Summary: For aging eyes, busy bookworms, or anyone tired of squinting When They read, Amazon has the prescription.
Amazon’s new Kindle Voyage. (Photo: Jason Perlow) It sucks to get old.
There are the usual things Associated with Entering middle age, Such as the aches and pains.
You Can ‘ t party as hard as you used to. You get tired breading. You can not load as long doing … Certain things as you used to.
You learn your limitations. You adjust.
But Certain things just start to piss you off. Like reading.
About a month ago my wife and I decided it was time to visit the ophthalmologist and the optometrist. Both of us found ourselves squinting When We Were driving, looking at signs and trying to focus on text.
close-up reading was overpriced Becoming exceedingly Difficult, especially since I could no longer buy Super Focus glasses, Which In Heavily relied on Until my last pair broke about two months ago. The company recently went out of business, or rather, of according to Their voice attendant, was “exploring new business models.”
So it was back to regular glasses. My Existing pairs, Which Had my Most Recent prescription from about four years ago, were no longer cutting it.
And I hated reading and watching TV. The never-ending squinting. I lost patience. Did not matter if it was the Kindle 3, Which I bought Several years ago when i finally gave into Lord Bezos, or the iPad Air, or the Surface 2, withtheir HD + screens.
I just couldn ‘t focus on the text at close distance, even if it was blown up. The sharpness and contrast was not good enough for extended reading at close distance on either a back-lit “Retina” class LCD or a traditional E-Ink display.
The Voyage That comes much closer to creating the suspension of disbelief That while I am reading, I am not old and decrepit and I do not need $ 750 glasses to help me read.
happ to love books. Science Fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, all kinds of stuff. And I’ll have overpriced More than my share of business documents and technical manuals I need to Refer to as part of my work at Microsoft.
I wanted reading back into my life.
The opthamologist gave me the bad news: I was more than two diopters off from my old prescription. Or to put it uh … blindly , I was a menace on the road and it was a miracle I have not been in a car accident.
I was not a Candidate for Laser Eye Surgery. So it was time for progressive high-index Varilux lenses. Which is a fancy and very expensive way of saying bifocals. $ 750 per pair. Ka-ching!
The good news is I can see again and there’s no immediate threat of me killing myself or anyone on the road anytime soon. I’m at 20/20 in my distance vision Which is the best I can ask for with driving.
The question is, would I enjoy reading again
I tried. My old Kindle 3 was a no-go. Fuzzy. Bad eyestrain.
The iPad Air and the Surface 2 were better, but even with the crisp color displays on These Things, extended reading for an hour or so at a time was challenging and the backlight was a killer and messed me up before going to sleep.
I needed a new device just for reading, period.
I decided to pick up the current-generation Kindle Paperwhite with Special Offers, Which was released a year ago. If you’re coming from an old-school, regular cheap Kindle like the Kindle 3 or even a 167 ppi 4th-generation, the 212 pixels per inch, 16-level gray scale is a massive improvement.
That’s as sharp if not sharper than most smartphones and tablets on the market.
Notable on the Paperwhite (Which was Introduced originally on the Kindle Touch a few years ago and is now in the latest version of the basic Kindle) is a touchscreen interface.
You use it turn the pages and access menus, Such as to buy and borrow books from the Kindle Store and Kindle Lending Library / Kindle Unlimited (Which is all you can read For $ 9.99 a month, from a large selection of stuff.)
unlike the cheaper models, the Paperwhite overpriced enjoying an Integrated Software-dimmable backlight, Which is helpful for night reading as well as For Use in darker rooms.
No more clip-on lights That You Need to position, and the software dimmer gives you many levels of back-light to choose from, so if you read in bed, you won ‘t disturb your partner.
It’s also a very “cool” light, not the type of direct backlit LED That is Typically used in in smartphones and tablets, so you do not get that harshness When reading with Those kinds of products. The light is engineered So THAT it illuminates the text without Directly shining into your eyes, Which is no mean feat.
At $ 119.00, if you need any kind of Corrective lenses at all, and if you do a lot of reading, the Wi-Fi Special Offers Paperwhite is a bargain. Leave the cheap Kindles for the kids That are burning Their Retinal out sitting too close to the TV and playing Xbox.
Sure, it’s a little more expensive than the basic one, but it’s worth every penny. This is your eyes we’re talking about here.
But Jason , you say, There’s a newer Kindle than the Paperwhite. Indeed there is.
The Kindle Voyage, Unless you were one of the folks who pre-ordered it, is slated to be back in stock in late November. That’s just in time for That post-turkey food coma couch reading session, or for avoiding your relatives in the guest bedroom (whichever you prefer).
Kindle Voyage is probably best Considered an evolutionary improvement over the Paperwhite for most folks.
It’s also $ 80.00 more expensive for the base Wi-Fi model, Which render it in the realm of tablet price territory, and more along the lines of what Kindles Used to cost four years ago .
What do you get for That premium price bump? Well, for starters, you get a 300 pixel-per-inch screen as opposed to a 212 pixel-per-inch screen.
Now, if you have decent vision and You Look at the Paper White and the Voyage, side to side, with the same page of content and same size of text, you might say, “ Yeah, this is better, it’s sharp, but I’m not sure it’s worth $ 80.00 more. “
I mean, for $ 80 more, you could buy your kid Their Own regular Kindle.
And you would be right.
Next Page: The Case for Kindle Voyage versus White Paper
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