Amazon has announced a new Kindle, the Oasis. (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) At $290 or £270, this is a luxury item for those who collect Kindles.
That’s fine, there are people who will pay this price, but WTF is this form factor? Do a lot of people read their Kindles one-handed; enough to want a Kindle that is designed essentially for one-handed reading? (I could be snarky and suggest that this Kindle is designed for those who read erotic fiction…)
It’s got a charging cover, which doesn’t make sense, given how long the Kindle’s battery lasts. So you charge the cover, then put the reader in the cover to charge it? Having two items means it’s possible to lose or forget one.
Granted, it’s smaller; but not by much. You only save on the top and bottom bezels, but the right side is wider than the Voyage or Paperwhite. It’s about 20mm smaller vertically, but a few millimeters wider. And it weighs about 50 g less without the cover, but you’ll want to carry the cover around with it anyway. It does have real page turn buttons; the ones on the Voyage aren’t great. And while it’s thinner on the left side, it’s a bit thicker than the Voyage or Paperwhite on the right side.
Books have generally always been symmetrical. A device like this is very strange; a new form factor, or the charging case, should solve a problem, and there are no problems with the existing Kindles.
Amazon.com doesn’t provide a price for the wi-fi + 3G version of the Kindle Oasis, but on the UK site, it costs £60 more for the 3G model. That’s £330. That’s just 10% less than the base price of an iPhone SE. (To be fair, the other models cost an additional £60 for 3G, or $70 more in the US.) Oh, and these US prices are “With special offers, i.e. ads; you pay another $20 to get rid of that. So, a customized Kindle Oasis, with 3G and without special offers, costs $380.
Save your money. Get the Paperwhite (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) or the Voyage (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) instead. To be fair, while I like the Voyage, it’s probably not worth paying more for it than the Paperwhite.