Introducing Kindle Oasis

I think the Oasis is for a different market than most people here. It started making sense to me once I looked at the math:<p>* The Oasis weighs less than my current Kindle Keyboard 3G, even with the Oasis case. The 3G device weighs 247 grams - the Oasis is 133g, plus 107g for the battery cover (240g total). Never mind that my Keyboard 3G case itself weighs another 225g!<p>* The Oasis is not the &quot;thickest Kindle ever&quot;. At the thickest point of 0.33&quot;, it&#x27;s still the same thickness a Kindle Keyboard 3G (0.335&quot;). With a case, the Keyboard 3G was 0.75&quot; thick!<p>* The Oasis and the Voyage are roughly the same price. The Voyage doesn&#x27;t include a cover, and it costs $85 to add an Amazon premium leather cover. That makes it just $5 less than an Oasis.<p>Weight, size &amp; battery life are important criteria for digital nomads or perpetual travellers. If you&#x27;re trying to keep under a baggage weight limit, saving 225g can make a big difference. So if you&#x27;re upgrading from a 5 year old device (that still works!), this is potentially a huge upgrade.<p>This isn&#x27;t a device for everyone, in fact I&#x27;m still unsure I&#x27;ll upgrade my 3G yet (I don&#x27;t travel as often nowadays). But I can at least see how it could improve my life.

Still 6 inches. I&#x27;m not sure why ebook readers standardized on that size, it feels too small at least to me.<p>Finally bought one last year and ended up choosing the Kobo H20 partly because of that - it&#x27;s 6.8&quot; which is not bad, but I suspect the sweet spot would probably be somewhere between 7 and 7.5.<p>Edit: for people looking for big readers (for technical books and such, where 6&quot; is quite useless), the ones I&#x27;m aware of are the 8&quot; Bookeen Cybook Ocean and the inkBOOK 8 (the later was still vaporware when I looked into it, not sure if it&#x27;s available now).

I was really looking forward to upgrade my paperwhite, but this is total disappointment. Almost 3x more $$ than paperwhite, but the very similar specs; LED lights are just fine on paperwhite, same DPI, same size, same touchscreen, absolutely nothing worth upgrading IMHO! Buttons are ok but never missed them, definitely not worth money. And I still can&#x27;t read IT books on that 6&quot; screen. What a shame. Amazon is without ideas, and money. Or paperwhite is simply good enough?

I&#x27;ll echo everything else: far too much money.<p>I felt like a chump for buying the Voyage weeks before the new Paperwhite came out with the same screen. The voyage is nice, but I would have gladly saved money with the PW3.<p>And that&#x27;s at $200! The Oasis is definitely a tool for the really hardcore reader, or otherwise for the wealthy.<p>And frankly, I really like the Voyage case for setting it on tables or laying in bed.

My first thought when I say the buttons only on the right side were &#x27;what if you&#x27;re left handed!&#x27;, but it seems they&#x27;ve thought of that:<p><i>&quot;Comfortably turn the page with either the touch display or dedicated page turn buttons located on the front of the handgrip. Whether you choose to read with your left or right hand, Kindle Oasis automatically rotates the page orientation to match.&quot;</i><p>Having said that, when using my Kindle I often switch from one hand to the other to accommodate things like picking up a cup, or one arm getting tired.<p>This is also a <i>lot</i> more expensive that the Paperwhite, or even the Voyage. While the dual battery concept seems nice, I can&#x27;t say battery life with my existing Kindle has ever been an issue... don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll be upgrading.

The design and added features look nice, but it&#x27;s hard to believe they&#x27;re charging $289 -- well over twice the price of the Paperwhite, which is a great e-reader itself. Makes me wonder if this is an artificially high price point meant to drive sales of the Voyage, which now looks comparatively cheap at $199.

From what I can tell this is still micro-usb. What happened to the everything is type-c dream? Honestly that&#x27;s probably the only thing that&#x27;ll get me to upgrade from my current one as I just want the same damn connector for everything. (which I did for a while with micro-usb, but damnit, we are moving on in theory!)

This solves the problem I am having with my kindle paperwhite -- difficult to read with one hand, often I hold it at the bottom with my thumb awkwardly sideways across the front to not invade the reading area, with my hand spread out across the back so it doesn&#x27;t fall out of my hand. It gets tired after a while, so I end up switching hands, until eventually I have to put it down on a table, and then I am reading with my head down, which is also inefficient.<p>I hope this creates demand for a paperwhite attachment &#x2F; cover that will achieve this same ergonomic design for those of us that don&#x27;t feel like forking over that much money after only just buying their paperwhites.

I really wish they&#x27;d bring back the Kindle Developer Program in a better form than what it was. My Kindle is jailbroken, and software like KOReader [1] and KindleExplorer [2] have become must-haves. In the case of KOReader, the flexibility offered is just miles ahead of Amazon&#x27;s stock reader app—even though reading is the central purpose of the device.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;koreader&#x2F;koreader" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;koreader&#x2F;koreader</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mobileread.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;showthread.php?t=206296" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mobileread.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;showthread.php?t=206296</a>

This is a huge disappointment. I&#x27;m kicking myself for not buying a Paperwhite when they were on sale last week. This was absolutely not worth waiting for. I wouldn&#x27;t find this compelling if it were $20 more than the Voyage, much less $90 more.

I still use some old Kindle from 2012, which was 80$ or so and had the best design.<p>I&#x27;d love to have the illuminated screen, but the 2012 one was the lightest, had physical page turning buttons on both sides and could be used by me as a left-handed person easily.<p>I will stick with my old Kindle until Amazon will make a remake of it.

&gt;Our thinnest Kindle ever<p>*except for the half of the device that makes it the thickest Kindle ever<p>Almost as bad as HP advertising their new laptop as being as thin as a AAA battery: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blogcdn.com&#x2F;slideshows&#x2F;images&#x2F;slides&#x2F;384&#x2F;908&#x2F;4&#x2F;S3849084&#x2F;slug&#x2F;l&#x2F;p1010313-1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blogcdn.com&#x2F;slideshows&#x2F;images&#x2F;slides&#x2F;384&#x2F;908&#x2F;4&#x2F;S3...</a>

I don&#x27;t really see the point of the charging cover. I have a 2 year old paperwhite and I charge it about once every two months.<p>That being said, I really like the new design. Glad they&#x27;re embracing physical buttons.

I love my Kindle Voyage, but I after the new Paperwhite came out with the same resolution as the Voyage, I thought the Voyage was overpriced. At $90 more than the Voyage and 2.4x the price of the Paperwhite, I don&#x27;t know who the target market for this Oasis is.

I have the Voyage but wish I would have gotten the Paperwhite instead as it is not worth the extra cost. The Voyage is also very buggy when trying to turn pages. There is no way I am paying even more for this new Kindle that looks to correct all the problems that the Voyage has with page turning.

£269 in the UK for the Wifi model which also has &quot;special offers&quot; (which is just advertising). Umm no thanks Amazon.

While this is a bespoke reader, I like the price point of the $120 (often cheaper with frequent sales) Paperwhite. It&#x27;s always with me, and relatively inexpensive and durable enough where I don&#x27;t bulk it up with a case or sleeve.<p>Either $289 seems overkill for a single purpose device, or Amazon screwed up and provided too much value in the Paperwhite.

Amazon sure has a problem pricing things. When they announced the Fire Phone I was all set to buy one out of plain curiosity, assuming it&#x27;d be priced at $299 -- then it came in at $699. Nope.<p>I have bought every iteration of Kindle (other than the large one they sold when they first came out). This one I might skip. $300 for the <i>same internals</i> as the Voyage is steep. The only major changes are the form factor and a few more LEDs. I do like that it has physical buttons, but not $300 like.<p>e: Also chiming in that I probably would have bought it anyway had it had usb-c, but it doesn&#x27;t, still stuck on micro.

I&#x27;ve bought pretty much every previous generation of kindles, but don&#x27;t see the point of this one.<p>The voyage is already quite expensive for an ereader, and an upgrade of questionable value over the Paperwhite, and this one is still more expensive, for hardly any benefit.<p>To put it more positively: The kindle paperwhite is amazing value for the price ;-)

Interseting to see that the UK price is £269.99, and the US price is $289.99 (£203.95). Seems a steep price different, even accounting for VAT.<p>Edit: Wasn&#x27;t taking into account Sales tax, it&#x27;s not that bad actually

I&#x27;ve owned a kindle paperwhite since 2013, it works fine tbh I don&#x27;t feel the need to upgrade. Even the touted 10 LED backlight on the Oasis is meaningless to me, I never use the backlight on my Kindle as it is.<p>The thing that is frustrating me more and more about the Kindle (and e-readers in general) is the amount of books still not available as ebooks, I don&#x27;t understand why publishing houses like Penguin books have such a mixed bag when it comes to having a Kindle offering for some titles.

I already have a great portable e-book reader that&#x27;s light enough to hold in my hand. It&#x27;s my phone. And it&#x27;s a sunk cost. Oh, and it&#x27;s not locked to a single bookseller.<p>I spend all day reading text on screens; when it comes to recreational reading, why are my eyes suddenly so precious that they need a special display that&#x27;s supposedly easy on them? Like, the rest of the day I&#x27;m beating them up or something? $500CAD is almost the up-front cost of a Nexus 6p. And when I get tired of reading Proust I can play Neko Atsume.<p>This is vesselmancy -- the same wayward urge that had fools plonking out for leatherbound copies of Encyclopedia Britannica as late as the &#x27;00s, when they could have -- should have -- known better.<p>The container has been abstracted. The value is not there anymore. Amazon is just doing arbitrage on the delayed response the background culture has to value migration. $60 leather case included indeed.

<i>Augh</i> - I wish they&#x27;d stop making smaller kindles and go with another DX! Giving up all that screen space after having gained it is just painful.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t mind a hard keyboard again either, but apparently the design meme nowadays is that keyboards are a terrible thing to be virtualized or omitted entirely. (Bitter? Me?)

I&#x27;ve owned about 4 Kindles (always upgraded, never had one break), but I just don&#x27;t see any reason to upgrade to this model, especially given the price.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why they haven&#x27;t included waterproofing yet. Or at least IP68 certification so you don&#x27;t have to worry at the beach or by a pool.

Wow, while I&#x27;m still disappointed that this doesn&#x27;t support EPUB, I&#x27;m impressed by the feature set. It&#x27;s clear that the team that did product design is really starting to understand book readers and their needs. The price-point seems to be targeting more dedicated readers it seems, especially with &quot;luxury&quot; offerings like leather covers. My only gripe is that a lot of the touted features will probably only be available for a select few books. It&#x27;s good to see that even though the e-ink technology isn&#x27;t maturing that much, the software integrations are increasing. Though personally I&#x27;d still go for a Kobo because of size and compatibility issues. Fingers crossed for that experimental color e-ink to ever make a debut...

Ergonomically looks great. They have fixed one of the issue with Paperwhite by adding physical page turn buttons. I prefer to use my Kindle Keyboard instead of Paperwhite everywhere but in bed. Accidentally touching the screen or tapping on a link when you wanted to turn a page is just too annoying.<p>Now I wish that they had re-introduced Text-to-Speech feature, I would have bought it then. At present, I think it is too overpriced.<p>There are many times when I get tired of holding Kindle and want to rest my hand. I simply plugin headphones and listen to whatever I was reading. Kindle&#x27;s TTS is amazing and almost sounds like human.

Yeah for physical buttons! I miss them on the Paperwhite.

My 5.5 year old Kindle 3 is still going strong. I could definitely see a strong case for a backlit display, but the device I have right now is not worse than a dead tree book in this regard.<p>My attitude might seem reactionary, however, I feel that in the case of a device that is used for an intimate and intellectual activity, more does not always equal better.

Just recently bought a Kindle Voyager (to replace my Kindle 2, which ended up having its screen crack after a fall), and I have to say the physical buttons on this are appealing-- definitely something I miss about the Kindle 2, though the Voyager&#x27;s pressure-sensitive sides aren&#x27;t terrible. Not sure it&#x27;s $90 appealing, though.

Wow it&#x27;s significantly lighter than previous kindles, with more battery, and a nice case.<p>People are going to say &quot;ah, same old&quot; but there are a lot of big changes here without going and breaking what makes kindles great. Will lots of people upgrade though? Probably not, the existing Kindles are also very good in their own right.

I don&#x27;t see what makes this worth $100 more than the Kindle Voyage other than it being thin? Am I missing something?

Is it me, or is the whole product line looking a bit weak right now? Only one model has proper page turn buttons, and that&#x27;s the most expensive. The cheapest is nice and cheap but has a low resolution. The paperweight looks like the best option at the moment; I&#x27;m not sure what the voyage offers for an extra $80.

Cool product, but I don&#x27;t see any reason to upgrade from Kindle Paperwhite that would warrant spending additional ~$300 on.<p>Paperwhite is just <i>good enough</i> across all of the key dimensions - size, weight, screen resolution and battery life for the users who don&#x27;t run after the latest and greatest.

I got a paperwhite for the touchscreen and backlight - both made the device a lot better for reading in bed, and that was a long time ago: a 1st gen paperwhite replaced a 2nd gen kindle, and the turn-page button on the 2nd gen was loud enough to bug my wife if she was trying to sleep. The battery on my paperwhite still lasts a week or more of regular reading, so I&#x27;m not about to upgrade for battery life (I have an anker for long trips anyway).<p>I guess maybe the big bezel would have to be a <i>lot</i> more comfortable for me to want to spend on the upgrade. OTOH, I&#x27;m a loyal customer who buys kindle books from the amazon store (or gets them from the library), so amazon already has me as a customer anyway, so maybe the device sale is no big deal.

My first Kindle was the 2nd gen one, right after they dropped the price to $359 (from its original $399 debut price).<p>Hard to believe I happily paid $359 for my first one, but $289 looks outrageous for the latest model.<p>The Oasis looks <i>awesome</i>, but I have a 1st gen Paperwhite and it still runs just fine.

Positives: -Physical buttons -Lighter -Smaller -Better frontlighting (supposedly)<p>Negatives: -Shorter battery life (without the case) -STILL no memory expansion slot -Very, very expensive for a small-formfactor monochromatic e-reader<p>I&#x27;ve owned every e-ink Kindle model released to date. Going to be skipping this one because there&#x27;s no real value added over a last gen paperwhite except for physical buttons, which, while very nice, aren&#x27;t worth tripling the price.<p>Why do you hate people actually hauling around decent sized libraries, Amazon? Why no SD slot? The device isn&#x27;t even waterproof yet, there&#x27;s no excuse.<p>Their pricepoint is a mistake, unless they just don&#x27;t want to sell very many of these for some reason. Not much more to say about that.

It feels like innovation on e-readers has stalled. Where is our color eink? Flexible screens?

I don&#x27;t know how many years its been, but all this time and the only reason I see to upgrade from my gen4 Kindle is my lack of back light, which has never really been a huge issue as I don&#x27;t do much night reading.

Previous (current) discussion from 1 hour ago <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11488082" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11488082</a>

I wish Amazon would start investing more effort into the software of the Kindle, and make it more into a platform. I still use mine mainly to read eBooks. I would love to use it for reading my Pocket list, for instance. I&#x27;ve been waiting for such an integration for a while.<p>Amazon&#x27;s doing a much better job with third party integration in the smart home domain. I still hope the eBook division will follow suit..

Disappointing. I can see some very small demographics being interested in this, but I don&#x27;t see the average consumer benefiting purchasing it.

Apropos nothing, I just checked my email records and I have 294 purchase receipts from Amazon Kindle books going back to 2010. I&#x27;ve read the vast vast majority of these on various iPhones and I have no complaints. It works great for me for 6+ hour sessions of reading.<p>I&#x27;m still looking for the right PDF reader, currently using GoodReader which for me is merely acceptable.

Looks pretty good maybe even worthy of an upgrade but that price is just too rich for me for an ebook reader. Maybe in a year or so when they&#x27;ve come down significantly. The charging cover almost seems unnecessary but if it really extends the battery life into months then that&#x27;s pretty awesome. Certainly would be great for long term camping &#x2F; hiking.

E-Reader for the price of a new PS4, no thanks.

Ok, I have a Kindle Paperwhite 7th generation. It&#x27;s 300dpi. There&#x27;s no reason even to desire this, right?

All of the images show it being held with the right hand. Can it not be turned upside down and held with the left?

This is a terrible price point for what&#x27;s at best a weak upgrade to the Voyage. $290? That&#x27;s nuts, unless you&#x27;re going to give me a 10&quot; screen with it. I was waiting on buying a new Kindle, hoping the Oasis would have a larger screen. Now I&#x27;ll just buy the Voyage instead.

A new Kindle, and still the size of a postage stamp. Do people really like to read on such a tiny screen? I ended up buying a Kobo H2O when I compared it next to a Kindle Voyage - bonus is I can use it in the bath without worrying about getting it wet!

Late last year I upgraded from a kindle 3 (keyboard) to the Voyage. I like the Voyage quite a bit and the cover flipping over the top rather than to the side is more usable than the case for the paperwhite.<p>As others have said, additional battery life isn&#x27;t an issue for me.

Nice. We have a Kindle for book reading but I have been considering letter&#x2F;a4 size epaper reader for music score notes for my children, the amount of paper they carry around is incredible. Too bad Amazon doesn&#x27;t offer anything like this yet.

I suspect that Amazon has realized that people don&#x27;t upgrade their kindles the way they do their phone per say and they think that people will be willing to pay a lot more for something that lasts them 4 or 5 years, if it feels higher quality.

This is a terrible price, especially at the CAD ($400!) pricing.<p>I would love page turning buttons on my paperwhite like my older kindles had. But I&#x27;m not paying $400 for the privilege of getting back what Amazon took away.<p>The touchscreen on the paperwhite is a terrible idea.

Wow, $289?!?<p>I loved the previous generation priced under $100 but that&#x27;s a huge jump and I&#x27;m not convinced the feature list justifies such a price. I predict this is not going to sell very well.<p>And I would have loved a slightly larger screen (7 inches).

The only thing that have held me back from upgrading to a Paperwhite is that the background LED is always on.<p>I hope this allows you to turn it off, but like the information about the Paperwhite, it is probably going to be buried in the forums.

My first thought when I say the buttons only on the right side were &#x27;what if you&#x27;re left handed!&#x27;, but it seems they&#x27;ve thought of that:<p>&quot;Comfortably turn the page with either the touch display or dedicated page turn buttons located on the front of the handgrip. Whether you choose to read with your left or right hand, Kindle Oasis automatically rotates the page orientation to match.&quot;<p>Having said that, when using my Kindle I often switch from one hand to the other to accommodate things like picking up a cup, or one arm getting tired.<p>This is also a lot more expensive that the Paperwhite, or even the Voyage. While the dual battery concept seems nice, I can&#x27;t say battery life with my existing Kindle has ever been an issue... don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll be upgrading.

For someone who never had e-reader: how good are they to read PDFs with code? Most of my &quot;books&quot; are just PDFs and I&#x27;ve read e-readers were bad for them some time ago. Is it better now?

The design does look way better, but 300 is a stretch for me for a kindle.

I&#x27;m sorry but the device didn&#x27;t need fixing. The shitty user experience of getting content on it and managing it needed fixing.<p>Until that is taken care of this is still not the device it could be.

I love the Kindle and ebook readers in general, but my beloved Kindle doesn&#x27;t like PDFs.<p>Is there any Kindle that does a proper job displaying PDFs without one having to play all the time with zoom?

Looks really nice, but $500 CAD for the 3G version seems very steep.

Was looking forward to buying this, but have no interest in buying leather for ethical reasons. I emailed jeff@amazon.com about this and am curious what kind of response I get.

Why have the buttons on just one side? That means I can effectively only read with one hand. I basically just want a paperwhite with page turn buttons on both sides.

I wonder if it&#x27;s actually now better to read things on the new ipad 9.7&quot;. Notably with true tone, night shift and the wide color gamut of the new display.

Is Amazon still refusing to support ePub on their devices? It looks like that from the spec and conversions didn&#x27;t look correct last time I tried.

Can anybody tell where the power button is? The Paperwhite has it at the bottom, which isn&#x27;t ideal for setting it on the elliptical machine.

It doesn&#x27;t have the adaptive light sensor from the Voyage? It always feels like one step forward, one step back with this product line.

Looks like it&#x27;s meant to be held with your right hand. I wonder if you can make it flip the screen so left handed people can use it too.

The copy here makes a big deal about reading outdoors. Can anyone comment on the current offerings and how reflective they are in sunlight?

so thin that the screen breaks at the slightest pressure, I owned 2 kindles, they ended up with the screen broke in two after every travel.

As a leftie, I feel like it is going to be uncomfortable to use, given that most of the weight of the device sits on the right hand side.

$289.99 for an ugly looking kindle that isn&#x27;t that different from the paperwhite... no thanks.

Isn&#x27;t it easier&#x2F;cheaper to add small solar panel than second battery?

I wonder how much battery might be saved with an &quot;invert colors&quot; mode for nighttime reading. I love that feature for my various iPad reading apps and desperately wish my Paperwhite had that capability. It would be so much easier on the eyes as well.

I don&#x27;t like that the page turners are only on the right side.

So, if you&#x27;re left handed it&#x27;s upside down by default?

Kindle keyboard (and text-to-speech) for life! :)

I&#x27;ve mostly gone back to physical books. The Kindle was a nice experiment and all, but honestly it&#x27;s more expensive and less convenient

I&#x27;m glad the buttons are back!

It is about time that an e-Reader works one handed. I have no idea why this wasn&#x27;t done years ago.

Yes finally an ereader designed for Africa the land of wild animals and no electricity !

10 whole leds!

4GB in 2016. Amazon, it&#x27;s not funny, really! Or actually it is very funny... Good luck!

&quot;Buy once, read everywhere&quot;<p>I can&#x27;t get this to work for my Kindle. I export lengthy articles and journal papers to mobi and save it on kindle device, but I can&#x27;t find it on my mobile or my laptop ever.

I owned a Kindle 1, 2, Keyboard, and then a Paperwhite.<p>The first-gen PW was EXTREMELY disappointing - their much-hyped backlighting was uneven and splotchy, and I hated being forced to use a touchscreen instead of having page-turn buttons.<p>So, when the Nexus 7 FHD came out, I switched to using that (despite having to use a touchscreen) and the PW has gathered dust. If I ever dig it back out, I&#x27;ll have to do a manual firmware update for the SSL cert issue, but I need to do that for the K1 I have in storage as well.<p>It was surprising when I dug the K1 out of a box last year and the built-in 3G still worked fine.

I really wish the Kindle team had more imagination. It&#x27;s a tablet designed for reading enthusiasts-- what about making one for writing enthusiasts?<p>Imagine a very affordable, portable laptop with week-long battery life, completely free of distractions like youtube.<p>It writes. It reads. It sends emails. That&#x27;s it. Maybe as a stretch, they could quietly make it attractive to the tech community with a Unix-compatible shell and SSH ability. Call it the Kindle TypeLighter.<p>You&#x27;re welcome, Amazon. I&#x27;ll accept my royalty payments in personal check.<p>EDIT: Before anyone says anything about refresh rates, there&#x27;s plenty of electronic ink technologies that are more than capable of supporting the rates needed to rapidly add characters to the screen. This thing, for example: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dasung.com.cn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dasung.com.cn&#x2F;</a>