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Kindle (2022) Review: Goodness in a small package

What a time for an upgrade.

I inherited my husband’s Kindle Paperwhite (7th gen) sometime during the pandemic and never looked back. Moving new books into a portable, digital format matched changes I’d already implemented as a Canadian expat living in Australia.

For the first ten years of my journey in a new country, I moved house too many times to count; having to pack and unpack boxes upon boxes of DVDs, books and Blu-rays just seemed stupid. After getting most of that bookshelf collateral, I only held onto a few of my favourite titles — in the case of videos and TV, I either moved onto digital copies or simply, streaming. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, at SO many DVDs per half-season, was inaccessible to me for a long time, until Disney+ magically made it once again available to cry-watch.

Books — for way too long, I might add — fell by the wayside. That, or they were simply purchased and gifted to friends after I’d finished them (though, with a slight pang in my heart).

Ironically, my husband took to proper, physical, paper books when he gifted me his Kindle; as I was moving into digital books and actually reading again whilst keeping storage uncluttered, he was doing the opposite. Ah well.

Whether he wants it or not, I’m giving hubby his old Kindle back; just like I sped into the future with the (2014-produced) Paperwhite a couple years ago, I’m all about this new Kindle. Let me tell you why.

An eReader is an eReader; I get that. It has a screen, some storage, and your books are all on it. There’s not much on offer, but thankfully this new Kindle does all of that in a stylish, classy way. Compared to my old Paperwhite, this new Kindle sports a (slightly?) larger 6″ display at 300 ppi with a noticeably smaller form factor.

More importantly, it has freaking 16GB of storage for all the books you could ever want to read alongside anti-glare implementations that are best illustrated as I tried to take photos of my old and new Kindles (left and right in the image above, respectively) whilst trying to shoo away my cat.

That’s not a supernova off the Enterprise-D’s bow. Or stern? Or port? Whichever — to its right, looking at the screen.

The screen is also a bit brighter — and whiter — but honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to tell unless you were putting Kindles beside one another like I had the opportunity to. Long story short, it’s easy to read and isn’t harsh on the eyes. This new model also sports a dark mode should you wish to enable it.

Wireless functionality is present on my old Paperwhite and that’s no different on this new Kindle, but the new kid on the block also offers Bluetooth functionality should you wish to connect some wireless headphones and delve into audiobooks (and truth be told, I do not).

I honestly don’t have complaints with the Paperwhite’s battery, and the same is true for this new Kindle. I’ve had it on me for weeks now, reading in my home in miserable, wet Melbourne pre-Christmas weather and then on the beach in the glorious sunshine that presented itself right as Santa was flying ’round the world.

I didn’t bother stress testing this new Kindle, but I’ve never had to plug it in while I’ve had it; plugging it in overnight — for like an hour, truth be told — every month or so is such a non-issue it’s almost not worth talking about. Thankfully, Amazon has wisely used USB-C charging for this device and I’m so very hopeful that Apple will follow suit on the iPhone so I can ditch all the Lightning and Micro USB cords that are littering my abode.

If I’m being dreadfully honest, I could rock my old Paperwhite forever and not really be concerned. It worked in the harsh Aussie summer without me really noticing that there was sometimes a bit of annoying glare on the screen. Checking on hubby’s purchase, he likely spent somewhere between $50-$80 AUD on his Kindle; while this is essentally a $100 AUD increase on that investment, there’s enough in it to warrant that. If you’re rocking an older Kindle and just wanting a value-filled upgrade, or new to this whole game and wanting to downsize on the amount of books filling your home, you won’t go wrong with this new Kindle.

The Kindle (2022) was reviewed using a promotional unit, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.