This is my favourite of the new Amazon Kindle lineup

While there will be plenty of buzz about the color-screened Kindle Colorsoft as well as the upgrades to the always-intriguing Kindle Scribe, my favourite of the new Kindle lineup is actually somewhat more down to earth.

The Kindle Paperwhite is a long-awaited upgrade to what Amazon isn’t ashamed to call out as its best-selling Kindle. That’s quite surprising given the cheap price point of the basic Kindle (now available in a macha color) but it shows how Kindle users value a bit of quality about their reading, too.

The new 16GB model has some very nice upgrades up its sleeve in my opinion, with a larger 7in display, faster page turns, an even higher contrast ratio and up to three months of battery life. It’s also thinner than the older model and waterproof, too. What’s not to love?

There’s also a Signature Edition with wireless charging, though that seems a little over the top for something that lasts three months.

I’m also quite excited about the upgrades to the Kindle Scribe too, which we’ve covered in detail elsewhere. When I reviewed the original, I felt it was a promise unfulfilled on the software side.

But gradual updates plus the new features mean that I think it’s a serious contender for note-taking in meetings and during launch events (it’s also great that many of the new features will come to the older model, too). I’m not someone who needs to annotate books, but if you are, the Active Canvas feature enables you to make notes on pages really easily; text will then flow around them.

While the Paperwhite is available now, the Scribe isn’t out until December, so it’ll be a while until I can review the 2nd gen version of that.