Amazon’s redesigned Kindle Oasis reader costs a whopping $290

The new Kindle that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos teased last week has been officially unveiled, and it's not a replacement for the expensive Kindle Voyage but rather an even more expensive reader called the Kindle Oasis. The $290 device ($310 without Special Offers, $360 with optional free 3G service) is available for preorder now and customers will begin getting them on April 27th.

All recent Kindles have been riffs on the same basic design, a 6-inch touchscreen surrounded by symmetrical bezels. That design slowly replaced the old QWERTY keyboard non-touch versions starting around 2011 or so and had completely replaced the keyboarded Kindles by the time the Kindle DX was retired a couple of years later. The Oasis changes things up again, switching to an asymmetrical design that you flip over if you want to switch the hand you're holding it in; there's also a raised bump on the back to make holding the reader more comfortable. At its thinnest point, the reader is 0.13 inches (3.4mm), the bump is 0.33 inches (8.5mm) thick, and the reader weighs 4.6 ounces (131g).

One downside of that lighter, thinner design is that the Oasis by itself won't last as long as the other Kindles—Amazon says it will last about two weeks on a charge rather than a month. The good news is that the Oasis' included charging cover allows it to last for another six weeks for a total of two months of battery life. The cover comes in black, "merlot," and "walnut" finishes, and it adds a further 3.8 ounces (107g) to the total weight of the reader.

The Oasis retains the 6-inch 1448×1072 300 PPI E-Ink touchscreen from the Voyage, though it's missing the ambient light sensor that helps the Voyage adjust its light level based on your environment. The frontlight uses 10 LEDs for illumination compared to six in the Voyage and four in the Paperwhite, which Amazon says will light up pages more evenly and consistently.

Finally, the Oasis includes the much-requested return of actual physical buttons for page turning, something Amazon removed from most Kindles a few years ago. The Voyage includes pressure-sensitive "buttons" in the bezel you can use for page turning if you don't want to smudge up your screen, but the actual click of a physical button is still more reliable and satisfying overall.

The existing Kindle Voyage, Paperwhite, and standard Kindle are all still available at their former price points of $200, $120, and $80, respectively (add $20 to remove Special Offers in all cases). The Paperwhite's 300 PPI screen and frontlight mean that it's still the best deal of the bunch of you want a high-end reader that's relatively affordable, even if it lacks some of the frills of the more expensive models.

The Oasis looks nice, but it's too bad that it's so expensive—we had trouble justifying the Voyage's $200 price tag for a simple, single-use device like an e-reader, and for all of its interesting additions, the Oasis makes that problem worse. We'll have a full review of the device in the coming weeks.

Listing image by Amazon