Kindle Oasis – With 7” display and page turn buttons – Free 4G LTE + Wi-Fi (32GB) – Graphite

Ummed and ahhed about whether to spend the extra on the oasis rather than the paperwhite. Landed on this because of the ability to interchange hands. Def recommend, feels great to hold and am able to read in bed now with no blue light.

I found so many problems with the Design funtioning of the Oasis , I’ve had to send it back . As we know the software layout is so-so ,when using my paperwhite . There are so many tweeks that could perfect it , yet the frustration goes on ! Bookmarks dropdown could have touch points to access different areas of a longer list of bookmarks for Technical books especially . Keep asking Kindle to have an option to flash book cover on screan every time we open a selected book . Winge winge .
I like to read in bed on my side before and after sleep Amongst other reading situations So …
So when I started using the Oasis with more complicated menu options due to having buttons , flaws/annoyances multiplied . The biggest flaw I realized is a it is missing an Essential third (rocker) button placed horizontally Between the two page turning buttons . This would create lots of quickly accessed variables , like changing font size or lighting at the push of a button (select R/L on Rocker) popup screen , second click R/L ups or down that metric . Rocker button left right quickly can create another quick menu option using top or bottom page turn buttons for say disabling the touch screen a very handy function if we have an Oasis buttons ( the current sys of turning Kindle on an off is painful ) . This just seems like a no brainer . The new button would be flush like the other two .
Without this option we a left with having to navigate and govern Oasis with both button use and touch screen ESPECIALLY in night bed reading in bed where we are adjusting the light strength and font size . So then after we have disabled the Touch Screen to prevent accidental touching , say when rolling over , How do we now access light and font size ?? The current kindle techneque is to hit to off button on ; Who’s big idea was this ? Design by committee ? Having a third rocker button could solve All these problems so simply , and so much more like access to the colour inversion font for whatever the user might choose , And make the Oasis spectacularly smoothly functional compared with the paper white And a thing to be desired !
As it is , in my opinion and for this particular usage like waking in the night , its actually much more of a hassel , even though the larger screen and general feel (fits in the med large male hand well) and having fingers out of the way of screen and cleanly clicking page buttons is excellent , we are always caught in a hybrid situation of using touch and buttons . Cluncky . I can’t be the only person that likes to change font size and styles and brightness regularly especially if we are doing a lot of different readings and at the opening of the day and into the morning . My eyes are 20/20 .
The warm light is a nice touch , for me not essential . Having a time bracket for when the Kindle switches to Inverted black/white would also be a nice touch . And having the auto brighness effect customizable like , the brighter the background lighting the less screen lighting , Why do we need to pump up screen lighting when we have strong reading lighting ? .
Anyway so if you always read in a chair or need to speed read , the Oasis is fine . But until I get my third button 🙂 , I’m going to have to pass . Must try harder Kindle C++ .

This was an upgrade from the first Kindle Oasis (8th Gen) for me, and I bought it for the novelty of being able to adjust the colour temperature. It didn’t occur to me until I opened it that the screen is larger, so that was a nice surprise. It isn’t so big that it is a problem, but the 8th gen version was practically weightless, and felt like I has holding thin air – particularly without the cover (which was also supplementary battery). This new one has slightly more heft, and really needs a cover – even though it is no longer a batter – because the texture without a cover makes it feel like it is going to slip out of your hand.

I didn’t get the version with cellular connectivity this time, as I can tether to my phone for when I need to sync it – the amount of data isn’t so big that there is ever any danger of using it all up, and of course I have the wifi at home or office. I tend to buy books when I stumble over them – not as I need something else to read, so I always have some in backlog.

My workflow is turn off airplane mode, download everything I haven’t read, turn on airplane mode. Then when I’ve read through a couple of books, or have bought something else – repeat the process. This means that connectivity is OFF for the vast majority of the time, and whilst this device appears to use battery slightly faster (but only had it a couple weeks), it still lasts effectively forever. I’ve never had battery anxiety with the 8th Gen, and I don’t imagine I will here either.

It would have been good to have the charger move to USB-C .. the Kindle was already the last thing I had that still needed the micro-USB, so to upgrade and still have it is strange, but I guess the Kindle isn’t going to benefit greatly from the more rapid charging, so they figure – why spend the extra.

I could have lived without the upgrade, but still pretty happy with the purchase.