Tablets & E-Readers

The Kindle that is really a tablet:

Amazon’s Fire, still listed second-hand as the “Kindle Fire”, has a colour screen, plays video and runs apps, which puts it beside a Galaxy Tab rather than a Paperwhite. A true Kindle is an e-reader: an E Ink screen that looks like printed paper, stays readable in full sun and goes weeks between charges, and it does books and little else. Kindles, Kobos and the note-taking readers sit under e-readers; Fire tablets share tablets with iPads, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range and Xiaomi’s Redmi Pads.

E Ink or a colour screen, and the bus to Flores:

what you will do with it decides. For novels, school reading and long trips, E Ink wins: no glare, no notifications, and a Kindle sees out the long ride to Flores and back with charge to spare, which a tablet playing video will not. For cartoons, video calls, games and school apps, it has to be a tablet. A Fire runs Amazon’s own app store rather than Google Play, so before buying one for a child, check that the apps the school asks for are in it. Between the two sit colour E Ink readers such as the Kindle Colorsoft, which show comics and covers in muted colour but no video, and writing slates like the Kindle Scribe and the reMarkable, which add a pen for notes. If the reader is going near a pool or the beach, check it is waterproof: the Paperwhite is, the basic Kindle is not.

An e-reader that ages slowly, up to a hard stop:

a new basic Kindle costs around Q1,000 to Q1,300 on Guatemalan shelves. Readers lose value gently, because there are no apps to outgrow: a Paperwhite a few generations old turns pages a little slower than a new one but shows a novel just as well, and second-hand it goes for well under half of what a new Paperwhite costs. The hard stop is age. Amazon has cut its oldest Kindles and Fire tablets off from the store, the original Paperwhite, the Kindle Keyboard and the first Kindle Fire among them, and once reset one of those cannot be registered to a new account at all, which leaves it worth next to nothing to a buyer.

A used Kindle’s screen, light and Amazon account:

E Ink is more fragile than tablet glass. A knock in a bag leaves lines, blotches or a patch that never refreshes, and the fix is a whole new panel, which costs close to a replacement reader. Turn through a few dozen pages and open a full-page cover to watch the whole screen redraw. Then turn the front light up full in a dim room: it should be even, with no dark spots or yellow edge. Ask how many days a charge lasts with the light on. The account matters as much as the hardware. A Kindle or Fire stays registered to the seller’s Amazon account until it is removed, and the books belong to that account, not to the device. A reader advertised as loaded with hundreds of books will be empty once that account comes off. Ask the seller to deregister it and run a factory reset in front of you, then sign in with your own account.

Photographing and describing a Kindle or Fire:

name the model and generation, not just “Kindle”: an old button model with no light and a recent Paperwhite look alike in a thumbnail. Say whether it shows ads on the lock screen, whether it charges by USB-C or the older micro-USB, and whether the case and cable go with it. Photograph it switched on with a page of text, again with the light at full, and the back and corners, where drops show first. Someone coming from Cobán or Puerto Barrios will want to turn pages for a few minutes in daylight, so meet somewhere bright: E Ink looks its best outdoors, and shows any flaw there too.