Amazon Kindle Oasis review: This razor-thin e-reader is the device to beat
A few minor niggles aside, Amazon's latest Kindle is worth its £269 price
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Your support makes all the difference.I’m on holiday, if you must know. I mention this because ebook readers are particularly popular among holiday readers. After all, you can pack over 1,000 books in your suitcase electronically with practically no weight. Readers that use E-ink displays are easily readable in the brightest of sunlight through sunglasses, unlike mobile phones and iPads. Some readers also have front-light options which are more restful on the eyes than the backlight of an iPad, too.
But real books, though less portable in huge numbers, have a lot to offer, too. And do you really need 1,000 books with you on holiday? I mean, how long are you going for?
Of course, that’s not really the point – you don’t need 1,000 albums in your iPod but it’s great to have the choice. Not to mention that ebooks download wirelessly in under a minute, so if you finish the first volume of His Dark Materials, you can press a button and instantly read the second, without leaving the hotel. In fact, if you have the 3G-enabled version of an ebook reader, you needn’t even leave the beach to pick up another book.
So here I am, testing how the Oasis compares to other ebook readers and to real books. After all, Amazon says it’s aiming to make its readers as good as books.
In many ways there’s still no comparison to the feel of rich paper under your fingers, the ultimate sharpness of ink compared to electronics, or the way the weight of each half of the book telling you how far you are through it, even if your eyes are shut. Navigation is still better in a paper book – flick to a note at the back and you can easily find your way back to the page you were on. You can have several pages open at the same time as you amble off to browse the photos in the middle of the book before flipping back to where you were. In ebooks, even now, text can re-flow so there’s no physicality to help you remember stuff – in some books flipping back and forth a couple of pages can move the text around confusingly.
And a pile of books on your table tells a visitor much more about who you are than electronics ever can (“Ooh, look, he’s got an iPad Mini”).
But convenience is still keen with an ebook reader. The weight of my one real holiday book, the brilliant Joyride: Lives of the Theatricals by John Lahr, is far greater than the Oasis. Plus, while I’m grateful for the gentle breeze that’s keeping the mosquitoes at bay, it makes it impossible to hold the book in one hand – I need the other to hold the page in place against the wind.
After a day at the beach, a paper book can look a bit dog-eared. The Oasis comes with a clever leather book cover which connects magnetically and includes a big battery to extend reading life considerably. And the leather on that has got pretty scuffed in a matter of days. This weathered, lived-in look will appeal to some. But it’s a surprise, a change compared to the pristine look every previous Kindle has maintained throughout its life.
The Oasis, especially when the leather cover is removed, is astonishingly light. It’s also very thin, apart from the edge where the page-turn buttons sit. This thicker edge makes it easier to hold and you can turn it upside down if you prefer the buttons on the other side – the onscreen words turn with it. Even so, there’s a knack to holding it: if the buttons are leaning too hard on your fingers, they can turn when you don’t mean them to, and if you rest your thumb off the buttons, you must take care not to engage the touchscreen. There’s no lip between frame and screen as there is on cheaper Kindles. This looks much classier, but it makes inadvertent page turns too easy. These are not big problems and you can easily acclimatise.
Purchasing content is still not quite as fluent as I’d like. I enjoy the possibility of seeing a sample first but why can’t I save notes? One of the best features of a Kindle is the way you can highlight text without making the book dog-eared as you would with highlighter pen and paper. I can’t do this in a sample. I imagine it’s to encourage me to buy the book but actually it puts me off. And what’s the problem with me highlighting in a sample? After all, the notes could be set to vanish if I don’t buy the book.
Say I do buy it, and it’s duly and instantly downloaded – why do I have to start again with the full version, instead of the sample becoming the full version, saving my place and my notes?
These are minor niggles. The screen is sharp and pristine, page turns are fast and smooth, and the flush screen makes the reader feel slick and modern. Amazon’s new system fonts and screen layout work well. The buttons to turn the pages are a little clicky, so if you’re reading in bed, as you can with the adjustable light on the Oasis, you may prefer to use the touchscreen for page turns, rather than risk waking your significant other.
The lightness and size of the Oasis are really brilliant, breaking new ground for comfort and efficiency that other makers will have to try to match.
The battery in the reader edges down during the day, but attach it to the cover and it bumps right back up again, and quickly.
All that said, the next model down in the line-up, the Kindle Voyage, offers some features the Oasis lacks. Like a frontlight that automatically adjusts to the ambient light around it. The Oasis is just too thin, I’m told, to fit this tech in. It’s not a deal-breaker but it means that if you’re not as desperate for the lightest, thinnest reader, the £169 Voyage (£100 off the Oasis cost) is a highly tempting alternative. Still, if you ask me if the Oasis is worth its £269 price ticket, I’d say yes. Although, you could buy an awful lot of real books for that.
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