The last Kindle with page-turn buttons is dead
Amazon announced a bunch of brand-new Kindle models Wednesday, including a refreshed Paperwhite and a new color model, both of which I’ve ordered and will review soon. But Jay Peters of The Verge brings us the bad Kindle news of the day:
Amazon has discontinued the Kindle Oasis, which was the only Kindle still available with physical page-turn buttons. The company announced a new Kindle lineup earlier today, but Amazon confirmed to The Verge that it’s moving on from the Oasis.
The writing was on the wall, but it’s still sad. Amazon has apparently decided that there’s no place in the Kindle line-up for an e-reader that still has physical page-turn buttons.
Regular readers of this site will know that I am an ardent supporter of physical page-turn buttons on e-readers, because they allow you to rest a finger on the button and turn the page with a simple squeeze, while touch-only readers require you to constantly reposition a finger, tap, and the move the finger away. Not exactly torturous, but decidedly less optimal.
Instead, Amazon (and many other e-reader makers) seem quite keen on the idea that you can read color comics (on screens that are far too small) and that you can take copious notes (which I stopped doing after grad school). I admit that e-readers are a niche tech product and don’t fault e-reader makers from searching for new use cases to expand their markets. I’m just sad that Amazon doesn’t think there’s room somewhere in its Kindle line for buttons.
In the meantime, if you want a new e-reader with page-turn buttons, I recommend (with reservations) the $220 Kobo Libra Colour or the $270 Kobo Sage. Neither is cheap, I know. (The Oasis was $250, though, so in the ballpark.) Of those two, the Sage is larger, has a flush screen, and doesn’t suffer some of the contrast issues of the Libra Colour.