While the market is now filled with high-performance smartphones with bezel-less screens and thin tablets, e-book readers are still in demand and popular among bookworms and bookaholics for their simplicity, affordability, and unbeatable battery life. We got to try the new Amazon Kindle 11th generation tablet and here are our thoughts about it.
Amazon mentions that its latest 11th-generation Kindle is the lightest and most compact Kindle ever released to date. The device weighs only 158g and is only 8mm thick.
The display used here is a 6-inch panel that offers a glare-free reading experience like reading a real printed paper. The display is also visible under the sun and features a pixel density of 300ppi. The texts appear crisp and sharp while reading ebooks and PDF files. There is also the adjustable front light and the new dark mode that helps users read through their ebook collection comfortably while staying indoors or outdoors.
While most smartphones or tablets now come with bezel-less displays, Amazon still sticks with large screen bezels for the new Kindle. While it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, a bezel-less screen could have also been a bonus addition. The front side also has the Kindle logo on the bottom and the rear side with the smiling Amazon logo. We should mention that the device easily attracts fingerprints and smudges. That said, Amazon mentions that the design of the new Kindle is based on sustainability and uses about 30-75% recycled plastics and 90% recycled magnesium.
To elevate the reading experience and protect the device, Amazon also offers slim form-fitting covers with a premium fabric texture that mimics a traditional book cover. The cover is made of 51% post-consumer recycled plastics and 67% post-consumer recycled fabric. The fabric cover comes in black, blue, green, and rose colors. The new Kindle itself comes in black and denim colors.
The fabric cover features a magnetic attachment that ensures the cover is securely closed. The new Kindle is designed to go to sleep when the fabric cover is closed and automatically wake up when the cover is opened.
The device also features the ability to convert the display to black or white colors and easily allows the user to adjust several factors such as font size, font faces, spacing of lines, margins, and more. With 16GB of internal storage, Amazon mentions that the device is capable of holding thousands of books. The official content formats that are supported are Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), PDF, unprotected MOBI, EPUB, HTML DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PMP, and more (most through conversions). The device also is capable of playing Audible audio format (AAX) audiobooks.
The functionality to send non-Amazon ebooks, PDFs, and other files to the user’s Kindle Amazon email address is still there and is very convenient. The USB-C port is located on the bottom, along with the power button that also can be used to wake up the device from its sleep mode. Amazon mentions that a fully-charged 11th-generation Kindle can last up to 6 weeks (depending on the wireless mode turned on/off, the brightness of the frontal light, and the hours spent on reading books). With respect to fast-charge, the device takes about 4 hours to achieve a fully-charged state when connected to a computer and only 2 hours when connected with a 9W USB power adapter.
Other features include support for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi networks and support for WEP, WPA, and WPA2 wireless security protocols.
Verdict
The Kindle series of e-book readers has been a popular choice among bookworms and casual users over the years for its simple-to-use functionality and amazing battery life. The new Kindle 11th generation tablet is the lightest Kindle that Amazon has released, featuring a 6-inch touchscreen panel with 300ppi of pixel density. The screen also comes with a glare-free surface and front-facing adjustable light for a better reading experience.
The new Kindle also packs 16GB of inbuilt memory that has enough room for thousands of ebooks. The device also has support for various file formats and includes AZW3, PDF, DOCX, AAX, and more. The new tablet also brings support for fast charging and can last for several weeks, based on the user’s reading habits. Amazon also manufactures the new Kindle with sustainability in mind and is made of recycled plastics and recycled magnesium.
