Logitech G502 Proteus Core Gaming Mouse Review

From design and software to performance, the Logitech Proteus Core is hands-down the best all-purpose gaming mouse on the market.

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pdate: Logitech has released the Proteus Spectrum, an updated version of the Proteus Core with full 16.8-million-color RGB backlighting. Aside from the illumination and a few blue highlights on the mouse itself, the Proteus Spectrum is exactly the same as its Core predecessor, right down to the G502 model number and the price.

I don't have a particular recommendation between the two, since they're nearly identical. For those who own other Logitech peripherals, though, it's worth noting that the Proteus Spectrum can sync with the company's RGB gaming products, such as the Orion Spark keyboard and the Atlas Spectrum headset.

It's great to see a company take a nearly perfect product and iron out its last remaining kinks. The Logitech G500s was a top-notch all-purpose gaming mouse, but its successor, the Logitech G502 Proteus Core, surpasses it in every way. In fact, we can confidently say that the Proteus Core is the best all-purpose gaming mouse yet.

Logitech G502

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Intuitive and comfortable design

Big buttons in a smart layout

Streamlined software with lots of options

Ultrafine weight adjustment

Improved scroll wheel

May not suit palm-grip players with big hands

Design

The Proteus Core makes smart design choices at every possible opportunity, offering a comfortable experience for players who use a palm grip and an exceptional one for players who use a claw grip.

The mouse itself is rather small and low in profile. Both the small thumb rest and the grip for the two outermost fingers are textured, providing both stability and a pleasant tactile sensation.

With 11 programmable buttons, the Proteus Core is neither minimalist nor excessive. The peripheral has a left mouse button, a right mouse button, a scroll wheel that clicks in three directions, two dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity buttons near the top, one button below the scroll wheel and three thumb buttons. There is also a nonprogrammable button beneath the scroll wheel that adjusts the wheel's friction.

When Tom's Guide reviewed the G500s, one of our biggest complaints was that the scroll wheel felt loose and flimsy, even when we pressed the button to give it additional resistance. Logitech has addressed this concern on the Proteus Core. The free-scrolling mode is still available, but the scroll wheel becomes rock-solid upon pressing the button, with resistance to spare. Its ridged design is both comfortable and effective.

Otherwise, Logitech arranged the buttons on the Proteus Core in a very smart layout. The thumb buttons are large and distinctive, and the lowest one is ideally situated for a "sniper" button that lowers DPI — a useful feature in first-person shooters. The DPI buttons, located next to the left mouse button, are both remote enough to stay out of the way and large enough to press easily without looking.

Palm players with large hands may find the Proteus Core a bit small for their tastes. Otherwise, it's hard to see how Logitech could have devised a better all-purpose gaming mouse design.

Features

The Proteus Core runs on the same Logitech Gaming Software as all other modern Logitech mice. While this software lagged behind the comparable Razer Synapse software a few months ago, it has really come into its own in the interim.

The Proteus Core can store three profiles internally, or a virtually unlimited number of profiles on a computer. One of the best features of the Logitech software is its ability to scan your PC, determine which games you have installed and automatically create profiles for them.

From there, customizing the profiles is simple. Simply click on a command (the profiles use game-specific commands, such as Grapnel Gun for "Batman: Arkham City" or Attack-Move for "StarCraft II") and drag it onto the desired button. The software will automatically apply the profile as soon as the game launches.

Users can also create macros, control the mouse's illumination and adjust the DPI range. The mouse ranges from 200 up to an unprecedented 12,000. Out of curiosity, we tried the 12,000 DPI, and found it far too sensitive to be of much use. Even so, the option to even go that high is something users won't find in any other gaming mouse.

The Proteus Core boasts two other innovative features: a surface-testing capability and an adjustable weight system. By testing the surface you use for the Proteus Core, users can optimize anything from a high-end mouse pad to a sheet of paper. (We tried both, as well as a standard office desk, with impressive results.)

The G500s had adjustable weights, but the Proteus Core refines this feature. Rather than an ejectable canister as on the G500s, the Proteus Core has a magnetic door on its underside, hiding spots for five 3.6-gram weights. Gamers select not only how much weight to add, but where to add it. This provides very granular control over the feel of the mouse, as adding weight to the center of the mouse can feel very different from adding it to the back.

Performance

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Thanks to the Proteus Core's large, sensibly spaced buttons, the mouse does a good job of controlling games from just about any genre. We tried it with "BioShock Infinite," "StarCraft II," "Batman: Arkham City" and "World of Warcraft," and found it equally suited to first-person shooter (FPS), real-time strategy, action/adventure and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.

In each game, we found the Proteus Core to be responsive, accurate and precise. The extra buttons were helpful, but never overbearing. Assigning skills to the thumb buttons, such as crouching in "BioShock Infinite," selecting whole groups of soldiers in "StarCraft II" or grappling from point to point in "Batman: Arkham City" left our left hand free to focus almost entirely on movement.

The one genre to which the Proteus Core may not be suited at high levels of play is MMO. We found that the Proteus Core worked extremely well with "World of Warcraft," and assigning our most frequent skills to the thumb button was extremely convenient. That said, hardcore endgame players may find a dedicated MMO mouse with rows upon rows of buttons, such as the Logitech G600, suits their needs better.

The Proteus Core has no appreciable liftoff range and moderately good Z-axis tracking. Picking up the mouse and replacing it causes the cursor to move somewhat, but not enough to interrupt anything but the most demanding tournament-level play.

Verdict

Logitech took the already-excellent G500s and remedied its few flaws, leaving a product that's both more streamlined and more robust. If you have very specific needs — such as tournament-level FPS play or endgame MMO content — the Proteus Core may prove passable. For anyone else, it's hard to imagine a better generalist gaming mouse. Mouse manufacturers, take note: The Proteus Core is the standard to beat.

Specs
Laser Depth: 1.5 mm
DPI: 200 – 12,000
Size: 130 x 76 x 38 mm
Weight: 164 g (Adjustable)
Connection: Wired
Grip Type: Palm/Claw

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HP Omen Photon Review: HP's First Good Gaming Mouse

The HP Omen Photon is a solid choice for gamers who are investing in a new HP rig, and it may even be worth a look from those who aren't.

Our Verdict

Pick up the HP Omen Photon if you have an affinity for the Omen line of gadgets and want a decent wireless mouse. But if you can spare an extra $20, go for a Logitech model instead.

For

• Customizable design
• Wireless connectivity and charging
• Good performance

Against

• Narrow body and thumb rests
• Tedious software
• Better mice available in same price range

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Up until now, HP's gaming mice have either been disappointingly bland or too inventive for their own good. The HP Omen Photon ($130), however, seems to have finally struck a happy medium between innovation and comfort.
This wireless mouse features a customizable design and good in-game performance, while incorporating wireless charging and charging less money than some of its competitors. The software is a little flimsy, and the grip could use some work, but I can't find any major faults with the Omen Photon — a first for an HP gaming mouse.

• HP Omen (Refurbished 256GB) at Amazon for US$1,200

To be fair, $130 is a lot of money for a mouse, even one with wireless connectivity and Qi charging capabilities. And for that price, I think there are better-designed, more-comfortable options. However, the Omen Photon is a solid choice for gamers who are investing in a new HP rig, and it may even be worth a look from those who aren't.

Design

Like with the Logitech G903 or the Razer Basilisk, you can adjust the Omen Photon's physical layout. In its default configuration, the Omen Photon has a narrow body, four thumb buttons and two "wings" on either side where you can rest your thumb and outer fingers.

However, if you find this design too cumbersome (as I did), all you have to do is swap out a few magnetic pieces. Both thumb rests are removable, and you can replace one set of thumb buttons with a plain plastic panel. (You can't do this for both sets of thumb buttons, unfortunately, as the mouse comes with only one panel.)

I commend the Omen Photon for its customization options, but they don't fully cover up for an uncomfortable core design. The mouse's body is extremely narrow, so it's hard to find a comfortable grip, even if you attach both wings. 
 
Additionally, the wings are curved in an odd way, meaning that neither my thumb nor my pinkie ever rested on the wings comfortably. I didn't have any trouble using the mouse for a few hours at a time, but it always felt like it was at odds with my anatomy.

In any case, the button layout is fairly sensible, regardless of what you do with the two to four thumb buttons. You'll find a right button, a left button, a three-way clickable scroll wheel and two DPI buttons, which are just beneath the wheel. It's worth pointing out that the mouse is fully ambidextrous, depending on your configuration, and you can even specify whether you're using a right- or left-handed grip in the Omen Command Center software.

I commend the Omen Photon for its customization options, but they don't fully cover up for an uncomfortable core design.

Beyond that, the Omen Photon comes with one USB cable to extend the dongle's reach and another one to charge the mouse, although you may not need it. The Omen Photon is the first HP gaming mouse to support the Qi wireless charging protocol. This means you can charge the mouse on any Qi-enabled surface, such as the HP Omen mouse pad, which costs a whopping $100.


If you shell out for the mouse pad, the wireless charging feature is useful, since you can charge while you play. Otherwise, it's actually less convenient to charge the mouse with Qi than to simply connect a USB cord and continue playing while you charge.

Features

The physical customization and Qi wireless charging are the defining features of the Omen Photon, but it also has some software backing it up. The Omen Command Center (which you can acquire only through the justly derided Microsoft Store app) serves as a game-launcher, a streaming platform (from one PC to another) and a control center for HP Omen peripherals. The game-launching and streaming capabilities are largely needless, since existing programs already handle these functions much better.

Controlling the mouse works pretty well, though. You can customize a few lighting options, program buttons, create macros, adjust how frequently the mouse communicates with your PC and so forth. However, the Omen Command Center makes you jump through an obnoxious hoop. Rather than simply assigning a keystroke to a button, you have to create a custom macro first, then assign the macro. This is a tedious way of doing things, and it all but ensures that your macro menu will get cluttered and inefficient over time.

Performance

Provided that you can find a comfortable grip, the Omen Photon performs admirably in game. I ran the mouse through Overwatch, StarCraft: Remastered, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and Final Fantasy XIV to see how the peripheral handled different genres, and I found no weak points. Moving and shooting in Overwatch were effortless; selecting the perfect cards to defeat my opponents in Thronebreaker was just as simple.

It may be worth pointing out that the Omen Photon doesn't favor any one specific genre. It's very much an all-purpose mouse, so gamers looking to go deep into MMOs or esports will probably want to hunt down a more specialized device.

Moving and shooting in Overwatch were effortless; selecting the perfect cards to defeat my opponents in Thronebreaker was just as simple.

Bottom line

I approached the Omen Photon with a fair amount of skepticism. After all, HP mice in the past seemed to cap out around "mediocre," with very few clever ideas to distinguish them from the rest of the pack. However, I came away from the Omen Photon feeling pretty pleased. It's not a great mouse, but it's a pretty good one. And considering that premium wireless mice like the Logitech G502 Lightspeed can run up to $150, asking $130 for the Omen Photon hardly seems unfair.
I still think that with its superior software and better button placement, the G502 is well worth the extra $20. Or you could go the other route and snag the Corsair Harpoon RGB Wireless for only $50. But if you dig what HP is doing lately with its comprehensive Omen line of PCs and accessories, you should like this pretty good addition to the lineup.

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Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019) Review

Yes, they make $250 e-readers

Our Verdict

The Kindle Oasis is still for only the wealthier bibliophiles among us.

For                             Against

• Sleek metallic design        . Expensive
• Water resistant              . Still displays lock-screen ads
• Sharp, well-lit display      . No charger included
• Physical navigation buttons  . Bloated interface

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The 10th-generation Kindle Oasis ($249) faces stronger headwinds than ever before, and now they're coming from within Amazon. This luxury e-reader's waterproof durability is no longer an exclusive, as the Kindle Paperwhite ($129) now offers the exact same IPX8-level protection against liquid ingress. 

To keep the Oasis afloat, Amazon gave the metallic e-reader a new feature: display warmth, for changing the hue of your page. But should you spend almost twice as much as a Paperwhite costs when you could just as easily spend that money on more books? It all depends on how much you value the little things, like buttons and an extra inch of screen. Most readers, though, will see the Oasis as a hard sell, even though it's a fantastic piece of hardware.

• Amazon Kindle Oasis (6-inch) at Amazon for US$309.99

Design

The Kindle Oasis' aluminum back is the device's most elegant aspect. I tested a graphite-silver model, though I'm more intrigued by the champagne gold edition, which looks even more luxurious.

Unlike the Paperwhite, the Oasis has physical buttons for navigation and page-turning, as well as a tapered back. The buttons are a big plus for folks like myself. I've have never really loved interacting with e-reader touch screens, where there always seems to be a slight lag between tap and action.

At 6.6 ounces, the Oasis is a hair heavier than the 6.4-ounce Paperwhite, but you won't notice this 3% difference. The Oasis' tapered back is on the same side as the device's physical buttons and indicates which side of the slate you're supposed to hold.

I like the Oasis' design, but after asking around, I found that it's a bit divisive. Tom's Guide Editor Marshall Honorof disapproves of this slate's asymmetrical design, which is admittedly un-book-like. My mom also prefers the Paperwhite, as she doesn't see the need for physical buttons. In the end, though, I appreciate that Amazon uses its higher-end price point to test a unique design, while keeping its more-affordable options simple.

Durability

The Kindle Oasis' water resistance is no longer a unique feature; the Paperwhite matched the Oasis' IPX8 waterproof rating in 2018. Nevertheless, we dunked the Oasis in a bath of tap water for 60 minutes and watched it survive (and thrive), just as the 2017 Kindle Oasis, and the Paperwhite, did before. The new Oasis' buttons (but not its screen) even stayed responsive while the e-reader was submerged.

Display

Amazon's best Kindle screen learned a new trick: warmth. Yes, the Oasis' 7-inch screen isn't just bigger than the Paperwhite's 6-inch panel; it also changes color.

A warmer display option made me think that Amazon's pushing a blue-light filter, a feature that's are often meant to help you fall asleep easier (there's some science behind that idea). As I tucked into Jenny Odell's anti-productivity book "How to Do Nothing" (Melville House, 2019) at bedtime, I upped the warmth to see if the change would affect how fast I fell asleep. 

The amber hue reminded me of the Night Shift mode from my iPhone, which is designed to reduce blue light, but I didn't find the Oasis' functionality as sleep-inducing as the iPhone's. Just like with Night Shift, you can schedule the display warmth to "gradually change with sunset and sunrise," as Amazon notes, or to match your own schedule.

Amazon is positioning screen warmth as a customization option, so you can adjust the color of your virtual page. This way, the Oasis' screen can look more like an aging, yellowed page, if that's your preference.

The Oasis' 300-points-per-inch, 7-inch screen is still my favorite of the e-reader pack. This display's supercrisp resolution is just as sharp as the Paperwhite's; text looks like it's physically printed on the E Ink screen. But that extra inch of screen real estate is welcome for those who are reading anything other than a traditional book. 

For example, if you read PDFs on your Kindle — which I'm doing with the script for the horror film Hereditary — those documents cannot be resized or formatted, which means you'll want to view them on as large a screen as possible. The panel-by-panel view mode for graphic novels made it easier for me to read dialogue and see details from "Saga" on the Oasis, but full-page viewing is still better on this slightly larger screen.

Reading Experience

No matter where I brought the Kindle Oasis, I always got a great reading experience. And that's how it should be. After all,you're using an E Ink tablet, as opposed to your phone, for reading because its screen is easier on your eyes.

This past weekend, I brought the Oasis with me to the park, where I continued to page through the Hereditary script. I could still read the hyper-creepy text, even with the superbright daylight (and an intense heat wave) hitting the screen. The Oasis' display can catch a glimmer of glare, but I saw that only when I was actively adjusting the device's angle.

The Oasis' automatically adjusting backlight is another standout feature, as it saved me time when I opened the e-reader in my bedroom for some pre-sleep reading. While adjusting backlighting takes only about four taps total, this way I jumped straight into Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation" (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014), rather than futzing with the brightness meter.

That automatic brightness, though, tends to err on the side of over-illumination. As I read Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" (Basic Books, 2013) at a subway station, where I had plenty of light, I could tell that the device's automatic setting was brighter than it needed to be. This isn't a problem, per se, but I definitely think it led to the battery draining a little faster than it needed to. 

The Oasis features a whopping 25 LED lights, more than twice what Amazon put on the 2017 Oasis (12 LEDs) and five times as many as you get in the latest Paperwhite (5 LEDs). The new Oasis maxes out at 167 nits of brightness, which handily outshines the 78-nit Paperwhite and narrowly edges out the 155-nit 2017 Oasis.

Interface

The Kindle appeals to those looking to declutter stacks of books, but its interface is in dire need of some spring cleaning. I get why each of its special features exists (and that they can be disabled), but they're all turned on by default, and most readers won't spend the time to disable these settings.

Just look at what happens when you open a new book. Instead of jumping straight into the actual text, you get an About This Book pop-over, which gives you metadata about the book and cloyingly prods you to use Goodreads by noting (incorrectly) that "Reading is more fun with friends." Detritus also clouds the home screen, where the bottom third of the screen throws curated recommendations at you.

As I read Lux Alptraum's "Faking It" (Seal Press, 2018), and most other books, I saw underlined passages with notes about how many people highlighted that section. I don't mean to sound antisocial, but I don't care which sections of a novel other people found interesting. I just want to read a book, not participate in some grand social experiment that feels like a teacher is managing my assignments.

Since I might be an outlier in all of these complaints, I think Amazon should offer an option for a minimalist interface. Call it Kindle Lite. Just let us read books, and don't get in our way. These "features" all add up to create a burden in the Kindle experience. The whole reason I use the device is for its focused, distraction-free experience, which I can't find on my notification-filled phone.

But speaking of obstructions, let's talk about Amazon's Special Offers, the ads for other books that take over your Kindle's screen. You can pay $20 to get rid of them, but since the Oasis already costs $250, which is $100 more than the ad-free Kindle Paperwhite, I had hoped Amazon would just take away ads as a favor.

Battery Life and Storage

The Kindle Oasis' battery life is good; you won't be charging it every day, maybe once a week — but that can vary. Amazon rates the Kindle Oasis for up to six weeks of battery life, but that's based on half an hour of reading per day, with wireless and Bluetooth off and lighting set to 13 out of 24.

Over the course of four days — when I read for about an hour per day and downloaded novels, graphic novels and audiobooks — I managed to drain its charge down to 66%, from 100%. That means I'm probably going to empty its charge in about 11 to 12 days.

The new Oasis frustrates me, just as the old one did, because it does not include a power adapter. Yes, most of us have a spare power brick or USB-A port to use with the included charging cable. But Amazon's asking $250 for this e-reader, and at that price, the company should throw everything in, even if it costs an executive somewhere an ivory back scratcher.
 
Most of the novels I've downloaded onto the Oasis take up 1MB of space, which means you can store thousands of books on the entry-level, 8GB version of the e-reader. And don't worry — that includes larger, graphic-intensive titles, such as "Saga Book Three" (Image Comics, 2019), a collection of 18 comic books, which takes up 64 MB. Consider the 32GB model (which costs $30 more) only if you love audiobooks, as the Audible version of "How to Do Nothing," for example, is a hefty 114MB. Of course, you can archive any and all content to the cloud and redownload it later.

Content and Audiobooks

Much like Amazon's Fire tablets and Echo speakers, the Kindle Oasis is a fantastic device for consuming content in Amazon's ecosystem. The Kindle store is filled with bestseller novels from top authors, as well as magazines, short-form fiction, comics from Comixology (an Amazon subsidiary) and Kindle-optimized versions of major newspapers (The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' own Washington Post).

The Oasis also includes the ability to listen to audiobooks from Audible (another Amazon-owned outlet). This device's lack of an internal speaker or headphone jack, however, means you can listen only over Bluetooth speakers or headphones. If you're asking, "Why wouldn't I just do that on my phone?" the answer is simple: The Oasis makes switching from text to audio simple. If you own both the Kindle and Audible versions of a book, you can easily switch between them by tapping the headphone or book icon in the lower right corner of the Kindle screen.

As I mentioned earlier, the Kindle isn't as great for dealing with PDFs. You can go forward and backward in a file, and that's it. No zooming, no tweaking, just reading — just page turning. (Ironically, the overall interface could learn a lesson from this minimalist situation.)
 
You can also check out library books with a few simple taps, though we've observed that our local library system offers thousands more Barnes & Noble Nook-compatible epubs than it does Kindle-compatible mobis.

Bottom Line

With its sleek metallic design, clicky buttons and new customizable page hues, the Amazon Kindle Oasis offers more than your average e-reader. If only its price weren't nearly twice as much as the Paperwhite's.

While the Oasis is my personal favorite Kindle, it's not the king of the e-book castle. The Kindle Paperwhite, with its midrange price and waterproof design, is still the model most readers should get.

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Amazon Kindle (2019) Review: A Good Budget E-Reader with One Big Problem

The Kindle can be a good product, if you're willing to tweak it, but reading under default conditions can be very distracting.

Our Verdict

The Kindle can be a good product, if you're willing to tweak it, but reading under default conditions can be very distracting.

For                           Against

• Solid lighting options     . Distracting interface
• Attractive screen          . Tedious menus
• Comfortable design         . Comfortable design

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June 19 Update: Amazon's announced the 2019 Kindle Oasis, its high-end e-reader, which now offers screen warmth settings.
Reading a book is arguably the last refuge in our hyperconnected society. We can't eat meals without having to dress up the food for Instagram; we can't watch movies without signing up for a convoluted streaming service; we can't even play video games without downloading enormous patches first. But a book would never hurt you like that. You just open it up, and for the next 10 hours or so, you can escape to a world of imagination that's more vivid and lifelike than anything you can see on a screen.

• Amazon Kindle (2019) at Amazon for US$89.99

In theory, e-readers like the Amazon Kindle re-create this experience as faithfully as possible, just replacing bulky physical books with more space-efficient digital alternatives. In practice, though, e-readers have become just as unfocused and distracting as smartphones, and the Amazon Kindle (2019) ($90) is a perfect example of this design trend.

 From a hardware perspective, Amazon's new budget-model Kindle is fine. It combines a clear screen, a robust front light and a long-lasting battery in a compact and comfortable package. The selection is also admirable, whether you want to buy books individually, leverage your Amazon Prime subscription or see what your local library has on offer. But everything else about the experience — the constant ads, the tedious Goodreads integration, the laborious menus — makes it feel like Amazon wants to sell you more stuff rather than just let you sit back and enjoy a book.

The Kindle can be a good product, if you're willing to tweak it. And it's affordable — at least on the surface. But you'll be amazed how much quieter and more serene the experience becomes once you turn the Wi-Fi off.

Design

The Kindle should look and feel familiar if you've used any of Amazon's flagship e-reading devices in the past five years or so (excepting, of course, the excellent Kindle Oasis, which sports a huge side bezel). The 6.3 x 4.5-inch, 6.1-ounce slate is comfortable to hold and easy to stash in anything from a backpack to a large pocket. Furthermore, the device measures an enviable 0.3 inches thick and comes in both black and white variations.

The Kindle is also pretty sparse in terms of physical inputs and ports. There's a power button and a charging port on the bottom, and that's about it. There are no physical buttons, which is a shame, particularly as the middle-of-the-road Kindle Paperwhite doesn't offer them, either. If you want to turn pages physically, you'll need to invest in the $250 Kindle Oasis, which seems like a lot of money for a feature that used to come standard with almost every e-reader.
Display

Night owls, rejoice! Amazon has finally added a front light to its cheapest e-reader. This means the device now costs $90 rather than $80 up front, but considering how useful a front light is, that's a fair trade-off.

In case you're coming from an older e-reader (or are simply moving on from your phone because don't want to read that 1,000-page epic on an LCD screen), know that a front light illuminates the Kindle's screen to suit all kinds of reading conditions. Unlike backlights, which can look harsh and drain a lot of power, front lights are gentle and go pretty easy on the battery. It's not an exaggeration to say that front lights were a game-changing innovation for e-readers, because they allow reading under any sort of lighting condition, from pitch blackness to direct sunlight. And it's high time that the budget Kindle got one of these lights.
The front light is also easy to use, although it requires a few more taps than I'd like. When you're reading a book, you have to tap the top of the screen. This will bring up an options menu, from which you tap a settings button. Then, finally, you can select one of 24 lighting levels, from a plain, unlit screen to something you could use as an impromptu flashlight. It's also easy to either max out or turn off the lighting by simply holding down a symbol on either side of the menu.

Most of me is glad that the front light is present, but a small part of me wishes this light were a little bit easier to manipulate. With 24 different options, it's very conceivable that you could adjust the lighting multiple times within the same reading session, and having that setting at the press of a button — or at least the tap of a finger — would be nice. Even the otherwise-underwhelming Nook GlowLight 3 offered this feature.

Beyond that, the Kindle's screen is much as it's been for the past few years. The device uses an elegant gray-scale display with a resolution of 167 ppi. I'm of two minds about the resolution. On the one hand, while 167 ppi is no worse than what you found on the Kindle's predecessor, it also falls far short of the 300 ppi in more-expensive Kindle devices. On the other hand, it's not really an issue unless you like holding the device very close to your face — which, admittedly, you might do with larger fonts for nighttime reading.

Reading Experience

Let's talk about the very best part of the Kindle first: its reading experience. When you've got a book you want to read and a quiet spot to do so, reading on the Kindle is just as good as reading a physical book. In fact, it's even better, since you can keep a hand free, just in case you need to grasp a subway pole or dig into a stash of emergency M&M's.

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As discussed above, it's easy to customize the lighting to suit your needs. But it's also worth discussing the font and formatting options, of which there are a great deal. You can choose from among 10 different built-in fonts or side-load your own. There are 14 different text sizes, ranging from the unreadably tiny to the almost comically large. You can set margins, spacing and page orientation and even save your favorite combinations as Themes.
I didn't get much use out of the Themes feature, but maybe you want bigger, more-spread-out content with sans-serif fonts for nonfiction and smaller, tighter layouts with artsier fonts for horror. It's up to you. You can also determine whether you'd like the Kindle to track a nebulous Location, give you a regular page number or even tell you how much time you have left in any given chapter. (It will learn your reading speed over time, which is great, if that kind of thing doesn't fill you with anxiety.)

Provided all you want to do is sit back and read, the Kindle will serve your purposes very well. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what the Kindle itself wants.

Interface

My biggest problem with the Kindle is that it tries to undercut its own purpose at every turn. The whole point of owning an e-reader is to distance yourself from the constant distractions of a smartphone or a tablet, especially since reading requires a lot more investment and focus than, say, watching a TV show. However, the Kindle is a noisy, busy device that seems to want to keep you from reading.

Every time you start reading a book, the Kindle will display a pop-up screen asking if you want to track your progress on Goodreads and compare your reading habits with those of your friends. As soon as you finish, it will suggest that you buy the next book in a series. Half of your home screen is dedicated to other books you might like — generated algorithmically, based on your preferences, and linked directly to the Kindle Store, naturally.

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From the home screen to the very last page of a book, every part of the Kindle experience is chockablock with metrics, social media and, above all else, opportunities to buy more stuff from Amazon.

Not only does the Kindle recognize and link to other book titles in the volume that you're currently reading, but it even shows you passages that other readers are highlighting, like an overshared article on Medium. From the home screen to the very last page of a book, every part of the Kindle experience is chockablock with metrics, social media and, above all else, opportunities to buy more stuff from Amazon.
And, naturally, the standard $90 Kindle model comes with display advertisements rather than traditional screen savers. Getting rid of these nuisances costs an extra $20, and I can't help but feel that Amazon is holding a feature hostage rather than trying to make a reader's experience better.

It's worth noting that every feature listed above is optional, but every one is also enabled by default and requires a somewhat deep dive into the menus to deactivate. This says something about how Amazon envisions its readers using the Kindle: less as an electronic book and more as a hyperfocused way to be plugged in to Amazon's services all the time.

Battery Life and Storage
 One area where the Kindle really delivers is in its battery life. Amazon claims that the device can last up to a month on a single charge, even with the front light turned on. Naturally, battery life will depend on how fast you read, whether you keep the Wi-Fi on, how you use the front light and a thousand other small factors. And a full month is probably not reasonable for everyone. But while reading "Soon I Will Be Invincible" by Austin Grossman (Pantheon Books, 2007) with the front light at half-strength and the Wi-Fi on, I drained the battery by about 5 percent per day, so maybe the estimate is not that far off.

The device also comes with 4GB of internal storage. While you can't expand this with a microSD card, it should also store thousands of books, considering that most titles (even ones with pictures) don't exceed 5MB. Whatever can't fit on the Kindle can reside comfortably in the nearly limitless Amazon Cloud.

It's also worth noting that, unlike with some of the Kindle's more powerful cousins, you can't get LTE connections on this device. When you don't have access to Wi-Fi, you won't be able to download any books. This shouldn't pose a problem under most circumstances, but my recommendation would be to always have another downloaded book ready to read, especially on long trips.

Content

The Amazon Kindle store is one of the oldest and most comprehensive e-book providers. Whether you like reading New York Times best-sellers cult hits, magazines, graphic novels, foreign-language titles or just about anything else, you can probably get it on Kindle.

One relatively new feature for the Kindle family, however, is the integration of Audible books. As Amazon also owns audiobook giant Audible, you can download audiobooks onto your Kindle and play them through a Bluetooth device, such as headphones or a wireless speaker. I don't know how necessary this feature is — it's just as easy to use an Audible app on a smartphone — but it's nice to have the option.

The Kindle can also pick up books from libraries, although the selection is surprisingly sparse. I borrowed a few books from both the New York City and Queens library systems in order to test the Kindle, and to the device's credit, the process is so, so much easier than getting a library book onto a Nook. You just pick the book you want, check it out and send it to download to your Kindle automatically. On the other hand, both library systems had thousands more Nook-compatible EPUBs than Kindle-compatible Mobis for perusal.

Finally, the Kindle is simply not that good at handling PDF documents. Unlike on more-advanced e-readers, you can't adjust PDF font size or zoom, meaning that the Kindle is not terribly useful for RPG rulebooks, work documents, small-press publications or anything else you might pick up in an Adobe format.

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Bottom Line

Amazon calls the Kindle a "sanctuary experience," meaning that with the device, you can tune out all external distractions and focus on a book, just like the author intended. And if you're willing to get down and dirty in the Kindle's menus, you can do just that. However, by default, the Kindle's interface is noisy and busy, when reading for pleasure is supposed to be an exercise in cutting out external noise and busyness.

From a hardware and utility perspective, the Kindle is hard to fault, with a gorgeous screen and plenty of fantastic books to read. From a price perspective, it's a fair value, although the extra $20 to remove ads still stings after all these years. Once I got the device set up just the way I liked it, I fully enjoyed sitting back and reading, in any kind of lighting.

My major concern with the Kindle isn't so much what it does but what it represents. Reading is the last bastion of the Luddite, the final, defiant gasp of, "No, I will not respond to your text message right now." Are we really supposed to enjoy a book more if we have instant and constant access to what every other reader in the world thinks of it?

If we are, then the Kindle is ahead of the curve. And if we aren't, then I can't help but wonder what the next big e-reader innovation will bring.

Today's best Amazon Kindle (2019) deals

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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2018) Review: The Best Got Better

Now that it's waterproof, the Kindle Paperwhite is the only e-reader you need to know about.

Our Verdict

Now that it's waterproof, the Kindle Paperwhite is the only e-reader you need to know about.

+For                             -Against

• Waterproof                      . Power adapter sold searately
• Bluetooth for audiobooks        . $10 price bump

• Same great e-reader

• Screen is now flush to bezels

Today's best Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2018) deals

Check It Out On Amazon $129.99
Check It Out On Amazon $149.99
Check It Out On Amazon $249.99

We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices

June 19 Update: Amazon just announced its 2019 Kindle Oasis, its 7-inch e-reader, adding screen warmth settings for evening reading.
The day before Amazon announced the new Kindle Paperwhite, I asked a colleague if the e-reader was "done." Not that e-readers are inherently bad, but I wondered if Amazon had already made the best affordable midrange e-reader that it could. And then Amazon one-upped itself by giving the Paperwhite ($129/£119) some of the best features from its high-end Kindle Oasis: waterproofing, more storage and a display that's flush to its bezels. And while it may not make every Paperwhite user run out to upgrade today, Amazon's made one of the best Kindles, again.

• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2018) at Amazon for US$149.99

Design

The new Paperwhite is nearly identical to the previous model. Its soft-touch matte-black case looks and feels just like its predecessor's, though the Kindle logo is now a light gray that contrasts with the case instead of a matching black.

The new Paperwhite is 0.32 inches thick and weighs 6.4 ounces, making it a slimmer  version of the 2015 Paperwhite (0.36 inches, 7.2 ounces). Amazon's $79 Kindle is thicker and lighter, but it doesn't pack a backlight, which means it's a no-no for nighttime.

The new Paperwhite is closer in size to the graphite-aluminum Kindle Oasis (0.33 inches, 6.7 ounces), while the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight 3 (0.35 inches, 7.0 ounces) is slightly thicker and heavier. The Nook, however,also offers buttons for turning the page, which the Paperwhite could stand to add. Rakuten, a Japanese electronics company that recently partnered with Walmart, just announced the Kobo Clara HD, a similarly priced e-reader that we're looking to test soon.

Paperwhite 2015 (left), Paperwhite 2018 (center), Oasis (right)

The Oasis's larger size (a 7-inch display vs. the Paperwhite's 6-inch screen) is still a point in its favor, but the Paperwhite has caught up in one key way. The Paperwhite's screen is finally flush with the bezel around it. This looks a lot nicer than the previous Paperwhites, which framed the screen with a chunky, shadow box-like bezel that stood out.

Handing the new Paperwhite to my mom, who doesn't spend more than a couple of hours away from her own Paperwhite, I got a surprising reaction. She said she likes the chunky bezel because it's a good place to rest her fingers,  but this new model's screen puts your fingers too close to the touch screen. Accidental page turns weren't an issue during my testing, though I do understand the reaction.

Then I remembered why I prefer the Oasis' design over the Paperwhite's. Unlike the Paperwhite, the Oasis is asymmetrical, with one thin bezel on one side, and clickable buttons and a wider bezel on the other side. This makes it easier to hold. The Paperwhite's slightly curved backside is also much simpler than the Oasis', which offers a bump meant to be cradled with your gripping fingers.

One positive design change is that there's no hump on the back where the power button and microUSB port rest. They're just a part of the bottom edge.

Both Kindles charge over microUSB, don't offer headphone jacks (Bluetooth is needed for audiobooks) and feature a small power button that you'll have to squint to notice. Annoyingly, Amazon doesn't include a USB power adapter. Sure, you've probably got one lying around, but for $129, Amazon should have included one.

The biggest new feature of the 2018 Kindle Paperwhite is its waterproof design, which earned an IPX8 rating. That's up to 60 minutes of submergence in 2 meters of water. You don't need to worry about it falling into your bath, the pool or even the ocean at a beach (though that's riskier, as saltwater is more corrosive).

Not only did I splash water on the Paperwhite during a photoshoot; I dropped the Paperwhite in a foot-tall bucket of tap water, then removed it after 20 minutes. The device continued to work and offer responsive page-turning, as if it had been dry the whole time.

Technically speaking, the IPX8 classification means we could have waited another 40 minutes, and dunked it even deeper.

Display

The Paperwhite's 6-inch, 300 ppi display is just as sharp and easy to read as its predecessor's: a true example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The screen's anti-glare display is also still great for reading in a variety of lighting situations.
Our light gun rated the screen for a maximum of 78 nits, which is slightly lower than the 92-nit 2015 Paperwhite, and well below the 137-nit Oasis. This Kindle packs 5 LED backlights, one more than the 2015 Paperwhite (which packed 4), and seven fewer than the Oasis (which packed 12), as well as an adaptive sensor.

The Paperwhite 2015 (left) and Paperwhite 2018 (right) both feature the same great display.

As I devoured a particularly tense section of Stephen King's The Outsider on the Paperwhite, I noticed a small gap between the screen and the bezel. This gap is also there on the Kindle Oasis, and it's the kind of thing that many smartphones used to have. It's a small thing, and not that important, but it's an area in which E-ink displays can still advance.

Reading Andrew Sean Greer's novel Less in Bryant Park one sunny morning, I noted the Paperwhite's super-legible display. Even in direct sunlight the page was easy to read.

The Paperwhite is even suitable for reading graphic novels, I found as I paged through Kieron Gillen's The Wicked and The Divine. The e-reader’s grayscale display is a bit unfriendly to color publications, though.

Using the Paperwhite

Overall, the Paperwhite is still a joy to use. Pages refresh and searches load with a prompt speed that's limited only by the E-ink itself. Contrast that with the slow, sluggish performance of the Nook GlowLight 3, and you'll understand why the word "Nook" became an afterthought in the e-reader market.

As I turned the lights off in my bedroom, getting ready to read a chapter of Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach before I went to sleep, I noticed the Paperwhite's lack of automatically adjusting backlighting. It's not the biggest issue — it took two taps to get to the brightness menu, and some fiddling to get it right — but I missed the Oasis, which knew when I'd entered a dark room and compensated without prompting.

Per a question from Tom's Guide forum member derek87, I compared the 2018 Paperwhite's lighting in pitch-dark lighting to that of the 2015 Paperwhite. The newer model provided a more even, uniform lighting, even at the lower end of the brightness settings (set between 5 and 8). Also, the 2018 model was brighter at 1 notch of brightness than the 2015 model was at 5 notches. And don't worry, this 2015 Paperwhite wasn't burned out, it's a pretty recent purchase, acquired in July 2018.

Battery Life

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Amazon rates the new Kindle Paperwhite as lasting up to six weeks on a charge. That's based on 30 minutes "of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13." The über-retailer says your time may vary, due to use of wireless connectivity, Bluetooth and lighting.

Based on my experience, I believe that estimate. After three days of using the Paperwhite rigorously for a few hours every day, including multiple hours at full brightness, as well as using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and LTE, I knocked the on-screen battery life estimate down to 50 percent.

Book Selection

Judging by raw numbers, you'd have a hard time going wrong with Amazon's library, which the company claims has "millions" of books (Tom's Guide editor Marshall Honorof pegs it at "about 4 million"), including "over 1 million Kindle exclusive titles." Barnes and Noble on the other hand, claims its library is around 4.5 million books.

Of course, though, we're all unique individuals, and we each have tastes that can find the holes in an online library. For example, neither the Kindle store nor the Nook store sells the hardcover book currently on my bedside table, I'm Sorry, I Love You, a recently released history of pro wrestling by Briton Jim Smallman.

Amazon's also got Kindle Unlimited, a $9.99 Netflix-for-books with "over 1 million titles and thousands of audiobooks." Authors whose work appears in Kindle Unlimited  include Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman and George Orwell. Graphic novels, including Saga and Captain Marvel, also appear. For a limited time, a Paperwhite purchase includes a 6-month free trial.

In case you're not made of money, the Kindle Paperwhite still supports borrowing books from public libraries for free, using the Overdrive service.

Prime members can take advantage of First Reads (formerly Kindle First), which grants early access to editor's picks. Members can also get two Kindle books a month for $1.99 each, and get discounts on hardcover books, which knock pricing down to $9.99 or less.

Audiobooks

Amazon has also added audiobook support to the Paperwhite. This option comes via Bluetooth headphone support, and was once restricted to the other Kindles (both the cheaper $80 Kindle and the $250 Oasis), or customers willing to shell out $20 for Amazon's micro- USB-to-headphone-jack adapter.

As I listened to Emma Galvin read Edan Lepucki's post-global disaster-relationship novel California over my AirPods, I wandered around my living room with no loss in audio quality. Only when I reached the far end of my medium-size loft did the audio crackle with disruption.

How much does the new Kindle Paperwhite cost? Pricing and configurations

While I'm not happy to see that the Paperwhite costs more than it used to — see below for more — right now Amazon's got a $30 off deal, so the Kindle Paperwhite is now just $99. Take advantage of this deal now, as it might not last long.

The one downside about this year's Paperwhite is that it costs $10 more than it used to, at $129/£119, although the waterproofing is well worth it. Everything else is business as usual, or improved.

Paperwhite 2015 with special offers, Paperwhite 2018 without special offers

The default Paperwhite comes with 8GB of storage: twice as much as the previous Paperwhite packed. Want four times that much, so you never ever have to think twice about downloading all the audiobooks and graphic novels you want? A 32 GB Paperwhite costs $30/£30 extra, at $159/£149. 

LTE connectivity with free cellular connections (for when you want a book, but you're away from Wi-Fi) costs an extra $70/£70, but that option is available for only the 32GB model, which makes for a $249/£219 Paperwhite.

Of all these upgrades, the only one I'd consider is spending $20/£10 to remove the Special Offers(aka ads) from Amazon for other books. Amazon doesn't take the user's reading habits into consideration, and just spams you with popular novels.

Bottom Line

With water-resistance and a flush-to-screen display, Amazon's taken the Paperwhite and made it even more compelling. The only downside is that it costs $10 more now.

The metallic Kindle Oasis offers physical buttons and automatically adjusts to your lighting conditions, but its $250 price  is mighty high. But we're betting that at $129, the new Kindle Paperwhite is the best e-reader for most readers. And as to whether or not existing Paperwhite owners need to upgrade, that depends on how much time you spend around water.

Today's best Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2018) deals

Check It Out On Amazon $129.99
Check It Out On Amazon $149.99
Check It Out On Amazon $249.99