Amazon has just unveiled a new entry level Kindle e-reader with an E Ink Carta display and a front-light. This e-reader refreshes the old model that has been heavily discounted in the past few months, as Amazon was trying to get rid of as many units as possible.
The entry level Kindle e-reader features a 6 inch E Ink Carta display with a resolution of 800×600 and 167 PPI. This is the first Kindle with a front-light display, which allows you to control the brightness using a slider bar. It has 4 LED lights that are on the bottom of the bezel and project light upwards, so it is not shining in your eyes.
Underneath the hood is a NXP 6SLL (Cortex-A9 @800M/1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. There is 4GB of internal storage to house all of the ebooks you have purchased from Amazon or from your own personal collection that you have sideloaded. There is no SD card for additional storage, but no Kindle after the 1st generation model has had one.
The all-new Kindle helps you go beyond a book with Amazon’s newest reading features. Now, when you finish a book, it will automatically be marked as read in your library and synced across your reading devices including Kindle, Fire tablet, and the free Kindle apps for iOS and Android. With just a few taps, you can filter to see which books you’ve read and which you haven’t, so organizing your library has never been easier.
The new Kindle also has Bluetooth for wireless headphones or an external speaker and has the Audible audiobook store. This will allow you to purchase audiobooks and listen to them.
Three months of Kindle Unlimited is included for free so you can enjoy unlimited access to millions of titles including stories from thriller author Vince Flynn, popular titles like The Selection by Kiera Cass, and classics like The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
The all-new Kindle is available for pre-order today starting at $89.99 in the US and will be available to ship on April 10th. There are two colors that will be available – black and white.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.