I am pretty sure that I saw a leaked image that showed it being held with both hands, so I am guessing there is, at least, a option to flip the orientation to use it with your left hand.
I wondered the same thing. Then it occurred to me that I have a $15 musical instrument tuner that, in addition to telling what note is being played, can figure out which way is up, so I just assumed a $289 device could do the same.
The fine print confirms my suspicions, though it could have been made more clear in the copy.
The long life of the Kindle battery sometimes comes back to bite me. I'm terrible about remembering to bring a charging cable with me when I travel, and when I do get the low battery warning it's usually three minutes after I sit down for some serious reading.
I have to charge so infrequently, I'm never prepared to do so.
Guessing he is not an Android user. I use iOS devices so I will have a USB charger but not one that fits my kindle from time to time (as there is just the 1 by my bed I will forget to take)
Thankfully people tend to forget chargers and (so far) I haven't had a problem dumpster diving at hotel's lost and found :)
Funny, my girlfriend actually had to call Amazon to complain that her Paperwhite was dying after roughly two or three days of moderate use following the last update. And that was keeping it in airplane mode.
Rebooting it seemed to help, although I'd say she still has to charge it about once a week.
Re-embracing, more like it. I forget how old mine is, but it's from before the basic Kindles went to touchscreen. The side-mounted page flipping buttons are just about perfect. Throw in battery life of like six months of hard use on airplane mode and the non-glare screen that you can read outside on the beach in full sun, and it is just about a perfect e-reader.
I just wish they would resurrect the DX concept. I'd like to have a thin, light Kindle that was approximately letter-sized, for textbooks, programming books, etc. It'd probably also be a great fit for somebody like my dad, who's eyes are going bad - you can crank up the font size on 6" kindles, but then you only get a handful of words on a line.
Yeah, re-embracing is correct. Lack of physical buttons on my paperwhite is a pain because the OS starts to severely lag after a few weeks of usage and turning the page can sometimes take 2-5 seconds. I've actually been looking around for a smaller kindle that's easier to keep in my pocket for traveling.
>The side-mounted page flipping buttons are just about perfect
I completely agree. I've had a Kindle 3 keyboard with the physical page-turn buttons for nearly five years and although the new models might have sharper screens, the lack of physical buttons is an deal killer for me.
They also seem to have gone backwards with the form factor. The 3 screen is nearly flush with the bezel, which slopes away to the buttons at the edge and feels great in the hand. I've handled the newer versions and they're thicker and feel more clunky and cheap.
When you can replace the screen for $20 (replaced once) and the motherboard for $4 (replaced twice), it's kind of hard to justify upgrading, even after you break both by sitting on it.
The charging cover is there because the change in design has reduced the battery capacity by 2/3. The cover brings it up to parity (and 50% beyond) with the Paperwhite/Voyage line. Making it mandatory lets Amazon advertise "months" instead of the somewhat more accurate "2 weeks" if you compared to the others without the cover being included.
Their spec days are 30 minutes a day on WiFi with the light up, I believe (iow, they model reading in bed), so what you should actually be hearing is something more like "21 hours for the old one, 7 hours for the new one but 30 hours with the charging cover on." It's a pretty big step down.
That said, I've still pre-ordered an Oasis even though I have a Voyage already. The ergos on this look much more suited to my reading style.
The Voyage is by no means heavy, out of the case at least (the official leather case is a brick, unfortunately) but the thin bezel means I either put fingerprints on the screen or can't really get a solid grip on it without cramping my hand and causing some shake.
The Oasis looks like it's taken a page in ergonomic design in particular from cameras and will be much more steady and sure to hold. That has to translate into a better reading experience. I'll probably end up using the cover as what amounts to a leather charging dock.
The design and added features look nice, but it's hard to believe they'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.
You can always lower a price, but you can rarely raise it. And a high original MSRP lets them advertise a steep discount when the price does get lowered.
Interesting, it's kind of what clothing retailers have been doing especially in the past ten years or so. I think the access to more shopping options have led consumers to expect "large discounts" so maybe companies benefit from high original MSRP more than "pricing right".
Right. It's a $200 Voyage (overpriced already), with a better backlight system, and thinner plus a $90 leather battery case.
I think the price, relative to the Voyage, is reasonable.
I think the Voyage price, relative to the PaperWhite, is insane. I should know, I own one (I like it but wow it's expensive to buy those pseudo-buttons).
I wonder if it's actually now better to read things on the new ipad 9.7". Notably with true tone, night shift and the wide color gamut of the new display.
Perhaps night-shift helps now, but for me reading on e-ink has always been a more pleasant experience that results in little eye strain after long periods of time.
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 $90 more than the Voyage and 2.4x the price of the Paperwhite, I don't know who the target market for this Oasis is.
I still use some old Kindle from 2012, which was 80$ or so and had the best design.
I'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.
I will stick with my old Kindle until Amazon will make a remake of it.
Same here. Mine is the "keyboard kindle" with the physical page-turn buttons. My only regret is that I didn't buy the larger DX model while they had it, as the bigger screen is more useful for technical titles.
I've been wanting to buy a Digital Paper from Sony since it came out for technical articles / textbooks.
Overall, I think the product is worth the price (around $1000 last time I checked), but I have other things to spend the money on right now. It seems to be marketed towards legal firms (possibly a source of the high price), but I don't need the collaboration software.
Cool product, but I don't see any reason to upgrade from Kindle Paperwhite that would warrant spending additional ~$300 on.
Paperwhite is just good enough across all of the key dimensions - size, weight, screen resolution and battery life for the users who don't run after the latest and greatest.
While this is a bespoke reader, I like the price point of the $120 (often cheaper with frequent sales) Paperwhite. It's always with me, and relatively inexpensive and durable enough where I don't bulk it up with a case or sleeve.
Either $289 seems overkill for a single purpose device, or Amazon screwed up and provided too much value in the Paperwhite.
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've come down significantly. The charging cover almost seems unnecessary but if it really extends the battery life into months then that's pretty awesome. Certainly would be great for long term camping / hiking.
This is a huge disappointment. I'm kicking myself for not buying a Paperwhite when they were on sale last week. This was absolutely not worth waiting for. I wouldn't find this compelling if it were $20 more than the Voyage, much less $90 more.
I've bought pretty much every previous generation of kindles, but don't see the point of this one.
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.
To put it more positively: The kindle paperwhite is amazing value for the price ;-)
I bought the Voyage when it first came out (moving form a paperwhite gen 1) and I thought it was _barely_ worth the upgrade then. Now that the paperwhite 3 is out with all of the features that I bought the voyage for, I don't see any reason to pay the extra for it.
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.
I also have the Voyage, at the time the Paperwhite was a lower resolution so the Voyage was a better choice - but there is no question I'd buy the newer paperwhite now instead.
When you say the voyager is buggy when you try and turn pages what is the issue? I have a problem with the (stupid, hateful) haptic buttons. The ones on the right mostly both go backwards, periodically it works as expected. I thought this was a hardware fault, but maybe you are experiencing the same issue?
Same. I bought the Voyage when it first came out, but the current gen paperwhite includes all the things that drew me to the voyage for less money. I recommend the paperwhite to everyone who asks me about Kindles. I had a hard time with the Voyage price, but this is just too much, even for a gadget-phile.
I'm not the guy you were originally asking, but I've had issues with page turns on my Voyager. I think it's a pagination ordering issue - if I've been reading on my phone, and then open my Kindle and sync to the location in the book where I left off at on my phone, the first manual page turn I make sometimes fails to match up perfectly.
As a for instance, if "the quick brown fox" is the last words on my current page, and I turn to the next page, I'd expect the first words to be "jumps over the lazy dog" but in this instance "jumps over the lazy dog" is typically somewhere mid page.
I've also had issues, again when syncing my position from a different device, where the location totally bugs out if I try to swipe back to the previous page. This happens infrequently, so I'm uncertain if there's any logic at play, but the location is often way off of where it should be when aiming for the previous page.
I bought Voyager when new paperwhite was out and I think I made the right choice. Voyager is much nicer to hold - build and plastic quality are much higher than on Paperwhite. I use Kindle a lot and in a grand scheme of things $80 difference is negligible when compared to the cost of books or time I spend using Kindle.
I have Kindle Keyboard and Paperwhite. Both of them are great for reading outdoors. Only time it is problem is when sun is directly reflecting in your eyes, but slight adjustment of wrist, problem is solved.
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'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'm not sure what the voyage offers for an extra $80.
Not just you. The screen size being locked to 6 inches across the lineup is disappointing. I can understand why someone would want the small screen for portability, but an option for an 8-10 inch screen would be nice.
Augh - I wish they'd stop making smaller kindles and go with another DX! Giving up all that screen space after having gained it is just painful.
I wouldn'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?)
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.
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.
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's TTS is amazing and almost sounds like human.
My first thought when I say the buttons only on the right side were 'what if you're left handed!', but it seems they've thought of that:
"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."
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.
This is also a lot more expensive that the Paperwhite, or even the Voyage. While the dual battery concept seems nice, I can't say battery life with my existing Kindle has ever been an issue... don't think I'll be upgrading.
I don't think I've ever heard of anyone complaining of the buttons on both sides on the old kindles.
I cannot understand why they chose to change something so obviously good.
The original Kindles had page turn buttons on each side. The Kindle Voyage has capacitive page turn buttons on each side. I don't really see what's so special about this other than that it has a bigger bezel on the side with the buttons.
Still look my Nook which allows you to determine the function of the buttons, so I can happily use it one handed down at the beach etc. Great bit of kit and was so cheap!
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'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.
I hope this creates demand for a paperwhite attachment / cover that will achieve this same ergonomic design for those of us that don't feel like forking over that much money after only just buying their paperwhites.
Not a great analogy. The designed use-case for a book is to be held in your hands and read. Whereas burning is almost never desired, generally only happens if something goes awry.
Given that two-hand holding is the norm for paper books I would say single-hand holding isn't a terribly important spec for an e-reader. Maybe it's desirable for some, maybe not. I would definitely give up a little bit of single-hand holdability for a larger screen, someone in thread above pointed out the 8" Bookeen Cybook Ocean, which at $180 looks like a good Kindle alternative:
http://www.bookeen.com/en/cybook-ocean
I think that was the point of the analogy -- to illustrate how silly it is to compare the two based on that. They are different mediums. Books are books, and ebooks are ebooks.
Short of large hardcover books, I can't say I've ever read two-handed. Perhaps I have larger than normal hands. but every book I've ever owned (and most books I've checked out from various libraries) I read one handed.
I object greatly, and think that single handed holding is an extremely important spec. Far more important than some silly touch-screen.
But like books, we are all different. So I hope you enjoy your e-reader however you choose to read it.
I have a weirder holding scenario, in which I hold it much like I normally would a book, but stick my pinky finger in towards myself and let the weight of the Kindle rest on that.
I often complain about it, and this Oasis appears to be an upgrade, but I have the same problem with books as well. Adding the physical buttons in is a nice feature that I've missed from my earlier Kindles, as it at least means I won't have to move my hand while my Kindle is precariously balanced on the aforementioned finger for every page turn.
Yea, looking at this made me realize how uncomfortable my Paperwhite is one-handed. When laying down I usually end up holding it awkwardly with my thumb underneath and my pointer finger straight up the bezel. It's fallen out of my hand too many times to count.
Price aside, this is a worthwhile upgrade simply for the ergonomics.
387 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadhttps://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/d...
The fine print confirms my suspicions, though it could have been made more clear in the copy.
That being said, I really like the new design. Glad they're embracing physical buttons.
I have to charge so infrequently, I'm never prepared to do so.
Thankfully people tend to forget chargers and (so far) I haven't had a problem dumpster diving at hotel's lost and found :)
[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00XINCAJA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=...
Rebooting it seemed to help, although I'd say she still has to charge it about once a week.
Re-embracing, more like it. I forget how old mine is, but it's from before the basic Kindles went to touchscreen. The side-mounted page flipping buttons are just about perfect. Throw in battery life of like six months of hard use on airplane mode and the non-glare screen that you can read outside on the beach in full sun, and it is just about a perfect e-reader.
I just wish they would resurrect the DX concept. I'd like to have a thin, light Kindle that was approximately letter-sized, for textbooks, programming books, etc. It'd probably also be a great fit for somebody like my dad, who's eyes are going bad - you can crank up the font size on 6" kindles, but then you only get a handful of words on a line.
If you ask me, half the point of ebooks is that you can turn pages with your hands under a blanket or a cat flopped on your wrist.
http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox-13-...
I completely agree. I've had a Kindle 3 keyboard with the physical page-turn buttons for nearly five years and although the new models might have sharper screens, the lack of physical buttons is an deal killer for me.
They also seem to have gone backwards with the form factor. The 3 screen is nearly flush with the bezel, which slopes away to the buttons at the edge and feels great in the hand. I've handled the newer versions and they're thicker and feel more clunky and cheap.
When you can replace the screen for $20 (replaced once) and the motherboard for $4 (replaced twice), it's kind of hard to justify upgrading, even after you break both by sitting on it.
I'll pick up a used one someday.
Their spec days are 30 minutes a day on WiFi with the light up, I believe (iow, they model reading in bed), so what you should actually be hearing is something more like "21 hours for the old one, 7 hours for the new one but 30 hours with the charging cover on." It's a pretty big step down.
That said, I've still pre-ordered an Oasis even though I have a Voyage already. The ergos on this look much more suited to my reading style.
The Voyage is by no means heavy, out of the case at least (the official leather case is a brick, unfortunately) but the thin bezel means I either put fingerprints on the screen or can't really get a solid grip on it without cramping my hand and causing some shake.
The Oasis looks like it's taken a page in ergonomic design in particular from cameras and will be much more steady and sure to hold. That has to translate into a better reading experience. I'll probably end up using the cover as what amounts to a leather charging dock.
I think the price, relative to the Voyage, is reasonable.
I think the Voyage price, relative to the PaperWhite, is insane. I should know, I own one (I like it but wow it's expensive to buy those pseudo-buttons).
Voyage ($200) + Premium leather cover ($85) = $285
The Oasis costs $290 with battery cover. You're paying for a more expensive Kindle and a cheaper cover :)
Comparing the uk and us prices this is the first product in decades that seems to have been priced $1=£1
I'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.
I will stick with my old Kindle until Amazon will make a remake of it.
Overall, I think the product is worth the price (around $1000 last time I checked), but I have other things to spend the money on right now. It seems to be marketed towards legal firms (possibly a source of the high price), but I don't need the collaboration software.
Paperwhite is just good enough across all of the key dimensions - size, weight, screen resolution and battery life for the users who don't run after the latest and greatest.
Either $289 seems overkill for a single purpose device, or Amazon screwed up and provided too much value in the Paperwhite.
Hard to believe I happily paid $359 for my first one, but $289 looks outrageous for the latest model.
The Oasis looks awesome, but I have a 1st gen Paperwhite and it still runs just fine.
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.
To put it more positively: The kindle paperwhite is amazing value for the price ;-)
When you say the voyager is buggy when you try and turn pages what is the issue? I have a problem with the (stupid, hateful) haptic buttons. The ones on the right mostly both go backwards, periodically it works as expected. I thought this was a hardware fault, but maybe you are experiencing the same issue?
As a for instance, if "the quick brown fox" is the last words on my current page, and I turn to the next page, I'd expect the first words to be "jumps over the lazy dog" but in this instance "jumps over the lazy dog" is typically somewhere mid page.
I've also had issues, again when syncing my position from a different device, where the location totally bugs out if I try to swipe back to the previous page. This happens infrequently, so I'm uncertain if there's any logic at play, but the location is often way off of where it should be when aiming for the previous page.
I wouldn'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?)
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.
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's TTS is amazing and almost sounds like human.
"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."
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.
This is also a lot more expensive that the Paperwhite, or even the Voyage. While the dual battery concept seems nice, I can't say battery life with my existing Kindle has ever been an issue... don't think I'll be upgrading.
Not just for left or right hande people. Sometimes you want to rest and can't stop reading.
I hope this creates demand for a paperwhite attachment / cover that will achieve this same ergonomic design for those of us that don't feel like forking over that much money after only just buying their paperwhites.
Given that two-hand holding is the norm for paper books I would say single-hand holding isn't a terribly important spec for an e-reader. Maybe it's desirable for some, maybe not. I would definitely give up a little bit of single-hand holdability for a larger screen, someone in thread above pointed out the 8" Bookeen Cybook Ocean, which at $180 looks like a good Kindle alternative: http://www.bookeen.com/en/cybook-ocean
I object greatly, and think that single handed holding is an extremely important spec. Far more important than some silly touch-screen.
But like books, we are all different. So I hope you enjoy your e-reader however you choose to read it.
It's not.
I often complain about it, and this Oasis appears to be an upgrade, but I have the same problem with books as well. Adding the physical buttons in is a nice feature that I've missed from my earlier Kindles, as it at least means I won't have to move my hand while my Kindle is precariously balanced on the aforementioned finger for every page turn.
This then allows me to squeeze part of my hand/fingers between the cover and the Kindle and doesn't get too tiring.
Price aside, this is a worthwhile upgrade simply for the ergonomics.
Glad I'm not the only one :-)