The Amazon Kindle Oasis.
Yesterday Amazon unveiled its latest e-reader, the Kindle Oasis. As promised by CEO Jeff Bezos, the Oasis is indeed top of the line — and it's all-new.
In fact, the design is the most radical departure Amazon has made to the Kindle e-reader lineup since it dropped the keyboard back in 2011.
SEE ALSO: The Amazon Kindle Oasis looks shockingly different
And I have to say, as a huge Kindle fan, I really like the Kindle Oasis. It looks like an excellent device. I like the new shape. I'm stoked that the company brought back the page buttons. It looks amazing. I absolutely want a Kindle Oasis.
But I'm not going to buy one. Why? Well, it's very simple: It costs $ 290.
Who is this for?
The question I keep asking myself about the Amazon Oasis is this: Who is this for? I genuinely do not know.
At first, I assumed I would be the target customer. I love my Amazon Kindle (I’ve owned three or four over the years) and prefer reading e-books to paper.
I'm also the type of consumer who usually doesn't get too upset by the price of a gadget. After all, I'm the same person who bought a pair of headphones purely because they match my phone.
But when I look at the Kindle Oasis and I compare it to the Kindle Paperwhite — or even the Kindle Voyage — I don't see the value proposition.
That's partially because the screen resolution and display technology are the same as on those two devices. Yes, the glass on the Oasis is probably nicer than that of the Voyage (and certainly nicer than the plastic screen of the Paperwhite), but the resolution remains a sharp, brilliant 300 pixels per inch (ppi).
The core of any e-reader experience is the screen
Now, that isn't to disparage the screen, which I'm sure is lovely. It's simply to point out that at its core, the display on the $ 290 Kindle Oasis is the same as the $ 120 Kindle Paperwhite or the $ 200 Kindle Voyage.
And putting aside any of the other niceties about ergonomics and thinness, the core of any e-reader experience is the screen.
The screen is the center of the device and all of the other engineering feats almost don't even matter if the core experience is going to be exactly the same as a device that costs nearly $ 200 less.
What it is missing
It's frustrating for me to look at a product like the Oasis because it's almost something that I could talk myself into buying. If it were waterproof, that alone would be a big draw. The reason I had to replace my last Paperwhite was because I spent too much time with its older brother in a hot tub over Christmas.
If the screen was larger — even though that has its own drawbacks — I could also see the case for a higher price.
If Amazon took the time to integrate audio into the new Kindle (old Kindle e-readers had audio jacks but Amazon removed them before the Paperwhite era) or voice support via Alexa, again, I could see that as being a draw to spend $ 290.
But that's not what Amazon has done. Amazon is steadfast in its vision to make Kindle e-ink devices all about reading.
In 2016, it's audacious to try to sell an e-reader for $ 290
The truth is that in 2016, it's really hard — I'll even say audacious — to try and sell an e-reader for $ 290.
Tablets not named iPad (even Amazon's tablets) don't sell for $ 290. For a single-purpose device without additional features, the pricing just feels wrong.
And ironically, the pricing feels wrong because Amazon moved to commoditize the e-reader. For the last five or six years, Amazon has done everything it could to push the price of an e-reader below the $ 150 mark. Amazon still sells a non-Paperwhite Kindle for under $ 100.
The Kindle Voyage debuted at a higher price than the Paperwhite, but it had a better screen for the first six months of its existence (I have to think most buyers just opted for the Paperwhite after it got a screen upgrade last summer). But there’s no screen improvement with the Oasis, which makes the pricing and placement in the line all the more strange.
I assume Amazon thinks it has a strong enough core base of diehard Kindle fans who will buy the product in quantities that make it worth selling.
Still, I'm not sure who those users are. And as much as I like the idea of the new Kindle Oasis, it's bothersome that the target market isn't clear.
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