Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

What's the deal with ereaders and their seeming disdain for sane battery life measurements?

Amazon boasts "up to 8 weeks on a single charge" in all their selling points, then, in the fine print states "A single charge lasts up to eight (8) weeks, based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13".

So, it has 28 hours of actual use time, got it. Why not just say that?

Because people are dumb and don’t want a book that you have to recharge every day.

But also because it is not really 28 hours of battery life. If you just let it sit without touching it, the battery lasts for several weeks, if not longer.

It's a hard class of devices to give any sort of reasonable battery life length.

Regardless, the battery on these devices even back in 2012 was already good enough.

With light at 13 it won't last weeks. Not even 3 days.

Why would you leave a Kindle untouched with the light on for 3 days?

TBF phones and computers also take "evocative" numbers on their marketing material.

The "Up to 33 hours of video playback" for the iPhone Pro Max[0] for instance is an absolutely insane use case (nobody's letting their phone passively play local videos for a day and a half), and gives little insight into how long it can stay in sheer standby, do video meetings or handle slack.

[0] https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/

Having a few eink readers/tablets, I can say that I almost never care about battery life. You end up charging them once a week or two anyway. I never look at battery stats for them because it almost never ends up important in practice. I don't even look at the battery stat when deciding which to buy or when I recommend one to a friend.

> "A single charge lasts up to eight (8) weeks, based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13".

> So, it has 28 hours of actual use time, got it.

Reminds me of when Quorn sold 3 sausage rolls but labelled them as 12, arguing that if you cut each one in 4 you get 12. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42251481

The problem is defining "use time". With eInk readers, the only time it needs to be actually awake is when refreshing the screen, and then it goes back to sleep immediately after. So depending on your reading speed, one hour of active reading time - which is what the users themselves would normally think as "use time" - can vary a lot in how much power actually gets used.

That said, I do think they should just give the number in terms of page refreshes and let the users figure it out from there.

> don't even look at the battery stat when deciding which to buy or when I recommend one to a friend.

I used to not care but beware if you get yourself a Note Air 3C the BSR can drain your battery at an alarming rate.

Because we're discussing battery life with the light at level 13.