There’s only one good reason to upgrade an old Kindle and its not screen size

If you’re anything like me, you hang onto your old devices far longer than you ever thought you would. I recently made the leap from a OnePlus 8 Pro to a Google Pixel 9a, and I can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier. I grabbed a Kindle several years ago as part of a Prime Day deal, and while there’s nothing wrong with how it works, there’s a big upgrade looming for me. I have a base model Kindle, so moving to a Paperwhite makes a lot of sense. However, I’m perfectly fine with the current lighting on the base models, and the upgrade I’m looking for has nothing to do with the screen. I want USB-C.

My Kindle still uses micro-USB, a format I’m dying to finally leave behind. This Kindle is the only thing I use the cable for these days, and it’s annoying every time I have to put my Kindle on the charger. I don’t have a long cable, and I’m not particularly interested in buying one since it’s a practically dead format for me, so I can’t read my Kindle at all when I want to read. Newer models have since adopted USB-C, and I have plenty of those cables lying around. When the time comes for me to upgrade my Kindle, that’s the change I’m most excited about.

Convenience is a big upgrade

Normalize using the same cables

There was a time when micro-USB was a popular format, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time now. To be fair, I wouldn’t have this problem if I upgraded my Kindle this decade, but for something like a Kindle, there’s not much a reason to upgrade every generation. Your Kindle isn’t like an iPhone where there are noticeable jumps made each year — all I need my Kindle to do is display words on a screen. It’s for this reason that I, and I’m sure many others, have stuck with their Kindle for a long time. My battery life is still weeks long, so it’s not like I’m dying for an upgrade because performance is lacking or the screen is bad.

As it turns out, the main reason I want to upgrade is that I’m sick of the cable that charges my Kindle. USB ports at my bedside are a commodity, and I can’t leave my Kindle one plugged in all the time since I have a USB fan and my phone charger there most of the time. This has led to me losing my Kindle charger numerous times, and it’s not as simple as using another cable because I only have the one. It’s very annoying, and the only fix I have is upgrading the Kindle or buying an old cable. I’m going to wait it out for now, but I can tell you the Kindle is being upgraded first.

So many Kindles to choose from

Maybe too many

If you’re in the market for a new Kindle, you’re in luck, because there are a lot of them. In fact, there might be too many to choose from. Although Kindle has retired some older models like the Oasis, it still feels like there are too many to pick from.

Now that the base model Kindle comes with a light, that’s perfectly fine for me since I don’t do any of my reading outside of the house. A Paperwhite has a more brightly-lit screen, but I’m not particularly interested in that. The good thing is that no matter what Kindle I ultimately choose, whether it’s today or a year from now, it will come with a USB-C port for charging. When that happens, I can finally let my micro-USB cable rest.