Fancy a read without the weight of a real physical book by the bath or beach? Water resistance has arrived on the mid-range Kindle.
There’s one thing that a physical book has had over many a Kindle cousin, and that’s water resistance. You can take a book to the beach, to the bath, or just relax by the pool reading the pages of something great and if it drops in, you merely have to dry it off to keep reading unabated.
Devices for reading don’t always play nicely with water, though, and only a handful of eReaders and tablets can let your eBook survive a close encounter with the drink. In fact, if you wanted to take Amazon’s Kindle out to the water, you had to opt for the expensive model, with the $389 starting price stretching as high as $529, not exactly in reach of every person.
But the latest mid-range Kindle has water resistance in mind, and it comes with a price tag to make the whole thing just that more appealing.
Announced this week and ready for shoppers from November 7, it’s the latest edition of the Kindle Paperwhite, and it gets a new design that is thinner than previous models, sitting at 8.18mm with a weight not far off big phones at 182 grams.
Water-resistance is a new feature for the Paperwhite generation, capable of surviving two metres of fresh water for up to an hour, though if you take it to the beach or pool and it goes in, make sure to wash it off to stop any mineral or chemical erosion.
Amazon’s 2018 Kindle Paperwhite also features front-lighting, allowing you to read in nay environment, letting you adjust the lighting to suit where you read, as well as more storage than the previous edition, offering 8GB for $199 or 32GB for $249 if you happen to be a big reader and have to have an entire library travelling with you at all times.
“Customers love the Kindle Paperwhite, and we’re excited to bring premium features, like a thinner and lighter flush-front design, additional storage and IPX8 waterproofing, to our most popular Kindle,” said Amazon’s Kevin Keith.
“With the all-new Kindle Paperwhite, it’s never been easier to get lost in a story no matter where you go,” he said.
One thing the $199 Kindle Paperwhite doesn’t have is a 3G connection, meaning you can’t necessarily connect from the road and buy a book remotely, something you can do with a variation of its flagship Oasis model, but the same is true with a real physical book, so you might just not worry too much about that.
