(Re)Kindling a Lifelong Love … in Color (Premium)

I've been a fan of the Kindle since it was first announced: I owned the very first Kindle (and still have the gorgeous box it came in), and I've owned almost every Kindle model that Amazon has produced since, including some of the more expensive experimental devices. A lifelong reader, Kindle was immediately and obviously something I wanted, a tiny, portable device with weeks-long battery life that could hold an entire library of books. It was, in its own way, perfect.

But also not perfect. In more recent years, I drifted away from Kindle for pragmatic reasons. There was no color, and aside from the book covers, a lot of the content I read includes color in the form of photos and illustrations, and some content is literally in color, like graphic novels and comic books. The screen was too small on the mainstream modes. The performance was terrible. And most important, perhaps, books are only one way in which I read each day. I start my mornings reading news in apps, and I read throughout the day, often in web browsers. The Kindle supported periodicals and books, but that was about it. And so I adopted the iPad instead, introducing its own problems but solving the issues I had with Kindle, and also introducing other benefits.

But I never lost track of Kindle, never stopped thinking about these devices and how their distraction-free experience might work as an antidote of sorts for the frazzled brain effect I see as a byproduct of our always-connected, never idle lives. And so back in May, I ordered what was then the latest generation Kindle Paperwhite. And I gave it a whirl. I read a few books on the device, noting that its battery life was still terrific, but that its display was still tiny. and its performance was still terrible. It was curious to me how little had changed over the years.

In the end, I handed it over to my wife, who has likewise been using a Kindle for many years. Her device at the time was a Kindle Oasis that was, at the time, a higher-end model, but it was bogged down with an out-of-date micro-USB charging port and was starting to slow down even beyond the normally slow performance. She was happy to get it, and she uses it every day. And I went back to my iPad, and then I upgraded--maybe not the right word--to an iPad Air M2 with a 13-inch display.

The iPad is OK. I had pragmatic reasons for this upgrade, I guess I always do. But it's too big and too heavy, and not ideal for reading, and I wish I could have chosen the iPad Mini that Apple only recently introduced, but it wasn't available at the time, and whatever. It happened. And I sort of regret it. It's a big, beautiful, premium device, but it's too much. Not just too expensive. Too much. Too much screen. Too much weight. It's not that perfect combination of attributes you always look for in a device. It looks like it could be, but it just isn't.

If I had waited for Apple to upgrade the iPad Mini, we might not be having this conversation ... are the...