiction part of the of the app of the book here um back back back back back back back back back then the page the page turning is as fast as you can tap basically um so it has x-ray they're adding some new stuff that isn't in the initial oops that isn't in the initial software but i'm going to click on a character's name and um oop here we go oh this book doesn't have x-ray um if you have a book that has x-ray then you can you can select a character name and it'll give you a brief rundown of the character you can go to all the pages of the character shows up so if you're reading like a neil stevenson book that has 50 million characters and you can't remember what who's who it helps with that i find i actually do use that stuff so also the great examples of game of thrones when chapters are three different characters yeah or when you when all of a sudden in the middle of the fourth book they introduce a an entire house that we've never heard of before it was one of the seven houses um it has the dictionary stuff you have to download the dictionary for your language that's i i i find myself actually using those features um some of the stuff is available in kindle apps for your phones and tablets um like the dictionary and the wikipedia lookup the x-ray stuff is exclusive to kindle devices so the the e-ink reader the paper white the the um uh voyage and the tablets now is because the screen's brighter and smaller is the battery life the same so the screen's not really brighter the backlight is the same seems like it gets to be about the same level bright which which you never really use the full brightness um the screens the the actual surface itself is a little bit wider um like i said i've had it for two weeks i didn't plug it in when i got it it came to me with about a half charge which seems to be what they ship kindles at uh i had to recharge it two nights ago so it's been 14 days on half a battery literally using it every day reading three or four bucks in that time period so um it's your battery life is it's it's it's a really good balance it's better than say a smart watch which you have to charge infrequently enough that you can never find the charger when you need it but frequently enough that you that it's always a hassle um with this and because it's a micro usb cable you can just plug it into anything and it just works yeah the only people that's going gonna really uh worry is travelers like month long travelers and then you can always have a usb power you know battery pack yeah i mean with the nice thing about it is it's a relatively low um low power device so you can charge it off of any usb device even plugging into the port on your laptop is enough and everybody should carry a micro usb charger with them everywhere they go pretty much um i think that's pretty much it for the kindle yeah i mean if you have last year's paperwhite it's not really something you need to upgrade yeah i don't i mean i don't think if you have if you have any of the paperwork if you have an ink reader with the backlight and even if you use it every day this isn't a device that you need um this is if you want to get something nice as a gift for someone and you don't want to get them the cheap one i think that's why this product exists a guy or if you want to find an excuse to you know if you have the third gen kindle or even yeah and you have extra 200 bucks and you really love using it like i i think that this is something like the the smaller size is actually pretty nice the buttons are you don't buy it for the buttons if you've been pining for lost buttons on the kindle for the last three years this isn't gonna suit your your needs um you know if they were going to make a premium product i would much rather see them release a waterproof version you know nano-coated something that you can put take in the tub with you and not worry about splashing something you can take to the beach that's much more exciting to me than a slightly higher resolution screen in a you know something that weighs four ounces four tenths of an ounce less than how the previous device how unwaterproof is this um i mean if you look at it the surface is sealed the front sealed i don't worry about taking it you know i'll read while i'm brushing my teeth and if i splatter toothpaste on it i just wipe it off i don't worry about that um you know the the the poor man's waterproof case for a kindle of course it's a different size so all of the previous generation kindle cases don't fit anymore um the poor man's waterproof kindle case is a ziploc bag yep uh i would still take it in the in the tub with a ziplock bag if you like laying on the tub in reading uh it's 200 bucks though and and to me the difference between 120 bucks for the paper white and 200 bucks for this is this is something that i cherish and this is something that i would be sad if i broke but i wouldn't probably hesitate to replace now if someone's getting their first awesome kindle do they buy the wi-fi or they buy the the connected seller so that's the other thing there's a bunch of different purchasing options uh you can buy the wi-fi only version you can buy one that has 3g that has no contract it's free to use you can download books pretty much anywhere you have a 3g signal um the 3g add-on is 70 bucks on top of the device so it's an expensive add-on it's the same for the paperwhite although i'm not sure that they're doing the 3g paperwhite anymore i think that that might have gone away with the addition of this um i find you know i have a phone that has a hotspot yeah so i don't need i don't need the paper i don't need the 3g and the 70 is better spent on i mean that's a month's phone bill basically and you said it still comes with offers it still comes with offers which i find kind of distasteful on a 200 ebook reader you can always pay for it you it's 20 bucks to remove the offers you can buy it with the offers rude you can remove the offers using the manage my kindle page this is what the offers look like um so this is literally just an ad for another book that's out i'll turn it off on and then you get a different one every time sometimes they're local stuff like it knows that i live in near san francisco so every once in a while i'll get a day spa invite the thing that annoys me about this is that you hit the power button and you always see the ad you have to swipe to unlock the the device it's just a couple extra seconds whereas the paperwhite which i unlocked last year on the stream when you hit the power button it just goes straight into your book it gets it's it's literally pay the 20 bucks a couple of tenths of a second it's not a big deal sometimes i actually see books that i would that i'm interested in would like to buy on the offers page you can't turn it off and turn it back on you can turn it off and turn it back on i mean you can pay for it you can pay for it and then turn it back on if you want if you're if you miss the offers i i just i just don't like the hey we want to make sure you look at this so you have to swipe too it just annoys me but it's a small thing that's their business model 200 bucks 200 bucks they should be able to you know you should not have to look at ads for 200 bucks make 180 one with no ads with ads that's an accounting thing so that's it it's the kindle voyage um i i really like it don't upgrade your paperwhite don't upgrade your paperwhite to if you bought the 70 kindle and you use it all the time this is a wonderful upgrade the addition of the backlight is an amazing amazing thing uh especially if you like playing and reading you can always hand me down or the 70 one is your beach kendall i mean kindles don't expire it's not like you can't get books on your first generation kindle today right that's a good question can you use your first or second generation kindles and still work still i mean assuming the battery is still good um lithium ion ion batteries have a definite charge cycle so you know 1500 charges in it's not going to hold to charge for very long but you can still buy the books and you can still read the same books and you still get the same updates um one thing to note is that they don't have the experimental stuff on the newer 3g kindle so the x-ray and the no no x-ray is there the the they used to have like an experimental web browser so you could buy a 3g kindle and then theoretically have free international 3g web browsing anywhere that that thing works that that they don't do anymore that's fine yeah it's all good you always get to use kindle also a used kindles are a perfectly reasonable thing to buy so that's it it's a kindle voyage it's 200 bucks plus 70 bucks plus 20 bucks if you want to get fully loaded with the 3g and everything turned off i don't think it's worth that i wouldn't upgrade my paperwhite but but it's a really really nice e-reader if you're just getting into the market so i'm well i'm norm see you guys later bye\n"