Read This Before Buying a Kindle Wireless Charger

If you’re thinking about buying a wireless charger for your Kindle, there’s something that Amazon doesn’t want you to know about because you can save some money if you do.

First off, only the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (both 11th and 12th gen models) and Kindle Colorsoft support wireless charging, so if you have a different model you’re out of luck (unless you’re savy enough to add wireless charging yourself).

Secondly, you can presently buy the previous Kindle wireless charging dock for almost half the price of the new one. They’re basically the exact same, but one sells for $20.97 and the other sells for $39.99.

This is one case where you shouldn’t believe the description. Amazon specifically states that the old version is not compatible with the 2024 Kindle Paperwhite SE and Kindle Colorsoft, but that’s an outright lie because it does work with the newer Kindles. Read some of the reviews to verify it for yourself (it’s also just common sense since Amazon says the new charger works with the old Paperwhite).

Amazon also used to advertise the fact you could use other Qi wireless chargers will the 2021 SE Paperwhite, but with the new model they don’t even mention it supports Qi chargers anymore even though it does. That way people will be more inclined to buy Amazon’s wireless charger that costs 2-4x more than a standard Qi wireless charger.

With the newer models Amazon makes it sound like you need to buy their charger if you want to wirelessly charge your Kindle Paperwhite SE or Colorsoft. From the product pages:

Use the Made for Amazon Wireless Charging Dock (sold separately) to power up wirelessly.

Also from the product pages:

A single charge via USB-C lasts up to 8 weeks. Or power up with the Made for Amazon Wireless Charging Dock (sold separately).

If you didn’t already know that Kindles support Qi wireless chargers you’d never know it by reading the description pages at Amazon.

They probably just wanted to be absolved from all responsibility and support for third-party wireless chargers and figured it would be easier if they didn’t even mention them. With the last Paperwhite SE, they had a list of Qi chargers that were known to be mechanically incompatible, so I guess I can see why they aren’t advertising support for other wireless chargers any longer.

So the bottom line is you can get the older wireless charger for basically half the price as the new one until they sell out of them, and you can also use cheaper third-party 10W Qi wireless chargers as well, even though Amazon no longer advertises that fact. Just keep in mind that not all Qi wireless chargers will work with Kindles, but a lot of them will.