However good it is, US$ 290 is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on an e-reader. Obvious, isn’t it? Not, it seems, to Amazon, which has released the Kindle Oasis as part of a new wave of products that can actually turn a profit rather than be loss leaders. It’s less clear why anyone would want to spend so much when the excellent Kindle Paperwhite is$ 170 cheaper.
In the same way you might suspend your disbelief in a good book, let’s for a moment ignore the price and focus on the design – because the Kindle Oasis is gorgeous. Small enough to slip into a pocket, it’s thinner and lighter than any Kindle before it. To be precise, it weights a phone-like 131g: tapering to a miniscule 3.7 mm at its thinnest point..
Yet somehow its design remains practical. The offset screen at the front and grip at the rear give you somewhere to put your fingers and thumbs while reading without having to worry about turning the page by accident. The power button is sensibly positioned in the top corner, and – after experimenting with the touchscreen-only designs and virtual, haptic feedback-based buttons for the past few years – Amazon has finally brought back physical page-turn buttons.
You can still use the touch screen to swipe back and forth through your texts, and it’s required for navigating around the user interface and entering text via the onscreen keyboard, but it’s so nice to have something on which you can rest your thumb and click without having to reach over the screen surround. It all adds up to a device that’s a joy to hold for long periods.
If that isn’t justification enough to pay the premium over the Paperwhite, then perhaps the premium leather cover Amazon includes in the box will be. Like the rest of the Oasis, this is beautifully designed. It clips magnetically to the rear of the reader, I know you don’t have to lever out the device if you want to separate it from the case. It’s a luxury accessory of the kind you’d expect in return for spending the equivalent of a year’s supply of paperbacks.
The case”s best feature, though, is that the magnetic flap that attaches to the rear of the Oasis has its own built-in battery, which, in conjunction with the e-reader’s main battery, delivers stamina in months rather than weeks. With the cover attached, a single charge will last up to eight weeks. That’s based on half an hour of reading a day with the light set to ten – just below half brightness.
That screen is just as good as it ever was. It measures 6in across the diagonal – exactly the same size as the screen on the Paperwhite – and has an identical resolution as well, with a pixel density of 300ppi. I can see why Amazon hasn’t changed it. Text is as crisp as it is on the printed page, which is all you need, while the front light boosts contrast and allows you to read at night without the need for a bedside lamp.
As with the Voyage last year, the Oasis' display is topped with a layer of toughened glass that runs across the entirety of the surface of the device, and this has a silky, semi-matte finish that keeps reflections and glare at bay. I prefer the slightly rougher feel of the Paperwhite’s screen under my finger than the slipperiness in evidence here.
Surprisingly, the Oasis lacks one of the features Amazon was keen to crow about on the Voyage. There’s no ambient light sensor on the front, so it’s unable to adjust the intensity of its light to match its surroundings. It does, however, have an orientation sensor, so you can hold the Kindle in your left or right hand and keep those all-important buttons comfortably accessible under your thumb – the text rights itself automatically when you rotate the screen, as it does on a smartphone.
Another improvement is that the Oasis' front light employs 60% more LEDs than the Voyage, ensuring more consistent illumination than any I’ve seen on an e-reader. With past Kindles, and rival devices, it’s always been possible to see the source of the light along the top or the bottom edge of the screen, just beneath the bezel – but here it’s all but impossible to spot.
Amazon’s recently updated UI is a joy, complete with its attractive homescreen that showcases the covers of recently downloaded and read books in the centre, plus suggestions on what to read next at the bottom. You can still view books by cover, or in a list, if that’s what takes your fancy, but I’d hazard a guess that most of your time will be spent actually reading books on the device
It’s just as well, then, that Amazon’s reading UI – perfected over the course of time – is so strong. Features such as X-Ray, Smart Lookup, Whispersync and Wikipedia integration all add greatly to the reading experience, and make ploughing through the latest Booker-nominated more rewarding than on any other e-reader. Page turn speed is very nippy, so much so that I didn’t notice it at all while I was reading on the Oasis, whether or not I had it set to fully refresh every time.
There’s only one area in which the Kindle Oasis' front-end falls short. Despite recent improvements to its text-setting engine, which combined with the new Bookerly font gives a more "book-like" appearance, the range of visual adjustments and tweaks still can’t match those on other e-readers. Still, most people will find a combination that works for them among the seven fonts, eight font sizes, and three variations of line spacing and margins – and it’s worth remembering that Amazon”s content, choice and prices remain head and shoulders above the rest.
The Kindle Oasis is a fabulous device for reading mr It’s thinner, lighter, faster, and more thoughtfully designed than any Kindle before it. The screen light has been improved and it offers great battery life. It’s the best e-reader in the business, no question.
If you spend a lot of time with your e-reader and don’t mind paying the hefty premium, or you’re on the hunt for that extra-special birthday gift, I reach my own shock ending: I wholeheartedly recommend the Oasis. Is it great value for money? Absolutely not. Will you ever regret buying it? Absolutely not.
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