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Comment by lambdaelite | Hacker News Reader

Yawn.

I upgraded from a Paperwhite 1 to a Voyage because I thought the screen and haptic buttons would be improvements. I can barely see a difference in the screen quality when I'm deliberately looking (and don't notice any while reading), and the haptic buttons are poorly placed so I rarely use them. The Voyage is nice but was questionably worth the extra money over the Paperwhite 1. Now with the Paperwhite 3? Fuggetaboutit.

You know what feature would be a great improvement? A backlight without blue light, for reading at night without screwing up sleep cycles.

edit: clarified

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Note that this is the upgraded Paperwhite, not the Voyage, and it's the same price as the previous Paperwhite.

Personally, if I set the light near the lowest setting I drop right off to sleep. It might not be campfire light, but it's not so far off from moonlight. Still, if they offered a warmer color option I wouldn't turn it away.

Yeah, I wasn't clear on the versions.

At night, I have to use level 7 on the backlight for comfortable reading without any other lights on. It's noticeably blue to my eyes at that setting. I get that Amazon's trying to make the display look whiter in normal light, but I (and I think others may) place more value on a warmer backlight for nighttime reading. Outside of vacations and doctor appointments, bedtime reading is my most frequent use case.

> A backlight without blue light, for reading at night without screwing up sleep cycles

This is much needed.

The Marvin e-reading app on iOS can change the screen color temperature to adjust the blue level, which helps with bedtime reading.

That doesn't sound good. I really want to use physical button with my kindle. Thats my biggest complaint.

One thing I couldn't find anywhere is how strong is the glass? A reader is much bigger than a phone and I wonder how safe such a big glass screen is.

Agree about the light though, its very glaring at night. I have to lower it to uncomfortably low to read to stop it from hurting the eyes. It actually feels a lot like backlight to me at night.

One of the main reasons I haven't bought a new Kindle Paperwhite or a Voyage is because I like the physical next/previous page buttons. I've tried last year's Paperwhite and I just didn't like flipping pages by pressing a part of a screen.

Thanks for mentioning the haptic buttons on the Voyage - my wife hates touchscreens, so she alternates between the last generation of e-ink Kindle with page turn buttons and the last generation with a keyboard. I'd given up on the Kindle line, but knowing there's an upgrade path for her requirements is helpful.

Now if only there were current phones being made with keyboards..... sigh

Is the Paperwhite worth upgrading from the regular Kindle? I've never bought one before but considering it

Which regular Kindle? The built-in backlight was the selling feature to me. My old Kindle had the light built into the cover which worked OK but was too bright for my wife. The paperwhite is great for reading in bed.

Yes I absolutely love my Paperwhite over my old Kindle, which I thought was fine. The backlight is fantastic.

For me the swipe / touch has been worthwhile ! The page turn buttons on the regular used to drive me nuts. Others might be used to it. The Paperwhite is a bit smaller, but has no audio, so the old Kindle is still useful to listen to audio books - though the Audible app on iphone/android is what i use nowadays for audio books. Oh and the backlight - very useful. (as @lambdaelite) pointed out.

I, on the other hand, love the page turn buttons on my Kindle 5 and reluctant to upgrade for exactly the lack of this feature. I'm afraid I will keep stubbornly refusing to get used to swiping for turning pages. Why couldn't Amazon provide both options (swiping and clicking) for page turning, at least on some of their newer devices?

I've got a version 1 Kindle Paperwhite, and you can tap the screen to turn a page. That's what I do.

Random ramble time... (because this aspect of the Kindle Paperwhite annoys me every time I think about it)

The tapping bit is fine, so reading books is no problem, but to be honest, in general, the touch UI is no more than resoundingly adequate. The tapping is fine, and the swiping works, but it doesn't feel as nice as it does on iOS. For me, swiping works best when the UI updates pretty much instantly as your finger moves (e.g., iOS, Android). The Kindle, on the other hand, doesn't do anything until your swipe is finished and the action has been registered. Feels like somebody who's never used an iPad read was given a one-sentence summary of what swiping was, and then wrote some code to do what they imagined. (Maybe they were worried about the screen going all blurry? Well, that's fair enough. But technical reasons won't make the touch UI suddenly brilliant.)

This makes the experimental web browser rather hard to use - a shame, as this could have been such a great feature! - and the book list a bit annoying.

But, still, compared to the non-Paperwhite equivalent, it has a backlight, and it's a bit smaller. And there's never anything wrong with a few more pixels. So overall, I don't mind, and the Kindle Paperwhite gets a thumbs up. It would still have been improved by some more UX work and/or a couple of physical inputs. I think this is what annoys me about it so much - the device is good, but it could have been better, and it's really obvious.

Ramble over. Phew! Sorry about that.

The thing I loved about my Kindle 1 with buttons on both sides, I could lay on my back/side in bed and go back/forth with one hand. If I mess up and go too far or need to navigate menus, on my PW I have to get both hands involved.

Agreed on that. I have a nook and love the buttons. Forward and backward on both sides so I can turn pages one-handed with either hand while I'm holding it. Comes in handy if you have a cat that likes to plop down on your arm while you read.

One of the buttons is starting to stick, so I'm looking at upgrade paths. The Nook Glowlight dropped its page turning buttons, but if I buy anything other than a Nook, everything I've purchased on it evaporates. Thanks, DRM!

If you're going to use the backlight it's a worthwhile upgrade. Otherwise, not sure.

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