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E-readers and e-ink · Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle Oasis

21owners with an opinion
63%of verdicts positive
12/7positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for comfort and ease of use; criticized for durability and battery.

What owners wrote

Likes it
I probably will move to Kobo eventually as well. My current device is the Oasis and I wish I had bought a spare. I was always hoping Amazon would update it with a USB-C port which I would have bought on day 1. I know it's such a small issue that no politician will ever take it on, but I really wish there would be some legislation around forcing interoperability and ebook transfer rights. You can buy a Blu Ray disk and it's going to work in your player. Ebooks should be like that too. And I should be able to give away my ebook collection the same way I can my BR collection.
Likes it
I had the same issue but found this fork and it works great for Japanese novels! Also I agree the dictionary isn’t the best but it’s serviceable… on my old kindle oasis it has been really transformative. https://github.com/m-tky/koreader-tategumi Manga works but the screen size is a bit awkward imo.
Likes it
I've looked at this device and I wonder how good the layout engine is. Screenshots never show text with any hyphenation going on which makes me wonder if it even supports hyphenation. One of the images on the Amazon page for the reader has somebody holding one beside their laptop and if you look at the screen, it looks terrible. There are even words jammed together ("would be most suitable forthe job"). I love that it has physical buttons though. My reader is the Kindle Oasis and the buttons are one of my favorite features of the device. The Oasis layout engine and typography are both pretty good and I wonder if the X4 would end up feeling like a big downgrade.
Likes it
During its early days (2009), an investor showed me a white Kindle reading a book. This was India, long before Amazon was even introduced to our country. I decided to get mine a few years later. I decided to move bag and baggage to ebooks. After some time, I got one for my daughter too. Then the Kindle Oasis was, to me, one of the best ways to read books. But I realize that I have a better and cozier feeling holding a physical book to read. As I get older, that also means I cannot deal with Paperbacks (especially in India where the quality is as bad as it gets). Buying only Hardcovers makes me choose my books wisely and feel immensely satisfied reading books. Unfortunately, with all the things happening with Amazon—Kindle, I have done away with Kindle and sold them except for a Paperwhite that I want as my gadget/device museum piece. I have too many books that I want to get back to, so I might just keep one but looks like Amazon is not making it easy to archive books. Now, I’m on a lookout for an Open Source but well designed eBook Reader, akin to the Framework computers but for ebooks. I would like to still keep the physical to ebook ratio to a good number; for every 5 ebooks, I should have at-least 2 physical ones.
Likes it
It’s infuriating that Amazon abandoned the Oasis form factor. I love having a safe area on the side to, ya know, hold the damn thing. And physical buttons are so much more reliable for page turns. Every once in a while, tapping the screen to turn the page does something unexpected, and suddenly I’m futzing with my kindle instead of being immersed in my book. I was a happy Oasis user until last year when I used a new Kindle and saw how much faster they’ve gotten. That started a very frustrating search for a kindle replacement. I ordered and returned many units before settling on the Kobo Libra Color. I didn’t want color, but I don’t notice the lower resolution now unless I’m using it side-by-side with a B&W screen. I do miss whisper sync, which I’d occasionally use to read a few pages on my phone. The Instapaper integration is awesome— I used to pay for KTool to accomplish something similar.
Doesn’t like it
Kindle became a joke with discontinuation of oasis. What we had: — aluminum build - glass front - physical bloage-turn buttons What we got now: - plastic soft-touch that reeks of grease after a short period of time - plastic front that scratches like hell (don’t even try bringing this near sand) - no buttons — I love my oasis but it’s 6(?) years old. If Amazon doesn’t get their shit together, I’ll be forced to buy ”boox go”
Doesn’t like it
I got a Kindle (moving on from an absolutely ancient rooted Nook) purely because the Oasis looked so nice I'll never get a Kindle again because I was blown away by how impossible it was to repair (plus the closed system really sucks). Mine broke for no reason at all a bit ago; my best guess is the battery started to swell inside it and that broke the screen. Got a Forma super cheap ($25!) and I've been super happy with it, feels a bit cheaper but it's actually got some level of grip. Have read more on it in a month than I did on my Kindle in the last 3 years. Haven't even dabbled into the custom tools stuff much but it all sounds great. Might get a cheap secondary one to play with, can become an (outdated) offline Wikipedia reader if nothing else.
Likes it
With library genesis, who needs Google Books anymore? I buy books physically to support the author/s and download an epub version from said site to my kindle. The physical books I hardly read, they are for my shelf. Although I love the feeling of printed books, but I read in bed, and it‘s easier to hold an ebook. Also I read when I commute. It’s lighter to have my Kindle Oasis with me with tons of books on it.
Likes it
I haven't used the Scribe much for reading, I do most of my kindle reading before bed, and I find the smaller Oasis is a nicer form factor for me to read while holding it. Using the Scribe as a reader, if you wanted something bigger, is probably a great experience. I agree that the pen feel on the scribe is great.
Doesn’t like it
The Oasis is a great device with one fatal flaw: battery life. For some reason they nerfed the battery relative to the paperwhite so it lasts about a week instead of about a month. Probably won't bother a lot of people but it really bothered me. I read a lot and hate having to think about recharging. I ended up with the Kobo Libra 2, which has all the same features as the Oasis but also has a month-long battery. I love it overall, great little device. Includes some quality of life features beyond the Oasis, including auto color tone shifting of the front-light in the evening (cool to warm), being able to adjust the light by swiping up the left side of the screen, and more options for progress indicators / headers and footers than the kindle has. Kobo changes their lineup constantly, which means the Libra 2 has been replaced with a more expensive color version I haven't tried. Color on an e-ink screen is not an interesting feature to me, esp. not when it makes the device more expensive.
Likes it
After using the cheapest e-Reader for over a decade (Kindle 2 until support ended, Kindle 3 until the same) I finally upgraded to the top Oasis and love it. Things that are absolutely essential IMO are - physical page turn buttons. the touch screens are finicky, inconvenient for one-hand use, and impossible if i want to keep my hand up a blanket or something - back/front light, with adjustable color temp, and an actual dim setting that doesn't blow your retinas out everything i don't care about. but these are must haves.
Doesn’t like it
1st Kindle DX: Screen cracked, not sure why. Maybe thermal stress? Amazon replaced for free. 2nd Kindle DX: Stopped booting, no physical damage. Kindle: Rolled on it after falling asleep, screen cracked. Kindle Oasis: Dropped directly on its face, screen cracked. This weird anti-bezel obsession means there is nothing to protect the screen. But you need a bezel to hold onto, so not having a bezel makes the device worse in most ways. The Kobo that I have has large plastic bezels, so it is easy to hold, lightweight, less likely to be dropped, and when dropped, unlikely to suffer direct impact to the glass surface.
Likes it
I wish it had page turn buttons. I bought an Oasis entirely because of the buttons. Once again Amazon has killed their only reader with buttons. They clearly don’t care much about Kindles in general, they’ve had software issues like missing features forever that Amazon doesn’t care about fixing. This lacks ghosting, the screen and CPU are fast enough not to be obnoxious when doing literally anything (low bar, but Kindle). It’s USB-C, and since it runs Android apps it runs the Kindle app. But no page turn buttons. I get those don’t matter for a normal tablet, but to me their do for an e-reader. I guess it’s just as well, they probably wouldn’t work in the Kindle app anyway.
Likes it
I like to upgrade them (the battery life, screen, refresh rate, etc. have all gotten consistently better over the years), I usually have one to leave at work and one for home use, and I give the hand-me-downs to friends and family. You can also sell them back to Amazon for a pretty good bonus when it’s time to upgrade. I think I sent back an old paperwhite and got $50 + 20% off my Scribe. Right now I have an Oasis and a Scribe that I use about equally. Reading is one of my bigger hobbies, I read around 100 books a year on Kindle.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
Yeah, I do not really see the problem here. These devices are ancient and the panic is unwarranted. The older Kindles can be jailbroken if anyone cares that much. I think there is a smaller argument that the newer Kindles don't feel as nice. The Oasis was the pinnacle of e-reader hardware design, and it'll be sad when they stop supporting it, but it certainly won't be worthy of a news article or this kind of reaction.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
Their devices get steadily worse. Kindle Oasis was the best device ever. It also had cellular connectivity so you could read it on a train, then put it in the backpack and switch to listening to the same book on your phone. All seamlessly, because Kindle used the cellular network for reading progress. Really a magical experience. Then they removed cellular and _buttons_ from the devices. And now their app is actively crashing on my Kindle when I try to use it to buy a book.