The new and lighter Amazon Kindle is a best-value buy

When Amazon introduced the Kindle more than a decade ago, it single-handedly created the mass market for e-readers — despite a slew of initially bulky, clunky 🌠devices that elicited complaints for cheap-looking, plastic cases and cramp-inducing keyboards.

Since then, the Kindle has come a long way. The new Paperwhite — which at $130 sits in the middle of a current assortment that’s priced between $80 and $300 — delivers the best value in digital reading that we’ve come across, including the $250 Kindle Oasis we reviewed last year.

This is the first update since 2015 for the Paperwhite, whose backlit screen😼 for night reading helped it become the best-selling Kindle ever. The new version’s sleek, compact body doesn’t l⛎ook much different.

Nevertheless, the 2018 Paperwhite boasts a slew of minor up♕grade🐎s that make it worth a buy.

Holding it in your hand, it’s clear that Amazoꦉn worked hard to improve ergonomics. The body of the Paperwhite is slightly smaller now, and is a feather-light 6.4 ounces. Its predecessor weighed in at 7.2.

The weight differenc�𝓀�e seems marginal at first, but after hours, days and weeks of regular use, it’s hard to go back.

The 6-inch display is as sharp as ever, andౠ is now flush with the bod▨y of the device. That’s an improvement from the recessed display of the previous model, which, in our bags, became a surprisingly effective magnet for everything from granola bar crumbs to beach sand.

Page turns are also marginally faster 🦹on the new Paperwhite — though only Kindle nerds are likely to notice. But with such a thick bezel, it’s a shame that Amazon declined to re-introduce physical page-turn buttons. Instead, we get an all-touch interface, which, in addition to lacki🃏ng the reassuring tap of a haptic engine, is so good at collecting fingerprints that we had to wipe ours down on an hourly basis.

Amazon also has brought Bluetooth to the Paperwhite — an overdue addition for audiobook listeners. And its waterproofing enabled us to keep clicking through George R.R. Martin’s “A Storm of Swords” after we subj⛎ected it to our own ritual punishment: a half-minute bathtub dunk.