Amazon never releases any Kindle sales figures so it’s impossible to know how many Kindles they sell, but the number of overall customer reviews can give some indication of a Kindle’s popularity.
The Kindle Paperwhite 4 recently crossed the 100,000 reviews mark at Amazon. Given that, it appears to be the most popular Kindle of all time by far. By comparison the entry-level Kindle currently has 33,317 reviews and the Kindle Oasis only has a paltry 14,193 reviews.
Released in November 2018, the Kindle Paperwhite 4 has been on the market for longer than the other two models, but it only has an extra 5 months on the entry-level Kindle.
It’s clearly selling way better than the cheaper model. It makes you wonder why they even bother keeping the entry-level Kindle around when approximately three times as many people buy the Paperwhite instead. Apparently the $30 price difference isn’t enough to keep most people from upgrading to the superior Paperwhite model.
What’s more interesting is the Kindle Paperwhite 4 now has twice as many reviews as the Kindle Paperwhite 3. I would never have guessed that Amazon has sold twice as many Paperwhite 4’s but that’s what the numbers indicate. Perhaps they are counting reviews differently now or something. They did switch to “global ratings” a while back but it says the same thing on the Paperwhite 3 page.
Either way you look at the numbers the Kindle Paperwhite is selling very well. This is part of the reason why Amazon upgrades Kindles so infrequently. They don’t have to change anything and people still buy them like hot cakes. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon doesn’t upgrade the Paperwhite again until 2022.
There is more to the Kindle than just the reader. You also have to include the great support from the Amazon website. The Unlimited subscription offer is also a good reason to get a Kindle.
What is the point of having 100,000 reviews? Is there really someone that “on-the-fence” about a Kindle at this point? “Oh, I’m not really sure….I think I need to read what another couple hundred strangers think before I decide”. C’mon, people!
Those deciding to get a Nook or a Kindle.
That 100k also counts simple star ratings.
What is the point of replying to a blog post? “Oh, I’m not really sure.. I think I need to read what another couple hundred strangers think before I decide what I think about this article”. C’mon, Rob!
Thanks for the information on the KPW4. I appreciate the information about relative number of reviews compared to other kindles where substantially fewer people reviewed it. Means that there is some word-of-mouth and so on.
I don’t trust 100k strangers, no, but if it has 2x ratings of other kindles – that’s interesting to me.
I wonder how many have sold. I know a lot of people that like to read on a tablet or even a phone.. I use the reviews all the time when purchasing items on line.
I just realized that Amazon removed the ability to comment on user reviews on their website. Just another way to censor. First they removed their down votes and now they removed comments altogether. I thought those comments were very helpful to those people that had questions about the original review. It was a good way to engage with other users, but Alas everything is being taken away. Bad move.
Moderating user generated content is a huge problem. What you think of as “censorship” is more likely explained by economics plus legal liability.
Comments about reviews were often devolving into ideological ‘flame wars’, especially books. So now you can’t read 47 nasty comments about a snarky review.
I didn’t understand why this would be so much more popular than the previous PW. And then I found a good reason. I went to fakespot (https://www.fakespot.com/product/all-new-kindle-paperwhite-now-waterproof-with-2x-the-storage-includes-special-offers) and low and behold…
The review count skyrocketed in 2020 when it only had 18,000 reviews (look at the graph on the bottom of the fakespot page). Gee I wonder what happened that led people to stay indoors and read ebooks?