The Kindle Voyage is the Paperwhite’s replacement. With a glass-covered, flush-mounted 300ppi display and new — and seemingly better — controls to turn pages, this is my next Kindle.
(Condolences to the Paperwhite sitting on my night stand as I type this.)
The Paperwhite is still around, but is now the middle tier, siting above a new $69 model that sports physical page-turn buttons and a touch screen, but no backlight.
Amazon’s tinkered with their tablet line as well, but the only mildly interesting one is the $149 Fire HD Kids Edition. Dieter Bohn at The Verge explains:
Amazon’s cavalcade of tablet announcements this evening includes a surprisingly good offer to parents. It’s the Fire HD Kids Edition. Essentially, the Kids Edition is a standard Kindle Fire HD tablet — at either the 6-inch or 7-inch size — with a pile of add-on features that are designed for kids and the havoc they tend to wreak. You pay a $50 premium over the standard version, which amounts to $149 for the 6-inch version and $189 for the 7-inch base model. But for that $50 you get a few special bonuses. The first is a one-year subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, the company’s set of kid-friendly content that includes 5,000 games, videos, and books. You also get a gigantic case that protects the tablet and makes it easier for small children to hold. Last but certainly not-least is a 2-year, no-questions-asked warranty. Amazon representatives all but intimated that your child could put it in a blender — just send the busted bits back and Amazon will send you a new one.
For many non-nerd parents this thing might be a real winner. It — along with all of these other devices — occupy Amazon’s homepage. With the promise of “If they break it, we’ll replace it. No questions asked,” I can’t help but think this will tempt at least dozens of parents out of buying an iPad mini this Christmas.
