Amazon released the details of its 6th generation of the Kindle Paperwhite today.
It will retail for $119 and is available for pre-order starting today at Amazon. Shipping will begin on September 30th.
The new Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G will be available for pre-order at an undetermined later date. It will retail for $189 and is expected to ship on November 5th.
Customers can be notified when the new Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G version will be available for pre-order by signing up at Amazon.
New Kindle features include upgraded display technology and lighting, faster processing, improved touch technology, and new reading features.
Higher contrast on the new Paperwhite provides for whiter whites and blacker blacks, courtesy of the new display technology. Amazon touts this will make the pages “virtually indistinguishable from a physical book”.
In addition, the built-in light has been upgraded to direct light toward the display’s surface in an effort to reduce eyestrain.
Another notable improvement comes from the Paperwhite’s faster processor. The latest Kindle will open books and turn pages more quickly than its predecessors.
Details to touch features were improved as the 6th Generation Kindle Paperwhite’s touch grid was made 19% tighter to become more responsive and accurate to small touches.
New reading features include Page Flip, a Goodreads Integration, FreeTime, Vocabulary Builder, Smart Lookup, In-Line Footnotes, and MatchBook.
Kindle Page Flip allows readers to perform a variety of functions without losing their place including skimming by page, scanning by chapter, and skipping to a book’s end.
The Goodreads Integration provides users with the ability to join other readers, rate books, receive recommendations, and see what friends are reading.
Parental control has been extended and simplified through Kindle Free-Time. The feature allows parents to choose books for their children to read and enables them to pass out achievement badges for reading milestones. Parents can keep track of total reading time, words looked up, badges earned, and books completed.
The new Vocabulary Builder combines looked-up words into an easy-to-access list. Users can create flashcard quizzes and see words in context based off of the list.
Full dictionary definitions are available through the new Smart Lookup feature. It also lets users find other reference information about words, characters, topics, or books through X-Ray or Wikipedia.
Amazon cites the following example: “ … using an ordinary dictionary to look up “credit default swaps” in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short would give the individual definitions of “credit,” “default” and “swaps.” Smart Lookup recognizes this is an important topic and phrase in the book, and gives you the correct definition of “credit default swaps” via X-Ray.”
Readers will also be able to read footnotes without losing their place thanks to the new In-Line Footnotes feature. A single tap lets readers view the complete text of a footnote without changing the page.
The release of the 6th Generation Kindle Paperwhite comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement of its launch of the new Kindle Matchbook program.
Matchbook allows users who buy a new and eligible print book to receive the Kindle edition for prices ranging from free to $2.99, including prior new book purchases dating back to Amazon’s launch in 1995.
The new Kindle Paperwhite will retain popular features of previous versions including a paper-like no-glare display that can be viewed in bright sunlight, eight weeks of battery life, a light weight (7.3 ounces), reading completion time estimates, Worry-Free Archive, Whispersync and X-Ray.
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