It was clear from our hands-on time with the device that, although Amazon is placing extra emphasis on the Fire line these days, it still has a lot invested in the e-reader fight. Earlier this month, the company launched the Kindle Paperwhite, the latest addition to a product lineup that has more or less become synonymous with the term 'e-reader.'Īt that launch event, CEO Jeff Bezos described the four years of R&D that went into the front light technology powering that bright screen. (A problem, according to Barnes & Noble, that was tearing the country's families apart.) But don't let it be said that Amazon doesn't believe in the American family. Back in May, Barnes & Noble captured our hearts and midnight reading marathons with the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, a wordy name for a great little device that made reading in bed at night a little easier. Heck, even the readers themselves started to look more tablet-like, with many abandoning of physical keyboards in favor of infrared touchscreens.īut here we are at the end of September, and this product category has never been more exciting. Spurred on by the tablet explosion, companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and even Kobo were looking toward that space for inspiration, introducing flagship devices on which reading was just one of many features. If anything, 2011 seemed like the beginning of the end.

If you had told us at roughly this time last year that the e-reader race would be heating up going into the 2012 holiday season, we would have disagreed. Amazon breaks down its Kindle Paperwhite light technology (video).Amazon announces $119 Kindle Paperwhite with illuminated, capacitive touch display.

Kindle paperwhite generation