People often ask which storage option to choose when buying a new Kindle, and I always say to choose the lowest option if you only plan to read ebooks because 8GB is more than enough for that, but there are other cases where getting more storage space makes sense.
Amazon is the only company that sells ereaders with 3 different storage space options, and most are just an easy way for Amazon to make more money off of the sale.
I see people saying it only costs $10 more for double the storage space comparing the 16GB Kindle Paperwhite with the 8GB model, and that’s solid reasoning for most electronics, but if you’re never going to use that extra storage space there’s no reason to pay more for it.
It might seem like a better value on the surface, but that’s what Amazon wants people to think. The cost difference for them is probably miniscule.
The fact is a typical ebook file is very small. It can range from less than 1MB to maybe 5MB for larger ebooks. Even if we calculate the average on the higher side at 3MB, which is way higher than normal for most ebooks, you could easily fit 2000 ebooks onto a Kindle with 8GB (the system takes up about 2GB, so there’s about 6GB usable).
The cheapest entry-level Kindle now comes with 16GB so you could easily double the number of ebooks on it to 4000.
Then there’s the 32GB Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition and the 64GB Kindle Scribe, which is oddly the most popular version (which proves Amazon’s mind games are working in their favor). The number of ebooks you can fit on those devices is well beyond anything the average person could ever use. Realistically, a Kindle’s battery could never last long enough to read that many books.
The only reason to get a Kindle with more than 8GB of storage space is if you want to use it to download audiobooks and image-heavy content like comics and manga that can be quite a bit larger than ebooks.
PDF files can also be quite large so you may need more storage space if you intend to carry a lot of PDFs of your Kindle at one time. However, the Kindle Scribe is the model that is best-suited for PDFs, and if you want to use the stylus to write notes on them, you’re going to be capped at 200 MB per PDF file because that’s the largest file you can send to Kindles using Amazon’s Send-to-Kindle service. You can sideload larger PDFs but you can’t use the stylus to write on sideloaded PDFs so that extra storage space might not be as useful as you’d think.
It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to have all your Kindle ebooks download at one time. Every ebook you buy from Amazon and every document and ebook that you send to your Kindle through Amazon’s servers gets backed up to your account so you can download them anytime to other devices and apps registered to your account. Frankly, managing and navigating thousands of ebooks on a Kindle is a difficult process with the limitations of the interface, so it’s really not practical to have thousands upon thousands of books on a Kindle anyway.
I also think people confuse the storage with RAM. In computers and other devices, more RAM makes sense, but with kindles, they all pretty much have the same amount of RAM. More storage will not make it run faster.
For me I seldom have more books on my Kindle than I am reading at the time. At this time I have 8 books on my Kindle and I normally only have 5 at the most. I can download new books as I finish the book I am reading . I am seldom where I can connect this the Internet to download or update my books. If I go out when the the rv and have any thoughts about not have Internet I will download the next book or books on my reading list.
Yeah, well, I’ve tapped out my Kindle’s storage…twice.
how?
by storing books or audio??
and if its books, how can you find what you need with the poor folder system??
For me, I want more storage than they offer. 512G or higher. I want my entire library available
Amazon is also one that doesn’t offer SD storage
How can you organize this with the Kindle interface?
I have approx 1000 technical PDFs that I like to access but i have to keep a master on the PC to find them since Kindle ignores a folders and dumps them all into one..
Kindle software and organizational tools are amongst the worst I have ever seen. This is what makes storing only a few dozen documents practical. More than that and you’ll spend hours trying to organize.
One can never have enough storage space! I have a few epub files that are larger than 200 MB and lots of epubs between 10-20 MB. So the larger the storage, if no card slot is offered, the better.
I wouldn’t buy a Kindle, though, and rather bought Android-based readers (Meebook and Boox).
When it comes to storage space more is always best. You never know how quickly you’ll use up GB’s until you’re looking to see what you can delete so you have just enough space to add something new. Low built in memory isn’t a bad thing only if the e reader has SD card support. If it doesn’t, it better have other bells wnd whistles that I want to make me even contemplate buying it.
Sure there are cloud services which I don’t trust at all who’s to say the service provider will always be around or that they wont delete my account for some reason or another accidentally or not. It’s for that reason I download my books liberate them and save them to my hard drive and send them to my highest memory e reader. Plus I like to have my whole library with me. I don’t want just some of it as that wouldn’t be much different than lugging around various books with me because I wasn’t sure what I’d want to read.
I agree that more storage is not necessary. However, I started buying bigger storage on my Kindles because for some reason they always seem to have the best, clearest, most uniform screen lighting in comparison to when I purchased lower storage options. From my Paperwhite, to Oasis, to my Scribe. I’m not saying this is official, this is just been my experience. I have done side by side comparisons with 8gb versions and 64, 32gb versions.
I agree. I mean, I HAVE purchased the 32 gb versions but I rarely have more than 4 ebooks on any given Kindle. (It’s a different story for my iPad because I have more downloaded craft ebooks that have a lot of color photos.)
I can see where a person would probably need more available storage space on the Scribe if they are reading PDF documents (text books, etc.). I feel like the other Kindles are probably too small for serious PDF reading, although I’m probably wrong. I can’t imagine using a non-paper textbook, but they weren’t available when I was in college. I’m a highlighter and notes written on paper kind of person. 😀
as for PDFs I have purchased approx 6 of the Kindle DX (10″) which are ok for page sized pdfs. each kindle has a different category since their filing system is so clunky. Since the DX is dead from Amazon’s viewpoint they all have to be sideloaded via usb.. Even th s Sribe is marginal for full page pdfs