The Amazon Kindle e-reader can be considered entry-level. It is the most affordable Kindle, and many people who buy a digital book reader for the first time go with this option. It is not very expensive, and most people are unsure if a Kindle might be for them, so rather than buy a more expensive model, they go with the cheapest one. However, the base Kindle has a ton of value for people who love to read.
Hardware
The all-new Kindle has a 6-inch E INK Carta touchscreen with a resolution of 1072×1448 with 300 PPI. E-book text is razor sharp and has no fuzzy anti-aliasing. You will get a tremendous reading experience. It has a front-lit display so that users can read at night. It only has cool LED lights and not a warm light system. It only has four cool lights with a peak brightness of 94 nits. As a comparison, the new Kindle Paperwhite 12 generation has 17 lights, with both warm and excellent lighting. Amazon says that the overall brightness of the Kindle is the same as that of the Kindle Paperwhite.
Underneath the hood is a single-core 1GHZ processor, 512MB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. You can buy Kindle books using WIFI at home or out and about. It supports .24 GHz and 5.0 GHz networks with support for WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3 and OWE security using password authentication or Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). It has Bluetooth 5 to pair wireless headphones, earbuds or a speaker to buy and listen to Audible audiobooks. A USB-C port is used to charge the e-reader, and although the battery hasn’t been disclosed, it lasts about six weeks, so it should be around 1100 mAh.
The Amazon Kindle 2024 comprises 75% recycled plastics and 90% recycled magnesium. Additionally, 98% of the Kindle packaging is made from wood fibre from responsibly managed forests or recycled materials. The dimensions are 6.2” x 4.3” x 0.32” (157.8 x 108.6 x 8.0 mm) and weighs 6.2” x 4.3” x 0.32” (157.8 x 108.6 x 8.0 mm).
The previous generation of Kindles came in black and blue. The latest Kindle 2024 model comes in Black and green (matcha). I like the new green colour; it stands out in the crowd, and hardly any e-readers on the market have this colour. Regarding hardware, the Kindle isn’t breaking any new ground; it is more of an incremental update.
Software
Amazon has always used Linux as their operating system for the Kindle, and every single generation has employed it. There are a few significant reasons why. Linux is super stable, and you can get away with using smaller batteries since there are no background processes, and all e-reader aspects are efficient at drawing less power. E INK does not generate power independently; it only does so when the state changes. If you are navigating around the Kindle, going to the settings menu or clicking on Goodreads, power will be consumed, but once you are just reading what is on the screen, no further power is being put to the screen.
The UI is straightforward; you have a home screen comprising the last three books you bought or read. A giant search bar at the top can find books in your library or on Amazon. Next to the search bar is a shopping cart icon, and clicking on it brings you to the Amazon Bookstore; if you live in a supported country, the bookstore will have two tabs when it’s opened: “Bookstore” and “Audiobook Store.” Three little dots are next to the shopping icon, which covers the settings menu. This is where the Goodreads link is, alongside many other options such as the settings menu, setting up the screen timeout, screensaver, and generation reading settings. Above the search bar is a downwards tab, where you can establish a WIFI connection, adjust screen brightness, turn the device into airplane mode, or sync.
At the bottom of the UI are two options: home and library. Between is a small piece of cover art of the last book you opened; clicking on it allows you to jump right into the book, making it easier to jump into a story. The Library menu hasn’t changed much over the years; it lists your books on the device. You can sort them and make folder collections for better organization. Some people like the cover view, but I like the list view for tons of books in your collection.
I believe Amazon has the most complete and best bookstore in the world. They have direct contracts with all the most prominent publishers. You will find all the same bestsellers by well-known authors that will be promoted at your local Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, or Chapters Indigo. There is also a slew of content from small and mid-range publishers specializing in one genre, such as TOR with fantasy and science fiction. Amazon has imprints, where they spend money, sign up established and up-and-coming authors, and publish the books themselves. There is also Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows anyone to publish and sell books on Amazon. If you like to read a lot, there is the Kindle Unlimited Program, where you can read millions of comics, books, and manga for a low monthly fee. If you also have a kid that uses your device, there is the Kids+ subscription, which has family-friendly content from publishers like Disney. There is literary something for everyone on the Amazon bookstore and all sorts of optional programs. You will find more content on Amazon than their rivals, such as Barnes and Noble Nook or Kobo.
Audible is one of Amazon’s secret weapons and something they have been leveraging on Kindle e-readers, starting with the 10th generation series and moving into the 11th and now 12th. They all had secret Bluetooth functionality and, once paired with headphones or a wireless speaker, allow you to listen to audiobooks right on the Kindle. The audiobook player is polished. Connecting your Bluetooth device and adjusting playback speed from various settings are options. You can skip chapters, view chapters, look for similar audiobooks, see the cover art and more. It is very similar if you have ever used the Audible app for Android or iOS. So, if you regularly listen on your phone, the same options are available on Kindle.
Reading
You would buy an entry-level Kindle e-reader to read ebooks, manga, and, to a lesser degree, comics and magazines. The six-inch screen is excellent for e-books and manga, but I think it is smaller for comics or magazines. If you are reading books, the 16GB of storage is enough for thousands of books, but if you download audiobooks to your Kindle, space can fill up fast.
When buying e-books from Amazon, most customers don’t worry about the book format. This only really applies if you are downloading free books from the internet. The Kindle supports Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX)
You can pinch and zoom to increase the font size when reading a book. This is useful since you no longer must do this exclusively on the Aa menu. You can do some options while reading, such as long-pressing on a specific word or body of text. This will provide options like making notes, highlights, or annotations. You can look up words in the built-in dictionary and check what Wikipedia says. The Kindle also uses Bing Translations on all their e-readers so that you can translate a specific word or a body of text from one language to another. If you highlight a block of text or a single word, you can share it via Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, or email instead of looking it up.
The reading app has a profile section where you can save your settings. This includes line spacing, margins, font size, and font type. You can share the Kindle with multiple family members, and each one can have its custom settings. One of the features I dig about the e-reading experience is the ability to shut off things like time remaining in a chapter or what page you are on. Eliminating the status bar or just giving the option to shut it off completely is genuinely excellent. You can configure this in the Aa menu.
All Kindle models have a system called X-Ray. It breaks down people, places, and things if you have never used it. It will tell you the book’s major and minor characters, let you know on what page they were referenced, and give a quick character biography. The Kindle 11th generation has an option in X-Ray called “Images,” which will show you all the images in a book you read. Most books have cover art, but there are many genres, such as autobiographies, that have dozens.
Wrap Up
The Kindle 11th generation 2024 model is a re-release of the Kindle that came out in 2022. There aren’t many processor, RAM, and storage upgrades. However, it does have a bright front-light display for reading at night; Amazon says it’s 25% brighter. It also supports more WIFI protocols and is made with 75% recycled plastic and is lighter.
That’s it. The device is identical in every conceivable way to its “previous generation.” The color change, if you choose it as there is also a black version, is the only thing to cling to.
the materials used in constructing the matcha green shell are quite nice; it looks great under any lighting condition and feels good in the hand. It’s a nice attempt at sprucing up a cookie-cutter eBook reader.
Outside of the three changes listed above, the devices are identical to each other and perform identically as screen, PPI, specs, dimensions, weight, thickness, battery life, and charging speed, are all 100% the same thing
So all they’ve done is rehashed the same device, called it “all-new” , and then put it in some 100% recycled card stock box
Amazon has done this in the past with the 2023 release AGAVE green 16Gb Paperwhite
But with that release, they never stated it was all new, they never stated it was next generation, etc.
They could have easily just called this 2022 re-release in matcha green, which would have made more sense, instead of treating this as one of their new additions to their lineup
Semantics aside, the device is good, feels good, looks good, performs well, and has no major downsides. It’s just… Another Kindle
Amazon Kindle
$109.99
Pros
- 300 PPI resolution
- Lighter
- Brighter Front-light
- New Colour: Matcha Green
- A good entry-level e-reader
Cons
- Hardware isn’t much different from previous gen
- Bluetooth version hasn’t increased
- 16GB might be good for books, but not audiobooks
- If you want magazines, you have to subscribe to KU
- Screen too small for comics or magazines
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.