Brief Summary
Eileen reviews the 2024 Kindle Basic after using it for two months, comparing it to her experiences with the Kindle Paperwhite and other e-readers like the Kobo Libra Color. She highlights its portability, speed, and battery life, while also discussing its drawbacks such as the presence of ads and the lack of a warm light feature. Overall, she finds the Kindle Basic to be a worthwhile device, especially for those who prioritize portability and read primarily during the day.
- The Kindle Basic is praised for its compact size and portability, making it easy to carry around.
- It offers fast performance and a battery life of up to six weeks.
- Drawbacks include the presence of ads and the absence of a warm light feature.
- The device is considered a good option for readers who value portability and read mostly during the day.
Eileen introduces a review of the 2024 Kindle Basic after using it for two months. She mentions her long history with Kindles, starting in 2018 with the Kindle Paperwhite, and her current use of a Kobo Libra Color. She aims to provide insights as someone who has experience with both the basic and more advanced Kindle models.
The Kindle Basic is the entry-level Kindle model, priced at $109, which is less expensive than the Paperwhite at $160. It features a 6-inch screen, up to 6 weeks of battery life, and USB-C charging. Available in matcha and black, it includes most essential e-reader features, except for a couple of omissions.
Eileen emphasizes the Kindle Basic's exceptional portability due to its small size, allowing it to fit in pockets, bags, and purses. She notes that despite previously using a Kindle Paperwhite, she found herself preferring the Basic for its convenience. The smaller size did not hinder her reading experience, and she appreciated how light it was, even with a case and popsocket.
The speed and performance of the Kindle Basic are comparable to newer Paperwhite models, a significant improvement over older Kindles. Eileen expresses satisfaction with the device's responsiveness and quick menu navigation, making it feel like a high-end device.
The Kindle Basic offers up to 6 weeks of battery life, which Eileen found sufficient, charging it only twice in two months. While some competitors like the Paperwhite boast longer battery life (12 weeks), she did not notice a significant difference in her usage.
One downside of the Kindle Basic is the presence of ads, which Eileen finds annoying. Removing ads costs an additional $20, making the Paperwhite a potentially more attractive option. Another drawback is the lack of a warm light feature, which adjusts the screen's color temperature for nighttime reading. While she prefers the warm light on her Paperwhite, she found dark mode on the Basic to be an acceptable alternative.
Eileen praises the Kindle Basic's display for its crispness and clarity. The screen is slightly indented, unlike the flush screen of the Paperwhite, but she quickly got used to it. She also appreciates the matcha color of her Kindle, which encourages her to use it more often.
While reading on a phone is convenient, Eileen prefers using a dedicated e-reader like the Kindle Basic. She feels that the experience is more book-oriented and less prone to distractions. Additionally, she notes that using a Kindle in public can sometimes feel less socially acceptable than using a phone.
Eileen concludes with a highly positive review of the Kindle Basic, emphasizing its portability, speed, and overall functionality. She recommends it, along with the Paperwhite, as good options for e-readers. Despite owning multiple e-readers, she plans to keep the Kindle Basic as her travel device due to its cute design and practicality. She also adds a disclaimer, supporting the idea of buying the cheapest thing and comforting those people who don't want to spend a lot of money on e-readers.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “Kindle Basic 2 Month Review (pros + cons)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 this thing can literally fit anywhere from my pocket to my school bag to my tiny purse hi Slayers and welcome back to my channel my name is alen and in today's video I'm going to be talking to you about the Kindle basic that came out in 2024 it is the newest version of it and I'm going to be giving you my two-month review so as some of you may know I've been using Kindles since 2018 which is now a lot longer than I thought it would be I was basically in eighth grade and I would take my Kindle with me to lunch because I had no friends and so I would just sit there and read on my Kindle instead of you know interacting with people and it was all a very healthy experience so I've had my fair share of experiences with using Kindles the main Kindle that I used was a Kindle paper white I got it in 2018 and so it was still like relatively cheaper than they are now and I really liked using
0:46 the Kindle paper white but it did become pretty slow after a while so I wanted to upgrade and currently I'm using a Cobo Libra color but that is for a different video because I also wanted to try out the new Kindles that dropped because they just seemed so cool so I've been trying out this Kindle basic for the last 2 months and I'm going to tell you my thoughts on it as someone who came from a Kindle paper white which is the more like luxurious model and we can get into that a little bit more but yeah so let's go ahead and get started so the Kindle basic is the base level model of Kindle that you can buy and it comes in at $109 which is kind of expensive for an e-rater but compared to the paper white Kindle which is the next model up it is $160 so you are still saving a decent amount of money money the screen has 6 in of reading space and it has up to 6
1:33 weeks of battery life and it also charges by USBC it comes in two colors the matcha which is the one I have and also it comes in black and it has almost every feature that you would need on an e-reader devoid of two things which we'll get into a little bit later let me start with the best thing about this Kindle and that is its size this thing can literally fit anywhere from my pocket to my school bag to my tiny purse to in my shirt right now wo Magic trick it is literally so small and you could just take it anywhere it's so portable and that makes it so much easier for you to just want to take it everywhere and then if you take it somewhere then you read more so like obviously it's helping you meet your reading goals now coming from a Kindle paper white I didn't think there'd be a huge difference in the portability size of it and how much that
2:18 affected me but it turns out I actually would grab this more often than if I had the paper white right next to it over these past few months so just like a little size comparison you can see that the paper white is like decent L bigger than the basic and while that can be both good and bad because on one hand you can fit it anywhere but on the other hand you have less actual reading room I found that I never really missed the extra size when I was reading on this and I was able to get through books just fine which is good because that was something I was worried about and of course I was used to the Kindle paper whites so I'm scared of change and I just generally was like not really gunning for this to win but um I actually really liked it so I also feel like because it's so light even like when I have the case and the popsocket on it I felt like I hardly noticed it
3:04 being in my bag whereas some e-readers or like carrying around an iPad can be very heavy moral of the story is size does matter and in this case I felt like the small size was pretty good the next thing I want to talk about is speed and there was really no difference that I noticed from the new paper white and this one but my old Kindle was getting very slow and it was still usable but I did notice a difference when I was using this I was like just every menu that I pressed was so fast I really just had no notes like I just sometimes would use this device and be like wow I feel so fast like it feels like I'm using a real iPad or something it's very cool so speed is not an issue if you're debating between any model of Kindle all the new ones are very good the next thing that I
3:50 wanted to test out was the battery life and how often I felt like I had to charge it so the Kindle basic has 6 weeks of battery life which is a lot of battery life there is not really any other device type besides e-readers that you can just like not charge it for weeks on end so 6 weeks to me felt like plenty of time that's more than a month but it is worth noting that some of the competitors like the paper white has 12 weeks of battery life and so in these two months I wanted to see if I felt like I had to charge the Kindle basic more versus like the paper white or really any other eer I was using and honestly I didn't notice anything I feel like it worked fine I charged it I think twice in in the two months and one of them was like the first charge so I don't think that really counts and it seems to hold up well I read I believe like two books on
4:37 it in that charge so personally I didn't feel like I noticed a huge difference so let's get into a couple more cons obviously there are ads on this Kindle which means I just get to see whatever Amazon wants to throw at me and I hate this feature about Kindles I see advertising literally every day of my life no matter where I go I don't need it to be when I'm picking up a book I can do my own research on what I want to read I a book talk user I know where to go okay so I didn't pay for the version without ads because that's an extra $20 and then at that point I'm like why not just get the paper white but then the paper white also comes with ads and you also have to pay $20 on top of that so I just let the ads be I just let them annoy me and it's fine but that is a
5:22 downside of the very like basic Kindle model if you want to do that you do have the option to buy the ads you can talk to C customer support and sometimes they'll remove the ads for free for you but I don't know if that's like a Surefire way or anything so if you're really looking for a device that doesn't have ads I definitely direct you to Kobo because this is my Cobo right now oh it has the book that I'm reading on it and it's not whatever this is I don't know so I definitely like that more about Cobo and they do have a very similar e-reader to this Kindle which is the Kobo Clara so that's just something worth looking into but but from my use of it it bothered me a little bit but it was not the worst thing in the world and then the other problem with it is that for whatever reason there's no warm light feature on
6:09 it which means like you basically only have light mode or dark mode and it stays at the same color temperature it's always like slightly blue tinted instead of slightly orange tinted which is technically bad for your eyes but whenever I was reading at night I would just flip it into dark mode and I found that that was fine I would just dim it a lot and I also found that was fine and I wasn't sitting there like oh my God I wish it was like orange it's ruining my life um it was something that I could get over and honestly I didn't really mind it like I was mostly paying attention to my book when I do use the paper we I do use the warm light feature but it's not like a make or break deal sort of thing and I was glad to understand that because like I said this was the Kindle I kept choosing to bring out with me into the world and sometimes like I would rather just have the smaller size versus having the warm
6:55 light protection so I feel like if you're deciding between the Kindle basic and the Kindle paper white it really depends on what type of reader you are if you're someone that reads A Lot exclusively at night then I feel like maybe the paper white might be worth it or any device that has warm light but if you're someone that reads mostly like out and about during the day then the basic is totally fine and honestly preferable because of its size in terms of display this display is beautiful there are times when I'd be reading and I'd just be like wow everything looks so crisp it's kind of like watching one of my videos no I'm just kidding but no seriously like I'd be looking at these pages on the screen and I'd just be like wow it's just always a good feeling to see the device that you paid for look really good so yeah I have to give it major props for that major props because
7:42 even though this is the base model version or whatever I still feel like it looked really really good along with that the display design is slightly indented whereas something like the paper white is not indented at all it's just like flush screen and I always felt like I thought it looked a little bit weird but honestly like it does really matter I guess it's just personal preference but I got used to it really really fast so if you're also worried about oh the the display is not flushed like it's fine on my current device that I read on the display is like that as well and I put a screen protector on it and I feel like it's fine another reason I just love to carry this Kindle around and why it sort of became one of my main devices when I was traveling outside in the world was just because how cute it
8:27 is like of course I went and decorated it but the actual color itself just made me like feel so inclined to read and maybe that's just like the girly Pinterest girl talking in me and maybe you don't understand that which is fine but if you get it you get it cute things just make me want to use them more and it's actually a very useful principle that you can apply to like homework or chores like make it aesthetic romanticize it and this Kindle is being romanticized to me and then really quickly I did just want to compare it to reading on a phone because both of these devices are very very small here is the phone comparison to device this is the regular size iPhone 14 just try not to look at the case I need a new case I hope that my devices don't get scared when they look
9:13 at my phone cases and they're like oh my God is that going to happen to me so I feel like reading on a phone is of course the ultimate way to make reading portable and if it's a habit that you can develop it's a really really good habit to have because then when you open your phone you just automatically think I need to start reading instead of I need to start scrolling but to be honest whenever I see people reading on their phone we know they're reading fanfiction and no hate because I've read my share of fan fiction but it does just have a certain connotation about it sometimes so I feel like whipping out your Kindle is a little bit more like I'm reading a book even though you could be reading FanFiction on it I also just feel like the screen is a tiny bit too small for my liking I like to see at least some resemblance of a page but on the flip side sometimes it's just like not socially acceptable to get your Kindle out I should know I've brought it to
10:00 quite a few sports games and I always feel a little bit bad cuz it's like yeah I'm not paying attention but for whatever reason in this world not paying attention by being on your phone is more acceptable than like reading or something so I'm just trying to be socially conscious here both experiences are fine I'm just talking personally I feel that I read more and for longer whenever it's on a separate e-reader device and I also feel like the experience is a lot more book oriented when you're reading on e-reader because it's just dedicated to your books and you can't get distracted and go start scrolling as easily anyways to conclude my thoughts on this e-reader are very very positive I loved taking it around I feel emotionally attached to it already and I just feel like it works it just works I was worried that I would feel
10:46 like drawn back because I knew about all of the like shortcomings of this Kindle and I don't feel like I was in the end I feel like I was able to just use it and it worked fine and it worked actually really fast and I just loved that right out of the box Bo it felt like it was meant to be used and was just like so easy to bring with me as a college student who carries around a heavy ass backpack all day I don't want to be carrying around a really heavy e-reader and I didn't feel let down by it at all I used the Kindle paper white as well but whenever I picked this up I wasn't like man I wish I was using the Kindle paper white right now like no I was just reading my book and it worked perfectly fine honestly you can't go wrong with any of the new lineup besides maybe the color soft I would definitely recommend shopping around with the Cobo line as well but getting the basic or getting
11:32 the paper white are all going to work for you even though it's probably not the most responsible decision I am going to keep this e-reader even though I already have two other e-readers because I just think she's so cute and I actually do use it all the time I feel like this sort of became my travel e-reader whereas my Kobo Libra color became like my at home annotation e-reader and while maybe I wish that there were certain things about it that were a little bit different none of that stopped me from using it or stopped me from enjoying the process of using it which I think is the most important part so I'm going to stop yapping about Kindles now but if you want more of that don't worry I'm going to make a new Kindle video soon and you can also go watch any of my older ones because I love e-readers I cannot stress that enough like I just love e-readers and so I love reading and it just all kind of ties in together you know anyway Slayers
12:19 thank you so much for watching Remember to like And subscribe bye okay this is editing Eileen and I just wanted to say something really quick I know this review was really really positive and like very much like encouraging you to buy this Kindle and of course I don't want to support everything Amazon does and I really generally don't like Amazon or anything but I do support people who buy like the cheapest thing and I really wanted this video to comfort those people because I feel like spending a lot of money on e-reader is like not something that's necessary so I just wanted to put that out there slay
