Summary
- The new Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is the fastest Kindle ever and has 25% faster page turns than its predecessor.
- It has the highest contrast ratio of any Kindle, automatic screen brightness adjustments, and offers impressive battery life of up to 12 weeks.
- The Kindle SE is larger, lighter, and offers double the storage capacity compared to other Kindles, but it comes at a price starting at $199.
The 12th-gen Paperwhite Signature Edition (SE) is Amazon’s latest Kindle e-reader, but is it the greatest to date? The three weeks I’ve just spent with it strongly suggest that yes, yes it is.
I read constantly, continually, and (according to medical professionals) borderline obsessively. That’s not an exaggeration. If I’m not actively working pieces like this, you are guaranteed to find my nose buried in a book, namely, because I live so far out in the sticks that Amazon Prime takes five days to arrive, and local TV service availability is wholly predicated on how clear the skies overhead are. That, combined with the fact that my local library is roughly the size of a broom closet, means that I stand ten toes in on Kindle Unlimited’s service for a majority of my entertainment needs.
As such, I’ve had a number of Kindles over the years, the latest being the generation 11 Kindle Paperwhite. It’s performed admirably over the past 10 months that I’ve owned it, though the gen 11 is not without its own drawbacks and shortcomings, including a glacial internet connection, laggy page flips, and a form factor that is just a touch too wide to continually hold comfortably during extended reading sessions. And for as much as I read in a given day, that discomfort quickly compounds into aching hands and stiff finger joints.
I’m happy to report, however, that the new Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition alleviates nearly all the issues that its predecessor presented.
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2024)
$135 $160 Save
$25
With a 7-inch display, high contrast, and sharp image quality, the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite will help you fall in love with eReaders. It even supports Bluetooth devices for setting aside the eReader and enjoying audiobooks through headphones or earbuds.
- Fast page flips and menu navigation
- New automatic screen brightness adjustments
- Larger and lighter design
- Long battery life
- No color display
- Lack of stylus support
- Gets expensive with optional accessories
Price and Availability
The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is available for $199.99 directly from Amazon and other third-party retailers. It is available in Metallic Black, Metallic Jade, and Metallic Raspberry with 32GB of RAM and other advanced features not found on the regular Kindle.
If you’re looking to save a few bucks and are willing to drop to 16GB of built-in storage, remove wireless charging, and lose the auto-adjusting front light sensor, you can opt for the standard 12-gen Kindle Paperwhite. It retails for $159.99 and comes in Black, Jade, and Raspberry.
The Paperwhite SE By the Numbers
Amazon touts the new SE as “our fastest Kindle ever” with a 20% improvement in overall performance over its predecessors and 25% faster page turns. This is thanks to a new custom processor and a new Oxide back panel. It certainly feels snappier and more responsive than my current gen 11. Where the older model needed to wait for a noticeable beat between page turns, I can rapidly flip through page after page on the gen 12 without any discernible lag, delay, or slowdown.
The same can be said for the new gen 12’s internet connection. It seemed that, no matter what network I was on, my gen 11’s internet connection could only ever be described as anemic. Downloading new titles was always an adventure. Maybe you would download on the first try, but more often than not, the process would hang and time out midway through the operation. Even the local system menus had a strong tendency to lag and stutter when navigating them.
The new gen 12 has no such issues. During the course of my testing, the gen 12 not once made me wait while it “updates the Amazon store experience,” nor did it ever time out when attempting to download content from the company’s servers. Adjusting the screen brightness, page warmth, or font size is near instantaneous, allowing me to quickly adapt my reading experience to wherever I happen to be, whether that’s in a dimly lit bedroom or in full sun out on my deck.
The Highest Contrast Ratio Kindle to Date
The Signature Edition offers a 7-inch display with a 300 ppi resolution and 32 nits of maximum brightness, the same as the gen 11 that it replaces. However, the gen 12 sports the highest contrast ratio of any Kindle on the market.
Like the gen 11, the new SE can automatically adjust the warmth of the displayed page, which is super helpful when reading in bed after a day of staring at a bright white computer monitor. It can even schedule that color shift based on the time of day.
The gen 12 also offers a new automatic screen brightness adjustment that will raise and lower the intensity of the display depending on the ambient light in the room.
The device itself is both larger and lighter than older Kindles. Available in three backplate colors (Metallic Black, Metallic Raspberry, and Metallic Jade), the new SE is a mere 7.8mm deep, thinner than the 8.1mm of the last generation, and weighs just 7.5 ounces, less than half a pound, making it a breeze to slip into a pocket or purse for on-the-go reading.
Its 32GB hard drive is double that of other Kindles and spacious enough to hold thousands of titles. Of course, you also get access to Amazon’s cloud storage system, which offers nearly limitless space to hold your purchased books and magazines.
All Month Battery Life
The Kindle SE’s battery is really impressive. Amazon estimates that a single full charge can last up to 12 weeks, assuming you’re using it for a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13.
During the course of my testing, I charged the SE to full when I first pulled it out of the box, then spent a week reading the first five books (~2000 pages) of the “Mayor of Noobtown” series on level 18 brightness and the SE’s battery only dropped to 63%. That’s fantastic. My gen 11 would be begging for a trip to the charger after a similar use.
What’s more, the gen 12 needs just 2.5 hours with a 9W USB power adapter to fully charge. The SE also offers a wireless charging option, though I was unable to acquire a station and test that capability during this review.
I also appreciate the accessibility options that the gen 12 offers. The VoiceView screen reader provides spoken cues via Bluetooth audio to help you navigate the device, as well as text-to-speech capabilities as well as a dark mode to really boost the screen contrast and make the words on the page stand out.
The new gen 12 does have a few limitations of its own. For one, it does not offer a color display as the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition does, nor does it offer the ability to write on the screen like you can with the Kindle Scribe. While I would love to see what the covers of the books I read look like in glorious Technicolor and markup my e-books as I do physical copies, I don’t consider either of those missing features a dealbreaker when it comes to the Paperwhite SE.
Should You Buy the Amazon Paperwhite Signature Edition (12th Gen)?
Performance like this does come at a price. Amazon offers the gen 12 Paperwhite SE starting at $199. Opting for a fabric or vegetable leather cover and the wireless charging station pushes that number up to between $277 and $305. The generation 11 that I currently use (with a 16GB hard drive and lockscreen ads) retails for $149. Given my experience over the last few weeks, I’d say that the extra $50 will be money well spent.
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024)
$135 $160 Save
$25
With a 7-inch display, high contrast, and sharp image quality, the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite will help you fall in love with eReaders. It even supports Bluetooth devices for setting aside the eReader and enjoying audiobooks through headphones or earbuds.
