Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

You can sideload your books over USB too, using Calibre for instance.

I own a few Kindle models and a Kobo Forma as well. The Kindles do have some quirks and bugs (e.g., disappearing books, issues with sideloaded fonts…). But my Kobo Forma’s battery completely died after a couple years of usage, and the device became completely unreliable. After that experience, I’ve resigned myself to live with the Kindle’s problems.

Interestingly, I switched from Kindle to Kobo because it was lacking various basic features that made it not feel premium.

* Kobo epubs can show "pages in chapter" progress so I know how much longer there is until a nice stopping point, while Kindle only shows "minutes left in chapter" which is functionally useless.

* Kobo had blue light blocking night shift before Kindle Paperwhite (I think both have it now?)

* Kobo had a convenient feature where you slide your finger along the side of the screen to change brightness, instead of having to go into multiple menus to do this.

It's possible these things have been remedied, but especially the chapter progress thing put such a bad taste in my mouth that I never wanted to touch Kindle again.

No, you can sideload books using USB mass storage. It's pretty easy. Kindle Paperwhite is still a great experience even without using the Amazon book ecosystem.

Here's a hands-on Kindle Colorsoft review, Amazon's first color Kindle is the e-reader of my dreams,

https://www.tomsguide.com/tablets/e-readers/kindle-colorsoft...

submitted earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41858947

I still have a paperwhite which is ok.

My favorite device right now is a boox Go6, smallish, cheap, android. I don't use many apps on it other than the reader but threw a copy of Kiwix on there, and use it as a writing deck using a bluetooth keyboard, hits a lot of semi-offline use cases for me.

Most important! The yoga cover is great for laying on either side, so I can toss and turn in bed and keep reading. Literally no e-reader I have seen since has a symmetrical stand-cover that can be used sideways both ways.

As for Kobo, I just looked the other day and saw they have some great prices for e-readers that have similar features, plus they advertise being completely repairable! And you're not in the Amazon ecosystem. My only gripe years ago was the don't rendering on side loaded books wasn't as good as Amazon, and that Calibre couldn't De-DRM Kobo books as well as Amazon. I think the game has changed a bit, though, and I haven't tested anything in a while.

If Kobo books are crackable, my next e-reader will likely take me away from Amazon. I want that USB-C in my life.

I managed to jailbreak my "Kindle Oasis 3" and install KOreader [1] and Syncthing on it (the process of achieving this, as described on mobileread.com/forums was quite horrible by the way.) Very happy with the result though, books are just synced automatically with my Macbook via Syncthing.

Hopefully somehow a similar setup will be possible with the new Kindles, if they can also be jailbroken.

PS. The Kindle Oasis 3 is still great in 2024, it even automatically adjusts brightness with its light sensor.

[1] https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Paperwhite 5: 124.6 x 174.2 x 8.1 mm

Paperwhite 6: 127.6 x 176.7 x 7.8 mm

(I want / need it to run KOReader because I wrote a small Lua plugin for it that syncs reading stats (words per minute, minutes read per year, etc) to a centralized server.)

The resolution and size just nails it, and my favourite feature is the warm backlighting for reading at night. Battery lasts forever, and I can just put it on my Samsung phone stand for wireless charging once in a blue moon - not once have I run out of battery.

I fall asleep so easily to this, currently on the Eisenhorn 40k Omnibus book - and a 184 week reading streak.

I used to be excited about new Kindle releases, have had one since the mammoth DXG - but no more, I'm good now with this, so don't see myself forking out $400 AUD for the new one (with a leather cover).

Also bought one (also a SE) for my son, with a different colour magnetic leather cover. :-)

Really? I had to make an account to "activate" my Kobo, but it wouldn't let me make one because I already had an old account with one of their partner websites, whose auth servers were malfunctioning, so it took like two hours to be able to "activate" the device.

Is there a way to bypass that?

The PocketBook cloud is just as seamless as the syncing with Amazon if that is something you use. Only time I notice problems is during the weekly maintenance window which just looks like an outage. It has bidirectional sync for your progress as well as syncing new books and has a web interface and a phone app. Also offers the same email endpoint service as Kindle and you can set up Adobe DRM to use with library borrowing as well as other places that distribute ascm. The builtin store probably doesn't have the same availability of titles as Amazon but I haven't used it since I manage my library with Calibre and buy my books from various stores.

Best of all is the customizability. Don't want to use their store or cloud? You can turn off (really just not setup and hide) all the features and integrations individualy to make it an "offline" reader but still bring it online for things like Wikipedia lookup and web searches. You don't even need an account to set it up. You can also load additional dictionaries, fonts, and even applications on it. It has a healthy if small development scene.

There is a new color version but if you don't read things that require color I would get the original; Based on reviews it has the the same downside as Kobo and others that use the Kalaido screen where it's relatively dimmer in ambient light compared to the B/W one and so needs a higher average backlight level to compensate.

Overall I've been really happy with my switch and can't see myself going back to Kindle.

Oh well, at least my Voyage still works and fits in most pockets (and has cool origami cover), the only downside is that if not in airplane mode, it uses up battery in 2-3 days. In airplane mode I can read 2-3 weeks.

I agree in principle (slow feedback is the bane of my existence) but I had one of those 10 inch Kindle DX without touch, and it was a pretty bad experience compared to the Paperwhite.

Physical buttons (and possibly the orientation sensor?) were definitely nice to have though.

I'm also impressed by the improvements to Gallery 3 displays used in the latests reMarkable. Gallery 3 has typically had much better colours, contrast and brightness when compared to Kaleido 3. Now I'm very curious for the reviews.

Finally the physical page turn buttons are great as well as the bevel on the back for holding it with one hand.

Both are features that complement each other. If I can’t read in the rain I don’t want it. This means disabling the touch screen and using the physical buttons to page turn, otherwise you are using hacks like putting it inside a plastic baggie. Haptic buttons would be fine as well, and likely solve some of the waterproof issues along with an update to USB-C charging.

Pondering having someone mule me the last of the Oasis International editions available for sale for when my current Oasis finally dies. I really don’t want to go back to the dark ages of touchscreen only.

I did know of its drawbacks beforehand — e.g. no physical buttons, not waterproof. The page-turning response/refresh time is noticeably better, but I'm left feeling pretty meh by the overall experience. I haven't had much need to scribble notes so as of now, the Scribe is basically an iPad-sized device with the limited feature set of the Paperwhite.

The size is good for textbook-type material, but not enough to make me pick it over an iPad if I'm traveling. The Oasis is small enough that I can carry it in a coat pocket.

But the buttons really are the killer feature. Being able to disable the touchscreen — especially when I'm anywhere where moisture is an issue (at the beach or gym) — easily makes the Oasis worth bringing even if I could read on my phone. I would have easily gone for a new version of the Oasis but I guess consumers haven't shown enough interest in paying extra for a button interface.

The joke was the same, we had a board game, then we made a mobile video game based on the board game, now they are selling a board game based on the video game that was based on the board game.

Especially for things like reading contracts which I find miserable on a screen

apart from the physical buttons the paperwhite signature has all of these.

jailbreaking sure but what is the issue with sideloading on kindles? You can either email them which is very practical for third party services that support it (I have a digital magazine subscription that supports this for example) or just drag and drop via USB or a manager like calibre.

I have never had any issues getting documents on the Kindle.

That said, I do think they should just give the number in terms of page refreshes and let the users figure it out from there.

> So, it has 28 hours of actual use time, got it.

Reminds me of when Quorn sold 3 sausage rolls but labelled them as 12, arguing that if you cut each one in 4 you get 12. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42251481

The "Up to 33 hours of video playback" for the iPhone Pro Max[0] for instance is an absolutely insane use case (nobody's letting their phone passively play local videos for a day and a half), and gives little insight into how long it can stay in sheer standby, do video meetings or handle slack.

[0] https://www.apple.com/iphone-16-pro/

It seemed like if you wanted a large ebook reader AND occasional note taking, it's probably great. For my use, I would have been just as happy with just a spiral notebook, probably happier. I used it every day for work notes and todos.

I sold it on ebay and got an Boox Note Air3, similar cost, and the writing experience is not nearly as good as the Scribe, but it is a much more capable device with many more features in the notebook. However, I've fallen out of the habit of using it, I think just because the writing experience isn't as good.

Remarkable, as a newer, smaller company, needs to seriously differentiate itself. Amazon can play it safer.

Having said that, I think the white bezel and introducing a professional looking colour to the Scribe, is so much better looking than my current Gen 1.

I normally wouldn't care, I didn't feel my scribe was ugly, until I saw the new one. I'm half considering passing mine to my mother, and buying the new version.

It wish it was A4/Letter size to read PDFs at full size. There are a few devices like that out there (I've heard the Fujitsu Quaderno is nice), but none of them can be used with books purchased at Amazon.

And yes, I know about Calibre and the DeDRM tools. They don't work on KFX files and the workarounds degrade the book (you lose typography improvements that are only in KFX).

I'm also disappointed by the Oasis being discontinued. I wanted to trade mine in for a USB-C version.

For me at least, issues with an e-ink device simply mean moving on to another device, or another manufacturer/brand, instead of switching to tablets.

I think this has gotten a free replacement Kindle on 2 of 3 times that I’ve tried it.

I have the newest paperwhite (prior to the one announced here) and it is incredibly fast and zippy compared to the kindles of old. And they claim the new one is even 25% faster.

I bought a colour Kobo. Super responsive by comparison. The colour isn't wonderful, I like that it's there.

Also, physical buttons! Such things are only available on the most expensive Kindle, I didn't realize how much I'd missed them.

I had hope at one point to set up a Kindle with large fonts on a treadmill, but that was just totally hopeless. I tried again with a music stand next to the treadmill, but it was too far away, badly angled, and touching the device to flip pages could still turn it off.

And it's not just the accidental power-off, it's also the accidental power-on. I slip the Kindle into a tight pocket in my backpack, and it sometimes turns on by itself. Further, inserting it into the pocket can sometimes reproduce the swipe motion, so it can be on and active (and sometimes randomly page-flipping) inside my backpack.

I was disappointed at first the Scribe didn't have buttons, but now I don't care.

Maybe other devices have been more life changing but their trade offs have all been greater than the Kindles.

I'm on my third device now, and I have a couple of them which just won't clear. Not the end of the world but eventually there will be so many that reading is just a pain.

- The standby screen is the book cover of your most recent read.

- No amazon shenanigans. Works just fine with calibre or the local library (onleihe).

- I bought my kobo aura hd in 2013 IIRC. Battery is still fine. Apparently newer models even have an ifixit partnership https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/21137184146071-Repai...

That said, there are some additional drawbacks which make me like physical books still:

- For physical books you have an intuitive understand and memory where in the book something happened, e.g. in the first quarter or on an earmarked page. On an ereader every book and every page feels the same.

- Easy multi page view and crossref. For instance, I can have two textbooks about the same subject open and easily compare different sections by just using bookmarks and spreading them on my desk. For that I would need multiple ereaders. Same reason a tablet with pen is nice but feels limiting.

- DRM is annoying enough to be basically an ad for piracy. Get the ebook, download, add it to adobe software, connect cable, transfer to ereader, disconnect cable, still doesn't work, reauthorize device, maybe it works. Meanwhile without drm: add to calibre, get book via wifi, done.

- Maybe better with newer tech, but eink was still somewhat lower resolution and contrast compared to a printed book. Also, page turning is fast enough but not seamless.

It broke because I had it in my back pocket and I sat on it. Bought a new one immediately.

I've yet to have any measurable battery degradation on either and I read 1-3 books a month. (Including 1000+ page monsters by Brandon Sanderson).

Of course, the situation reverses when you’re trying to search a word rather than a page. It’s too convenient to use a global search function on e-readers.

However, I have been experiencing annoying software bugs with both my Paperwhite and my Kindle Scribe. Unresponsiveness, disappearing books, issues with sideloaded fonts… the devices’ software quality has greatly diminished lately.

You need a word of caution here. These devices are very good for writing but absolutely suck at rendering ebooks. I was on the market for a new e-reader/writer ultimately decided to go for the Boox Note Air 3 (no backlight on the Go was a deal breaker) and I think remarkable really dropped the ball by releasing the Paper Pro with a pen that needs a battery. Coming from years of using a Kobo Ellipsa, this was a huge deal breaker. The Remarkable 2 is a bit old and underpowered not to mention the limited amount of storage space.

It’s one of my favorite purchases, because now I can actually fall asleep while reading the kindle since I’m not activating my arm muscles to turn every page.

This is the item (my kindle is one of the earliest versions, from 2011, if that matters): https://amzn.eu/d/aJaesjd

Connecting a Bluetooth remote to the Paperwhite or using the Scribe's pen to turn pages remotely would be fantastic.

I can't understand why remote page-turning capabilities are not being included.

There are multiple listings on Amazon for the clip on remotes that have 10,000 reviews. The use-case is common.

https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/catalog

Kobos are mostly just arm linux machines. You can install KOReader on them for a better reading experience.

[1]: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

Kobo you can put custom scripts on to run stuff like koreader which is nice.

Bro I can wake up my Kindle, buy essentially any book I want to read for less than $20 and be reading it in less than 30 seconds.

The Kindle has been one of the most amazing and consumer friendly devices I’ve ever used. I think I spent like $2k on books last year on it.

I have been considering Boox Air 3C. PDFs are important for me.

Thanks.

Of note, the screen seems slower to update when waking up or going to the home screen and keyboard touch points seem slightly off and I'm not sure why that is.

None of the later version have peeked my interest, because I don't gain anything, compared to my 12 year old Kindle. Prices have gone up, but I've lost the physical button, so I pay more to lose a feature I really like.

Amazon could have more or less stopped Kindle development in 2012 and just worked on reducing the cost ever since and it would still have been a great e-reader.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T8CZYF3?th=1

It's almost a pocketbook form-factor. I overlooked it initially because who wants a basic model? but the only thing I miss in practice is waterproofing. That, and the Oasis OEM cover which was unexpectedly nice, like a leather-bound pocketbook.

Funny, because I'd like a larger one.

When e-readers first started, one of the big companies offered a machine that would display an entire page of The New York Times on it large enough to be able to skim the headlines, then you'd tap on the article and it would take you to that part of the page.

Back then, I didn't have the money for it. Now I do, and the only options seem to be too small.

If you need an eReader, something with an LCD screen will refresh faster than something with an eInk display.

A further difficulty is the file formats being used --- ages ago, I tried to argue for an ebook format which specifically noted markup and content as being decorative or semantic and looking over the specification I don't see that that was ever really worked up.

That said, a further difficulty is even if a feature is in the spec, it's not certain if the various hardware and readers would actually be implemented.

One back-burner project I've had for a while is to take a publication, make it into an ePub, then use the ePub as the source for a nicely typeset version (or more likely, series of versions) --- gotta finish a bunch of other projects first.

FWIW, it seems to me that a lot of the effort into nice typography/appearance is going into the "coffee table" sort of books which these days are stand-alone apps such as:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/...

and it seems to me that there is a lot of potential for such documents which is as-of-yet only poorly explored --- some examples which seem to be reaching towards this:

- Bembo's Zoo --- this used to be a Flash-based website which was delightful: https://jilltxt.net/bembos-zoo/ --- it really needs to be brought back

- Euclid’s Elements Joyce's Java Version --- https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm... --- I refer to and link to this version by preference

- Motion Mountain: The free physics textbook --- https://www.motionmountain.net/ --- if this would read well in a PDF viewer on the Kindle Colorsoft, I'd get one --- as it is, I've been reading through it on my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and it's done a lot to help my understanding of physics

- various CD-ROMs and other multimedia efforts --- "The Manhole" became Myst which became a franchise unto itself, Broderbund's "Living Books" are now a popular line of apps, the Voyager series which was _amazing_ and I'd dearly love to see revisited https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1995/01/02/t...

- Leonardo da Vinci CD-ROM which was a wonderful interface for exploring the "Codex Leicester" --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci_(video_game)

I'd be very interested in other texts which explore this space and which have the potential for nice typography.

That said, I am fine with just reading ebooks on my Kindle w/ flush-left, ragged-right and having the ability to report the (apparently inevitable) typo.

I use a Remarkable tablet (the Scribe's competitor) for the exact reason that it doesn't come with apps for email or web browsing or an app store or a weather app. It writes really really well (the scribe does too) and lets you focus on that. It doesn't try to be the 4th version of a smart device when you already have so many.

The simplicity of it is a feature not a bug.

I hope Kobo releases a new Elipsa. I waited for the new reMarkable, but it is full of subscription garbage.

If you had separate paths for each language, most links would have an unnecessary /en/.

The reading experience is a little more bare bones, but good enough, and still offers things a physical book does not.

But, with that all said... it's great for my specific uses. Android is just so much better if you want to run self-hosted stuff. When it dies or the software just gets that old I'll be really at a loss for what to get to replace it.

Could you expand on that? I load all my books via calibre but I also have the kindle set to aeroplane mode at all times. Does this happen when syncing?

This is news to me. All my kindle library is books side loaded via calibre. Then again, my kindle paperwhite is non stop in airplane mode so maybe this is a factor. In any case this is alarming and thanks for the feedback, I will read more about non-Amazon devices because of that.

Honestly, I just wanted an open reflective reader just for reading. Just put the books on the reader with usb and you're done.

I liked the remarkable 2 - they didn't require an account or cloud syncing. I didn't use the pen much, but when I did it was pretty good. I mostly stopped using it because no backlight.

I tried a kobo clara 2e - I had to learn about "sideloadedmode=true" in the settings to use it properly. Decent reader, but a little small. I like dark mode.

then I stumbled on the pocketbook inkpad lite. I use it all the time. 9.7" screen but only $219, backlight, and you just put your books on it and go. No activation or cloud stuff required.

Also, it reads books directly not only in epub, but many other formats like mobi and azw. (I haven't tried .azw)

One thing in particular is that the physical page turning buttons are very useful. None of Amazon's new Kindles have physical page turning buttons any more from what I see in the reports.

It's usually in airplane mode, but I of course turn syncing on whenever I buy a book from Amazon, and it never deleted any of my sideloaded books.

I wonder if this is a "feature" of new Paperwhites? If so, it would suck. I was looking to replace mine because it has the old micro USB connector that no other device I own uses, and so I must keep a cable just for it.

Never had that happen, either with stuff loaded through Calibre or Amazons document service.

It is one of my favorite pieces of software. The UI is beautiful and, to be honest, inspirational. It frequently reminds me that the best UI should not be noticed. Humbling.

[0] https://github.com/baskerville/plato

It was so good I got a second one for my 5 year old daughter, figured it was a good alternative to the iPads I see her peers with.

I wonder if there is a way to do that safely, long term.

Notifications and a kind of recent android version are two deal breakers.