Three years have passed since Amazon last updated its flagship e-reader, and while this year’s Kindle lineup seemed focused on Amazon’s first color offering, the Paperwhite still got some welcome improvements. With a higher-contrast screen and snappier performance, the 12th-generation Kindle Paperwhite remains the best e-reader on the market.
I tested the $199.99 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which is $40 more than the $159.99 basic Paperwhite. The screen and internals are the same, but the Signature Edition includes an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness adjustments, 32GB of storage rather than 16GB, no lockscreen ads, wireless charging, and a metallic finish on the back. The metallic jade version I was sent looked great (metallic black and raspberry are also options) but felt slightly less grippy than the plastic of the base Paperwhite.
