When Amazon released its flagship Kindle and called it Oasis, the name couldn’t be more fitting. Although the market has already been flooded with more advanced tablets, the E Ink-based tablet seems to have really stood tall on its own in an industry where advancements in tablets seem to be happening on a daily basis. The Oasis is for reading only and to be honest, there isn’t a lot you can do with it other than that.
But Amazon has done its fair share of updates on the Kindle Oasis. It looks like the tablet has not stagnated in any way especially when you consider the year after year updates on its core technology. Although the Kindle Oasis is not a red carpet device that’s hyped all over the place, there are a lot of consumers who would love to have it. This year’s Prime Day marked the single biggest day sales for Kindle.
There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm towards the device so it’s not a surprise that Amazon has been busy updating its premier Kindle radically. The all-new Kindle Oasis has a number of notable design improvements and the 7 inch diagonally sized device will start selling on Wednesday. This will also be the first ever waterproof device released by the e-commerce giant.
There’s a resemblance though between the new version of the Kindle Oasis and the previous $289 model that was released about a year ago. To start with, it’s incredibly slim. In fact, it’s almost “paper thin” at 0.13 inches on one side, and then fattens substantively though to almost a third of an inch on the other end to accommodate the battery.
However, even with these similarities, there are other notable differences between the new Kindle Oasis and the previous model. The composite body on the previous model has been replaced with a unibody aluminum chassis. In addition to this, the smooth curve connecting the thinner side of the tablet to the fatter one has now taken a scallop design. This has significantly improved and secured the grip. The screen is also large at 7 inches although the 300 ppi resolution remains the same as in the previous model.
The new Kindle Oasis has a metal back which makes it relatively heavy compared to the previous device, and comes with a neat companion cover (optional) that can double up as a stand too. You will also get six weeks of battery life. Amazon has integrated the Audible Audiobook service into the device. You can use headphones for the audiobooks or listen through Bluetooth speakers.
The new Kindle Oasis will start at $249 with 8 GB of storage. If you love Audible, there’s a 32 GB model too. There are also a few software changes on the new device. Upgrading the Kindle Oasis is quite strategic for Amazon seeing how popular the device has become in the recent years. We can only hope that this progress continues into the future.
