There’s been a three-year gap between these two Amazon Kindle Paperwhites, so has a lot changed?
It’s been three years since the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2018) landed, but now finally we have a new model, in the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2021). Three years is a long time in the wider tech world, so you might expect a lot to have changed here, but on the other hand progress is often slow when it comes to ereaders. In the case of the Kindle Paperwhite 2021 the reality is somewhere in the middle. It’s not an enormous upgrade over the 2018 model, but there are still some substantial changes here. Below we’ve detailed exactly what those changes are, so you can see whether this new model is worth upgrading to if you have the old model, and worth choosing over the old one if you don’t. The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2021’s sale date is October 27,2021, and it costs $139.99 / £129.99 for a version with adverts on the lock screen, or $159.99 / £139.99 / AU$239 without adverts. That’s for the standard 8GB model, but there’s also a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which comes with 32GB of storage and wireless charging, and costs $189 / £179 / AU$289. The older Amazon Kindle 2018 meanwhile has obviously been out for years, and this started at $129.99 / £119.99 / AU$199 for an 8GB model when it launched. That’s for a version with ads in the regions that offer them, so the price goes up slightly if you remove ads. For a 32GB model you’d pay $159.99 / £149.99 / AU$249. So the new version is a bit more expensive than the old one was at launch, and the 2018 model has since dropped in price too. At the time of writing we can see it from $110 / £99 / AU$189. Usually in these articles we’d talk about the design before the display, but the screen is a big change here, and it’s a fundamental part of the design. The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2021 has a 6.8-inch screen, up from 6.0 inches on the previous Paperwhite, so it’s significantly bigger here, and closer in size to the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Oasis. It also has 17 LEDs in its front light, compared to five in the old model, allowing for a 10% higher maximum brightness.
