Originally Posted by albertd:
“Not sure I follow that, as the Paperwhite is backlit as well, isn't it?”
No the paperwhite is front lit. Rather than having lights behind the screen which illuminate the the screen the paperwhite has lights in the case that shine the light on the screen as that way cuts out the eye strain issue (and the issue of it suppressing melatonin that you need to induce sleep).
Athough the reason is less the light than the screen type. A LCD screens pixels can produce any colour and can switch colours in a fraction of a second.
Eink can't do this and actually even after a page refresh you can still see a slight imprint of the previous page if you look really hard. It would have to produce a page of almost solid black apart from the text and when it then changes page it could cause issues with it not being clear to read