With the release of the new basic Kindle for 2022, Amazon has added the option to get a standard Kindle Paperwhite with 16GB of storage, and it’s available with or without ads.
The new basic Kindle comes with 16GB of storage space and it sells for only $99, so it seems rather silly for Amazon to offer an “upgraded” Paperwhite model with only 8GB of storage space for $139, so you can see why they added a 16GB option.
At $149, the 16GB Kindle Paperwhite costs $10 more than the 8GB version, which I think is pretty lame. Amazon has increased the storage space on Kindles in the past without jacking up the price at all, so this just seems like a reason for them to start charging an extra $10 for a Paperwhite with extra storage space that most people are never going to need.
I know we’ve all been trained to think that more storage space is better, but when it comes to Kindles and ebook readers in general more storage space doesn’t really matter. You can easily fit several thousand ebooks on a Kindle with only 8GB of storage space.
A Kindle with 8GB of storage really only has about 6GB available to the user since the system files take up some of that space. But even still that’s enough room to hold upwards of 5,000 ebooks or a few dozen audiobooks. Even if you managed to read an entire ebook every single day, it would take over 13 years to read 5,000 ebooks.
Frankly, the amount of storage space they’re adding to ereaders lately is nonsensical. Not only is it virtually impossible to read 6GB of ebooks before an ereader’s battery permanently wears out and dies from overuse, navigating and organizing 6GB worth of ebooks on a Kindle would be a total nightmare. Amazon’s interface isn’t setup well enough to handle libraries even half that large.
There are really only a few reasons to get a Kindle with more storage space, and having more space for ebooks isn’t one of them.
Reasons to Get More Storage Space
1. Audiobooks – Audio files are a lot larger than ebook files so if you plan on having several dozen audiobooks downloaded to your Kindle then you’ll want to get a Kindle with more storage space. Even still this really only matters if you insist on having them all downloaded at once; you can remove titles you’ve already listened too and they remain available to download again from the cloud, and keep in mind Kindles only support audiobooks purchased from Audible.
2. Manga/Comics – Image-heavy content like comics and manga take up a lot more space than an average ebook so if you have a massive collection you’ll probably need more storage space.
3. PDFs – If you have a large PDF collection that you want to read on a Kindle you might benefit from more storage space, but you’d really be much better off getting something other than a Kindle with a larger screen better suited for PDFs, like the Onyx Note Air 2.
I think they’ve always charged more when you have a choice in the amount of storage. The previous Paperwhite had the option for 8 GB or 32 GB as does the current Oasis, each costing more. The only time they didn’t charge more was if there was only one option for the device and the storage was increased. I think that was way back when the Paperwhite only had something like 4 GB and they quietly increased it to 8 GB. The price stayed the same.
Yeah, one of the earlier Paperwhites went from 2GB to 4GB and the last entry-level Kindle started out with 4GB and then they changed it to 8GB and didn’t charge any extra. Are they going to keep making 8GB Paperwhites? If so the price difference makes sense, I guess. But if they stop selling them after they run out of the remaining stock and only offer the 16GB model moving forward it just seems like an excuse to charge more for the same product. Why do we need three different storage options for a Kindle? It seems kind of silly. I think they’re just trying to take advantage of the mentality that more storage is better so they can make more profit off of people that will never really need that much storage space but think they will since 8GB seems so small by most standards.
While looking around for an upgrade to my Aura ONE, I was surprised to see I’d only used 4 of its 8GB. So yeah, “needing” 16GB or 32GB just for mostly text ebooks is really unnecessary.
Now if the books were filled with large colour photographs, that’d be another way to use up the space, but I can’t imagine any non-masochist wanting to read those on grayscale e-ink screens..
But another possibility here is that there could be supply chain issues with getting 8GB chips, and fewer issues getting 16GB chips. I doubt Amazon’s selling so many Kindles it can tell memory fabs what to make.
Whether that’s worth charging consumers more for is another thing, and a balance between the marketing whizzes and bean counters.
I think it’s just Amazon needing to increase the price because of the current political situation and increased costs. So they added storage and raised the price by 10 dollars. Personaly I don’t see it as such a big deal.
At the very least, your Kindle can double as a flash drive. It would be for storage and transport only. But with all that memory, you could back up a lot of files from your PC (I don’t know if the data would survive an automatic version update,, though).
If you use your device for podcasts, and you keep current on a number of them, listening to them in batches, the 16 GB is a legitimate use case. This is particularly true if you have dozens of downloaded episodes to choose from at any given time, because of your schedule, intermittent listening habits, or because of offline use and commuting.
True, but how many people prefer to use a Kindle for podcasts and audiobooks over a phone or tablet? Not very many. Probably less than 1%.
It must be more than 1% or why would Amazon continue to support bluetooth? I think the haters are more outspoken about not wanting to use their devices for audio than those that actually do use their kindles for audio. I prefer using the kindle for audio for the same reasons I prefer to use it for reading: battery life, won’t use up the limited space on my phone, and no notification interruptions.
Battery life is part of the reason why I don’t think Kindles are very good for audio. I once did a test on the Kindle Oasis and the battery only lasted about 8 hours from full to dead when streaming an audiobook. Compare that to the cheap $49 Fire tablet where I was able to get more than triple that out of a single charge. The reason Amazon continues to support audiobooks on Kindles is it’s another revenue stream. They want to milk every penny they can out of these things. I’m surprised they haven’t added Amazon Music support yet (kidding, but I would actually find that more useful than audiobooks).
Makes sense that a table would last longer since it has a bigger battery. But compared to a phone, I think a kindle would last longer. It would be nice if they allowed you to play music in the background while reading. I still see it a a positive for kindles to have audiobooks. I have found it to be more convenient to be able to switch between reading and listening using the same device. Also, the more flexible a device is the better, right? Offering more options to the user is better, and if they can make money off it then it is a win-win situation. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Kindles are there to make getting books (and audio books) easier to the user and easier to read said books. Yes, you are paying to have their store in your house, but that is the point, saving you the trouble of having to drive to a book store to get a book. Making reading more accessible.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with it, but I do have a problem with them suddenly raising the price of an existing product just to add more storage space that most people will never use. If they keep the 8GB version around it’s one thing, but I kind of think they won’t now that the basic Kindle comes with 16GB. Also, regarding my other post, I can’t help but notice they didn’t add a 16GB version to the Kindle Oasis…
Spending ten dollars for extra storage was something I would easily do before the UI change. I keep hundreds of books on my Kindles with the old interface.
My Paperwhite 5 has the new UI and each update I like even less. I hate that the pages were taken away and having the endless scroll down is a mess. Only what I’m currently reading is on it and I sync and delete when done. (I rarely use it though.)
With the new UI there is no reason for me to spend extra money on storage.
At one point I was planning on buying a 32g Kindle and download all my thousands of Kindle books to it, but then Amazon released the new UI. So glad I didn’t do that.
I have an older Kindle paperwhite from 2015, and manage to store less than 500 books out of 2600. Less than 20% have pictures or diagrams.
Would love to store more.
Do wonder if Kindle has problem with reusing space after books deleted.
I would think that like any computer, restarting the device would recover those memory blocks.