The Amazon Kindle Oasis 3rd Generation has been out for four years, making it the oldest e-reader in their portfolio. The Amazon Kindle Basic and Kindle Paperwhite have all been refreshed in the last year, not to mention the Signature edition variant and the all-new Kindle Scribe. One of the differentiating factors of the Oasis was the large screen, manual page turn buttons and funky design. However, the Paperwhite Signature Edition took its place, having the same screen size, an ambient light sensor and even quick charging, not to mention the Carta 1200 e-paper technology. There is no place for the Oasis in the modern era, and I believe that they will not refresh the model and quietly discontinue it like the Kindle Voyage.
The Amazon Kindle Oasis 3rd Generation came out in 2019 and is getting long in the tooth. Each generation of the ebook reader only had incremental upgrades; the big selling point of the Oasis at the time was the inclusion of a colour temperature system that added orange LED lights and helped mute the front-lit display. These days, almost all Kindles have both cool and warm lighting. One of the things I liked about the Oasis was the build quality; most Kindles are made of plastic, but this model high-grade aluminum made it feel premium. The capacitive page turn buttons were also a standout feature; Oasis was the first to do it. No other Kindle has page turn buttons of any kind. This is the only Kindle you can buy now with 4G/LTE internet access at checkout.
There is no room for the Oasis in 2023 and beyond. Amazon seems bullish on the Kindle Scribe, their first product aimed at professionals, students and artists. You can draw, make notes, edit PDF files and even edit ebooks. The large ten-inch display has 300 PPI, which makes books look razor-sharp. Amazon has been focusing on firmware updates for this model and has released four updates since it came out. The Scribe is a brand-new product category for Amazon, and customers seem to be adopting it in droves; since its release, it has had more ratings than the Oasis.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
