I didn’t think I’d ever write a full post about this, but it really irks me and I have to get this out.
I love my Kindle Paperwhite. It’s the best reading device I’ve ever held. The light is amazing, the text is nice and crisp, and now they’re coming out with a refined version that solves some of the minor problems with the current-gen version that might actually get me to upgrade.
But there’s one thing that really fucking pisses me off about the way Amazon advertises the Kindles: their portrayal of the battery life. Here’s the chart they show on the Kindle Paperwhite product page (which can be found HERE):
There are a great many things wrong with this chart. They’re comparing one unit of measurement (weeks) to a completely different unit of measurement (hours), which is a violation of Bar Graphs 101. They’re also applying a different set of criteria to the bar for the Kindle than they are applying to the other devices, which makes this bar graph so misleading as to be useless.
Their criteria for the laptop, tablet, and smart phone is straight up battery life: turn on the device and wait ‘till it dies from use. There is no “per day” qualifier applied like there is to the Kindle. If they applied the same qualifier to the other devices – 30 minutes of usage per day at mid-level settings – here’s roughly what the chart would look like:
The chart looks much the same if you take away the “30 minutes of reading per day” criteria and simply list the Kindle’s battery life by the hour:
Look at the charts above. They still look phenomenal compared to other devices. 28 hours of battery life is spectacular for a handheld device.
Avid readers – those who would be most concerned with the battery life of their e-reader – read far more than just “30 minutes per day”. Using myself as an example, I generally use my Kindle between 1-2 hours on an average day, and as much as 6 or 7 on days when I’m really in the mood to just curl up and read.
Furthermore, many Kindle Paperwhite users report much higher battery life figures than what Amazon lists at their settings, with some with some users reporting as much as 47 fucking hours at Amazon’s settings, and 13+ with every single thing turned on at full blast.
And those figures tend to jive fairly well with my experience. I rarely remember to turn wireless off, and I always have the light set to 24 (the highest setting) and I can usually go about a week or so before having to charge. And that’s with about 2 hours of reading per day.
What aggravates me the most about this whole thing is not only that it’s misleading – it’s that it’s pointlessly misleading. Isn’t twice the battery life of any other device enough? Why make us jump through hoops to figure that out? And once someone actually does the math and figures it out, we (read: I) end up almost feeling disappointed that it’s actually “only” 28 hours – even though that mentality is preposterous.
But it’s bred of the original misleading chart. I’m sure they constantly wow people with that “8-weeks” figure, but it’s fucking frustrating to a guy like me that actually pays attention. I immediately see “weeks” compared to “hours” and the qualifier at the bottom and think “Hm… I wonder how many hours that translates into.” And then I do the math. And then I get pissed off at the misleading nature of the chart. And then I write a ranty blog post about it.
For fuck’s sake, Amazon, stop using this bullshit apples-to-oranges comparison. Ugh, that’s not even the right metaphor. Stop using this crates-of-apples-to-individual-apples comparison… oh, for fuck’s sake just stop being needlessly sleazy about it, okay?
