Amazon today introduced the all-new Kindle, making its most affordable reader thinner, lighter, and with twice the memory as the previous generation for the same price, just $79.99. Kindle is offered in your choice of black or white and is available at www.amazon.com/kindle.
“Tens of millions of readers around the world have Kindle e-readers and today, we’re excited to make our most affordable Kindle even better, while keeping the same breakthrough price point,” said Arthur van Rest, General Manager, Kindle. “With a thinner and lighter design, twice the memory, and all the features customers love about Kindle, it has never been a better time to be a reader.”
The all-new Kindle is thinner and lighter and has twice the memory compared to the previous generation Kindle. Now available in black and white color options, the new Kindle features a more rounded design, making it easy and comfortable to hold in one hand at any angle for extended reading sessions. Unlike reflective tablet and smartphone screens, the high contrast touchscreen display on Kindle eliminates glare in any setting, even in direct sunlight. Recent studies have shown that evening exposure to blue light from backlit screens like tablets and smartphones can suppress the body’s production of melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone that helps the body fall asleep. Because the Kindle display emits no light, you can read anytime without losing sleep. Like all Kindle e-readers, the all-new Kindle has a battery life that lasts for weeks and not hours.
New Reading Features
Kindle comes with Amazon’s newest reading features, including:
- Export Notes—It’s now easy to export notes and highlights from a book to your e-mail, so you can always have them on-hand for reference. Receive your notes both as an easily printable PDF that’s ready to bring to your book club, and as a simple file you can open in your favorite spreadsheet app. This feature will be available as part of a free, over-the-air software update in the coming weeks.
- Built-in Bluetooth audio for accessibility—The first Kindle with built-in Bluetooth audio support, Kindle makes it possible for visually impaired users to use the VoiceView screen reader on Kindle to read the content of the screen—including reading books and other Kindle content—without the need for an adaptor. This is enabled through a new out-of-box experience specifically for visually-impaired customers that allows them to pair their Kindle with Bluetooth headphones or a speaker. For other recent updates in accessibility, visit our Amazon blog.
- Chinese Word Wise Hints—Choose between English and Simplified Chinese Word Wise hints by changing the language in Word Wise settings.
- Personalized Home Screen—An updated interface and navigation makes it even easier to discover your next favorite book, manage Wish Lists, and see recommendations from friends via Goodreads. To learn more, visit www.amazon.com/kindleupdate.
All the Features Readers Love about Kindle
The new Kindle includes all of the features that have made the Kindle family the most popular e-readers in the world for eight years running:
- New Fonts—Fonts like Bookerly, Ember, and OpenDyslexic provide more choice for customers on top of the world class fonts already available on Kindle.
- Weeks of battery life—Battery life is measured in weeks, not hours.
- No set-up required—Kindle arrives pre-registered so you can start reading immediately.
- Whispersync—Saves and synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks, and annotations across all of your devices and Kindle apps, so you can always pick up where you left off.
- Worry-free archive—Automatically backs up your Kindle books in the cloud, so you never need to worry about losing your books—re-download your books wirelessly anytime for free.
- Goodreads—Kindle is integrated with the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations, with over 50 million members, 1.5 billion books added, and 50 million book reviews.
- X-Ray—Explore the “Bones of the Book”—see all of the passages across a book that mention relevant ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places, or topics of interest.
- Word Wise—Available on many popular English language titles, Word Wise makes it easier to enjoy and quickly understand more challenging books. Short and simple definitions automatically appear above difficult words, so you can keep reading with fewer interruptions.
- Family Library—With Kindle and Kindle reading apps, you can access not only your own books, but also books from the Amazon account of a spouse or partner.
- Kindle FreeTime—Gives parents a simple, engaging way to encourage kids to spend more time reading. Hand-select books for your kids to read, and achievement badges are earned when they hit reading milestones.
- Time to Read—Tells you how much time it will take to finish a chapter or a book based on your personalized reading speed.
- Vocabulary Builder—Compiles words you look up in the dictionary into an easy-to-access list. Use these lists to quiz yourself with flashcards and instantly see words in context.
- Share your favorite passages—Share book recommendations, highlighted sections, and meaningful quotes with friends via Facebook and Twitter.
- Smart Lookup—Integrates a full dictionary definition with other reference information via X-Ray and Wikipedia.
- Custom-Built Typesetting Engine—Word and character spacing, with hyphenation, justification, ligatures, and kerning lays out the pages just as the author intended.
