[swanson]

I've owned every model of the Kindle (minus the comically large DX) - it's been fun to watch them iterate and refine this device. It really is a great product and the price point is always within my "insta-splurge" budget. I read roughly 10-20 books a year on the Kindle.

The Kindle Voyager fixes the biggest complaint I have with the Paperwhite: page turning via touching the screen is worse than the physical buttons on older-gen Kindles. And the auto-brightness sensor means there is one less thing for me to fiddle with. Higher DPI and thinner (flush bezel looks sexy!) are just icing on the cake.

It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much - and why I've owned every model - but something just feels right to me about reading with it. It's modern but familiar and so much more convenient for me (click Buy Now on amazon.com and the book is loaded by the time I walk over to pick it up from the shelf).

FYI: I always buy the models "With special offers" (ads shown on the lock screen - but usually Amazon does a free giftcard offer during the first few weeks so free $$) and "WiFi" (I've rarely used the 3G - and you can always just tether to most phones nowadays anyway).

[notatoad]

>It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much

i feel the same way. I've never really loved any piece of tech the way i love my kindle(s). An iPad or a Phone is just a tool, but i've got a totally irrational emotional attachment to my kindle. It's kind of like the irrational emotional attachment proponents of paper books talk about when explaining why they could never buy an e-reader.

[Shivetya]

I have given my iPad(s) away to family, even bought a few for family, but I never keep one. All I need is my phone and my kindle. I even take it when I take the bicycle out for a ride.

I have probably read more books in the few years I have owned a Kindle than in the forty preceding it.

Now I have found difficulty getting my niece and nephew to read on it, they seem very much at that stage of "its not color its old". So when they get e ink to color maybe that will help.

I am a little disappointed in the price jumps for the e ink models, it seems like there is a model missing.

[auderwoof]

I got the DX because I read a lot of PDFs and Word documents that don't fit on a small screen. It ended up being my favorite ereader ever. The big screen lets you pick a big font, which makes for a super-easy reading experience. The battery is a problem, though, yeah.

[cfontes]

Same thing. I have the DX and love it. I can't complain about the battery, it lasts at least 3 weeks of 1 to 2 hours of reading every single night with the 3G off.

The only thing that pisses me off is that I could not find a decent reading light to accompany it until today.

I ended up using my IPhone a reading light which is not ideal.

[chj]

I bought DX years ago and it is still among the most used devices, second only to iPhone. I wish Amazon would make it bigger, but now they don't even produce it any more. Let's hope someone would come in and fill the void.

[drited]

It's expensive, but Sony's digital paper product looks pretty sweet: https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-digitalpaper/resource.sol...

[AlisdairO]

The Onyx e-readers are pretty damn good for PDFs.

[snogglethorpe]

Can you turn off the frontlight on the Voyager?

[It was a slight annoyance of the PW that you could never entirely turn off the light, just turn the brightness way down.]

Or, even better, is there a physical button to turn off the light (as on [some models of] the Kobo)...?

[geoelectric]

I don't think this is known, but I'll be surprised if it has more capability in that regard than the PW.

I can't see the PW light at minimum in a room with any lighting, though, and can't read the PW without lighting.

Aside from the probably-negligible battery use, what use case is it breaking aside from pet-peeve?

[snogglethorpe]

> Aside from the probably-negligible battery use, what use case is it breaking aside from pet-peeve?

I just hate the look of the PW's backlight. The color is a sort of sickly blue, and I actually hate the evenness of it, it loses any sense of being a reflective matte surface which is one of eink's great strengths.

At absolute minimum setting, the PW's light is basically dim enough to be acceptable, but the Voyager's press descriptions, which are emphasizing the brighter light intensity etc, are making me nervous that Amazon is doubling-down on backlighting (er, "frontlighting") and giving up on the idea of a good-contrast reflective display...

[I certainly recognize that in many cases, a light is very useful, but I really want it to be an option that I can turn on when it's handy, and turn off when it's not. I don't want eink to become just yet another light-emitting display tech...]

[dholowiski]

> The Kindle Voyager fixes the biggest complaint I have with the Paperwhite: page turning via touching the screen is worse than the physical buttons on older-gen Kindles

I agree. This makes the upgrade to the voyager an immediate purchase for me. As soon as they decide to make it available in Canada :(

[emir_]

Was it that bad on the Paperwhite?

[geoelectric]

I have a Paperwhite. It's not that bad--still less effort than turning a real page, and the screen doesn't show fingerprints much. Still, this will be better.

[SiVal]

I've owned every model of the Kindle (minus the comically large DX)

Funny, I would buy something like the DX ("like", as in price and battery life) for reading PDFs of the textbooks, magazines, journal articles, and so on, that are my ordinary reading material, if the screen weren't so comically small.

[mschaef]

I've had a DX for around four years, and absolutely love it for reading PDF's (mostly of academic papers). It's light, the screen is clear, and it works well with all of the PDF's I've thrown at it. (This includes PDF's that are scans of 40 year old papers.) My one complaint is that it doesn't have a lighted screen for night time reading.

(I also have a Kindle Paperwhite 2 that I use for books. I've tried PDF's on on the paperwhite, and it doesn't work nearly as well as on the DX.)

[ScottWhigham]

Legit question: why buy each version? Is it just for fun, or is it because the new versions have a feature you craved? Or is it because something went wrong with your current version? I have a three year old Kindle and, as far as readers go, it's good. I'm trying to think what would make me upgrade and I'm just not seeing a compelling reason in these new versions. Mostly the new features seem to add things I don't want/care about: touch, GoodReads integration, etc.

[nolok]

I had the very first version. I upgraded to the last version before paperwhite because the screen was much better. I upgraded to paperwhite because I saw the integrated light and it's much comfortable than other solutions (and luminosity was an issue eg in planes on older kindle). I may upgrade to the voyage one because it's smaller and i miss the change page button of the older kindles which this one seems to mimic.

So for me it's not that the one I had at each time was too old, or for fun, but because the new version adds something that genuinely improve my reading comfort, while being cheap enough that I don't need to think much about that expense.

[geoelectric]

Sounds like my upgrade path. I went launch Kindle (for $400!) to Kindle 3 (before it was renamed to Kindle Keyboard) and then to the Paperwhite.

For me, the reasons went: "new," "screen contrast + first-party lighted case," "built-in light + size" in that order.

I've pre-ordered a Voyage. That's in part because of increased clarity and even thinner form factor, and in part because it frees up my PW for my gf, who honestly uses e-paper Kindles more than I do.

[boundlessdreamz]

I have a 3 year old kindle as well. I might upgrade to Kindle voyage because of the high PPI. Hopefully they have improved the refresh rate of the display as well. In the older kindles you have to make a choice between refresh every page (slow) or artefacts. I don't know why they didn't make the refresh every n page configurable (6 by default I think)

[swanson]

I bought one model (4th gen I think) because it was much lighter and I noticed my wrist got a bit sore during long reading stretches. I bought the first model with the touchscreen because navigating the store on the device was annoying with the directional keypad thing. I bought the Paperwhite because of the built-in light - I mostly read in bed so this was a big win.

I like having at least one "backup" to lend to family members on vacation. I also bought a cheap waterproof-case (it's essentially a double-sealed Ziploc bag) so I just toss an older model in that and float around the pool and read worry free.

I also like supporting the product line with my wallet - and it's fun to get new toys every year or two :)

[casey_lang]

I've been waiting for the new Kindle to be released. I lost mine in the seat pocket of a plane last November. I read some rumor article that said Amazon would be releasing a new Kindle Q1 of this year. Obviously that never happened. I track all my read through Goodreads and have for a few years. By this point last year I had 30 books read. So far this year, 13. I cannot wait to finally replace my Kindle.

[bhauer]

I'm in roughly the same boat as you, with my household having owned so many Kindles that the names are something like "8th Kindle." I go with special offers as well because I usually run with the antenna off for long periods anyway, so the device eventually switches to a default simple background.

I completely agree that the removal of the hard-buttons for page turning was the biggest deficiency with the touch-screen models. I'm so happy to see hard-buttons return. The Voyage looks a bit pricey compared to the last few I've bought, but I'm willing to pick one up.

Here's something I've wanted for a while, though: a small bluetooth page-advance button for bedroom reading. Maybe some day.

I often wish Amazon would focus on the Kindle e-readers since their tablets and phones seem a distraction.

[Tyrannosaurs]

> It's kind of hard to explain why I love the Kindle so much.

For me it's a great example of a device that does one thing and does it well. Yes there are compromises (buying from Amazon is frictionless, from anyone else requires side loading for instance) but it what you want to do is read books, it does that really, really well - way better than any other device I've owned.

[gcb0]

i dont use my dx because battery is a joke.

if i leave radio off it last weeks.

as soon as i turn it on to get my newspaper it last a couple days.

and there is no "turn on to update now and then back to off" option. when you manually update it turns on and you have to remember to go to options and turn off. which i never remember.

we call it the kindle paper weight.

[ufmace]

That's the one thing I find annoying about the newer Kindle software. It seems to really want you to leave WiFi on all the time, but that drops the battery life to a couple of days from a couple of weeks. I haven't had any trouble remembering to turn it back off after I let it sync, though.

[pooper]

As someone who doesn't own an e reader but rather the kindle fire (cyanogfen 11 nightly) and a nexus 4, I can't understand why someone would complain abnoiut a battery that lasts over a week.

[skriticos2]

A regular Kindle (paper-white) lasts for about a month with regular usage (few hours a day). Even with critical battery charge you can skip a day or two until you get around to charge it. Once you get used to that behavior charge time of once a week becomes very annoying. Tablets/Phones and eBook readers are completely different device categories when it comes to battery life.

[gcb0]

i'm complaining because the UI tricks me into "couple days" mode by not turning off radio when i tell it to update my library while the radio was off.

it would be perfect if radio off, i press update, it turns radio, update, turns radio off again.

i would get my journals and week long battery.

as it is, if i wont watch it update to the end (which is slow as hell, couple minutes often) and do the boring procedure to turn radio off manually again (menu > options > etc) i will have a few days instead of a couple weeks.

[taude]

I'm on the same bandwagon as everyone in this thread. Love the long battery life (i've read at least three books while being in the woods for 10 days). Pseudo-disconnect from a internet-alive device (no distractions from social media or websites) that allows me to relax with a book.

[DennisP]

Although I'm hoping the adaptive lighting has a manual override, in case I don't agree with their view on what's most readable for me.

[darshan]

Yes, as seen in several videos on YouTube, there's a slider just like on the Paperwhite, with a checkbox at the top for "Auto Brightness".

Here's an example: http://youtu.be/5-vZqmdwWSo?t=1m16s

[geoelectric]

One of the articles I read said it could be configured. Hopefully you can just turn it off.