Amazon Kindle Paperwhite , 6-Inch, Wi-Fi, With Special Offers [Previous Generation - 5th]

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5 star		75%
4 star		12%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		5%

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arPie47

Love, love, love Kindle Paperwhite!

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

Just realized I had not written a review. I've been reading on this daily for more than 5 1/2 years, and the original battery is still good. I carry around a library of hundreds of books as well as having the dictionary, translator and Wikipedia available at a touch. When I first got this I was approaching the need for cataract surgery, and it was a huge help to be able to enlarge the text to a comfortable level. Controlling the brightness is another huge advantage. I can read in bed without turning on a lamp and disturbing my husband. My only regret is that we didn't have this sort of thing when I was a kid.

90 people found this helpful

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Chad Bush

Amazing new Kindle is nearly perfect except for ads in the non-ad version*

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2012

Verified Purchase

So far, I love my new Paperwhite Kindle. I've been using an aging keyboard Kindle 2, waiting for a version with a built-in light like this. Amazon really got it right with the light on this one.

The high resolution screen is noticeably easier to read, and the user interface is well thought out.

The form factor is also an amazing improvement. I like the tactile feel of the Kindle's back, although I'm awaiting shipment of Amazon's leather case because I like to take my Kindle everywhere and this device feels small and delicate, and I've liked the old Amazon leather case on my old Kindle.

The one thing keeping me from giving this product a 5-star review is a software issue that really irks me: I paid the extra $20 to have a Kindle without advertising, yet the entire bottom half of the home screen in cover view is taken up with Amazon's recommendations for me to buy new books. This is advertising, and it is totally unacceptable in a product that costs extra just to avoid advertising. Targeted advertising is still advertising, and there's not enough space on this screen to make any amount of advertising okay with me.

If I ever want to see what Amazon recommends for me, I'll visit the Amazon Store and look myself. The end result of this unsolicited advertising on my home screen is that I have to scroll past it to see more than three of the titles on my device, whereas if the ad was gone, I could see six titles right away on the home screen. Given the way the Kindle's user interface is designed, going to the home screen is necessary to get just about anywhere else, so this advertising block causes me to have to scroll past it over and over again, gumming up my otherwise smooth user experience on the device.

Amazon could easily make this optional with a software update, and I hope they do so very soon. At the very least, this unsolicited, mandatory advertising on the home screen needs to be explicitly disclosed on the sales pages. Had I known that there would still be advertising I could not remove on my device, I might not have paid $20 to avoid advertising.

Until Amazon gives us the option to disable these "recommendations" on the home screen, I've used parental controls to just disable the store completely on my Kindle. That does make the ads go away, but it's not really a convenient solution, because if I ever actually want to buy something on my Kindle, I'll need to type in a password and re-enable the store. I'll more likely use a different device for all purchases. This forced advertising, then, really backfires in my case because instead of enticing me to buy more books right on my Kindle, it's prompted me to shut the store down completely on the Kindle.

* UPDATE: I left this review years ago, then never realized until just recently that it had received so much attention. Had I realized that, I'd have posted an update sooner. I don't remember exactly when, but Amazon did, as promised, release a software update that made it not only possible but easy to remove those recommendations (ads, as far as I'm concerned) from the home page of the ad-free Kindle. I now have upgraded to a Kindle Voyage and am very happy with it, and these recommendations never appeared on it, even by default when it was new. I've changed my review to 5 stars and will mention this in my upcoming Voyage review.

16,583 people found this helpful

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David N. Ewing

Clunky junk, brimming with hype.

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

If you are used to the responsiveness of a smart phone touch screen, you will find the sluggish response of the Kindle Paperwhite screen frustrating--you will need to be prepared to count to five after tapping on a button before expecting anything to happen. What is more, a good bit of the functionality of the device seems dedicated to trying to sell you more stuff or encourage you to get hooked up with social media platforms. I suppose my mistake is wishing for the Kindle to be more like a book--something to pick up and read, rather than a device that is trying to work me to its own purposes. I owned one of the early Kindles and though I found it a bit clunky, I actually used to read on it sometimes. Then it got broken in my pack and I figured I'd try a reconditioned Paperwhite. Maybe there is a learning curve, but I wasn't patient enough to get through it. I probably would have just thrown it in a drawer, but then noticed that it arrived with a tiny, almost imperceptible, crack in the screen and this motivated me to return it as defective for a refund. But I doubt that the little crack is responsible for the thing irritating me so much. Sadly, I think that is because it is designed for marketing rather than for reading.

64 people found this helpful

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Michael Bosse

Good product but possible underlying defects

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

The Kindle Paperwhite is a good product and I certainly loved mine to death. This morning I woke up, read a few pages of a book and my kindle rebooted itself, as they do from time to time. No big deal, I figured I would just wait until it finished and go back to reading. My poor kindle never came back from its reboot, it remained stuck on the kindle reboot screen approximately 50% of the way through booting. I plugged it into the wall for 10+ hours and attempted the hard restart procedure countless times but the device never restarted again or made any response. I purchased my kindle in February 2013, so while it is not the newest of devices, it certainly is not old either. I decided to call Amazon customer service to see if there was something that could be done. The agent took me through the hard reset procedure and then stated that the only thing she could do is offer me a discount on my next device, she offered me a Kindle Paperwhite 3G for $20 off of the current price (my device is the Wifi) or a Kindle Fire for about the same. Frustrated, I hung up. I am a computer engineer by training so I took the device into my garage and disassembled it. I removed the front bezel and popped the battery out. After depressing the power button with the battery removed and replacing the battery, I was able to get the indicator lights on the bezel to light briefly. Initially the screen would flash white and then return to the kindle boot screen but with no further activity. So I hooked the device up to a linux pc and repeated the procedure now, the Kindle is seen via USB and the file system can be mounted before the device powers off again. I also noticed that the orange charge light will now turn on and the kindle boot screen will start draw a few frames of an animated whirl loading symbol at the bottom. I bet if I let the device sit for a few hours it might work again. I will update this review if anything changes.

So here is the short version of my review. The device is amazing and worked majestically for 2 years and a month. Today for no apparent reason the device bricked itself and none of the steps provided by customer service or online would make it come back. Amazon customer service refused to accept the device back for repair. I disassembled the device and found that with a simple removal of the battery I was able to restore some function. I suspect that this device (or at least my hardware revision of it) has a faulty charge controller which I was able to reset by removing the battery. I suspect the Amazon engineers have fixed this in more recent versions but buyer beware.

** Update **
After numerous cycles of removing the battery, pressing the power button, replacing the battery, plugging in the device and pressing the power battery I was able to restore my device to full function. I fully believe that there is a defective charger controller and Amazon should replace the affected devices instead of telling people to buy new ones.

149 people found this helpful

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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite , 6-Inch, Wi-Fi, With Special Offers [Previous Generation - 5th]

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