The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 4 is waterproof and this is one of the big selling points. How exactly does it perform underwater or with droplets on the screen? Recently Good e-Reader conducted a test to answer these questions.
The 10th generation Kindle does not work when it is completely submerged in water and the touchscreen does not respond to taps or gestures. When you take it completely out of the water, the e-reader will be able to turn pages with swipes and taps, but when you try and access any of the settings, such as font adjustments or taking notes, the water droplets makes the capacitive display think you are touching something and all sorts of weird things start to happen. This is likely why Amazon developed the option to turn the touchscreen completely off in the settings menu when you have a book open. This way, the droplets won’t be registered as a touchscreen interaction, but you can continue to turn pages. It would have been nice if a popup message appeared, that asked if you wanted to enable this feature when it detected there was water on the screen.
My advice is if you want to use the Paperwhite 4 in the bathtub, my advice is to shut the touchscreen off, so you don’t want to worry about false touches while your hands and Kindle are wet.
Amazon has provided Good e-Reader with an exclusive quote about our underwater test. “The all-new Kindle Paperwhite isn’t intended for reading underwater, but is designed so customers can read safely virtually anywhere they’d like. The device is IPX8 rated, which means it will continue to work following accidental immersion in up to two meters of fresh water for up to 60 minutes. We’ve also tested the device against other water exposures in other places you are likely to read, like by the pool, in the bath, and at the beach.”
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.
