The Amazon Kindle e-reader has just undergone a minor refresh, including one of the best colour schemes in the business, Matcha Green. The base model Kindle is the least expensive, making it a great entry point to the Kindle ecosystem or as a gift to a family member or loved one. I know many people who aren’t sure if they would read enough ebooks to make a more expensive model viable, so they get the cheapest one. The new Kindle has many things going for it; we will look at it first.
The all-new Kindle has a 6-inch screen with a 300 PPI resolution. It has a front-lit display with cool LED lights and no warm light. It has only 4 LED lights and a peak brightness of 94 nits. This might be good for light reading before bed, but the lighting system isn’t that bright, so stick to the table lamp or read during the day. This device has a dark mode so you can invert the background to black and text to white. It is not waterproof but does have Bluetooth to listen to Audible audiobooks. 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).
One of the good things about this device is the overall reading experience. Ebook text is razor sharp, thanks to the higher contrast ratio and faster page turn speed than the previous 11th generation model in 2022. It has 16GB of storage, which should be everything you need for your ebook collection. However, since Audible audiobooks are quite large, you might only be able to fit a dozen before space starts to run out. The battery life is similar to its predecessor, with about six weeks of battery life.
If you want to sideload your books, 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. Most people buy their books from Amazon, though, and sideloading is just a tiny minority of users.
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).
Wrap up
The new Matcha Green body is striking and sets the Kindle apart from previous generations. Sometimes, when you put multiple generations side by side, they only really come in black, and it is hard to know what it is visually. You usually have to look in the settings menu, which takes time, and most users don’t even know how to find the model number. But a green e-reader, you know precisely what generation it is.
The base model Kindle does an excellent job at reading books. Since it has a 300-panel display, the highest e-readers can go now. For new users, there is a six-screen tutorial outlining some of the latest features and others you might not be aware of. This is a readers e-reader, you can’t go wrong at buying it from Amazon for $109.99.
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.
