One year with the 12th-generation Kindle Paperwhite SE
Just over a year ago, I upgraded my 11-year-old Kindle Voyage to the latest Paperwhite SE. I had a lot of fears, but they were all unfounded.
I’ve been a huge fan of e-readers ever since I received my first-edition Kindle. Around the time of its 2007 release, I was traveling the world for work, and I would carry a stack with me, leaving the books I’d read with hotel concierges along the way. It was a pain, and when I ran out of things to read, I was almost always in a non-English-majority country. Having a short list of bookstores that sold English-language fiction across Europe and Asia was more frustrating than charming, tho I do still have a few interesting editions of some of my favorite works of fiction. Then came the Kindle.
Instead of being limited to what I could carry, I now had access to what felt like “all the books, all the time.” I never looked back. Over time, I started to resent my large collection of books at home and have been trying to trim it down to something manageable for over two decades. When I got my Kindle Voyage in 2014, I could not believe the upgrade over the OG Kindle. Screenr resolution, battery life, and a super-compact shape that was all about reading without the silly, nearly unusable scroll bar or keyboard. For a decade, it was my safety blanket. I carried it everywhere, and the few times I forgot it or misplaced it, both heaven and earth were turned over to find the device.
Last year, after its second or third battery swap, I knew that as my primary reading device the Voyage’s time was limited. I also wanted something I could take with me to read on breaks during my volunteer work at a wildlife shelter. I did not, however, want something that had been in my hands, no matter how furiously I washed them before touching the Kindle, then finding it in my bed with my dogs. Cross-species transmission is real.
I immediately fell for the larger screen and faster interface. I jailbroke the Voyage to see if KO Reader and all the swooning over jailbreaks were worthwhile. For me, they are not. I do not “own” my Kindle e-book library, nor do I care—I use Libby and my public libraries to access most of what I read. I return books after I read them. I don’t understand the fascination with folks who overpay for books on Amazon and then gripe that they don’t “own” them, even though our tax dollars fund the excellent resources of a library.
Nearly everything about the Paperwhite was an improvement. My biggest fear, the loss of my haptic “buttons” on the Voyage and having to tap or swipe to change pages, turned out not to be a thing. I quickly adjusted. The native dark mode is excellent, makes nighttime reading much better, and preserves battery life instead of blasting the backlight.
I bought the “premium” leather case. I looked for a return and found one for about half the price. It came slightly pre-scuffed, but the dogs managed to scuff it even more quickly. I find Pecard’s clear motorcycle leather dressing brings it back to a weathered-but-loved look, and I apply some every few weeks. About as often as I charge the device. It seems to have a forever battery life. I do try to wait until it is at 20% and only charge to 80%, most of the time, thinking I am doing something to help prolong it. Having had multi-year or decade experiences with my prior two models, I anticipate keeping this one for a long time.
The Paperwhite replaced the Voyage as my security blanket.