Kindle Oasis 2

FINALLY, A PREMIUM EBOOK READER THAT’S WORTH THE ASKING PRICE?

IT’S BEEN ABOUT 18 months since Amazon’s original Kindle Oasis was launched, a premium ereader that dropped jaws with its unconventional design — where one side is considerably thicker than the other — and rather outlandish price; in Australia, buying one would set you back $449.

Amazon’s second-gen Oasis ups the ante in numerous areas and this is a redesign that, by and large, has definitely been worth it. This is a premium ereader that finally feels like it does enough to match its price tag. With an aluminium body and a matte-finish glass panel to cover its high-res, 7-inch E Ink display (adding an inch over its predecessor), the new Oasis has an almost iPad-like feel that’s both classy and durable. It’s also the first Kindle to include water-proofing, where it beats most flagship smartphones with an IPX8 rating.

And yet despite those improvements, the price is also more palatable in Australia, dropping $60 to a slightly more reasonable $389 for the 8GB model — although opting for the bigger 32GB model will still set you back $529.

The asymmetrical design, which gives you a nice big holding area on one side of the display and thin bezels everywhere else, is unusual- looking, but works very well in use. Swap from holding the Oasis in your left to right hand (or vice versa) and the screen orientation automatically flips around to accomodate. The two dedicated page-turning buttons have a satisfying and reassuringly stable click when you press them, and that 7-inch, 300dpi display is gorgeous, too, rendering text and images with the same sharp and smooth results we saw on the first Oasis.

There’s another neat new trick underneath the Oasis’s hood, too: Audible audiobook support. There’s a big caveat, though, in that you can only output audio via Bluetooth — there are no inbuilt speakers or a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you’ll need to have a wireless speaker or set of headphones to use it.

The Oasis isn’t the only premium reader out there, though. Kobo’s slightly cheaper Aura ONE offers a 7.8-inch display and the same water-proofing, but uses a plastic body that, while durable, lacks the premium feel of the Oasis. The Kobo does have a couple of capabilities that make it worth carefully considering, however. The first is a dedicated ‘night mode’ for backlighting, which changes the backlight tone from blue-white to orange, which is less disruptive to sleep. The Oasis has no such feature — you can adjust brightness, but the colour-tone is always a neutral white.

A slight concession is Amazon has added a new optional viewing mode, letting you reverse convention and have white text on a black background, which should help reduce the amount of blue light being bounced into your eyes.

The other main caveat with Kindle is that you still can’t borrow library ebooks in Australia. Our libraries use the Overdrive system, which the Kobo range of readers support, but Kindles do not. There’s also no native integration with a read-it-later service, like Kobo has with Pocket ( www.getpocket.com), although you can email stories or use a free service like Pocket 2 Kindle to achieve this.

If you’re an existing Kindle owner that already owns a wide selection of Amazon ebooks and are looking for an upgrade, the new Oasis should be a no-brainer. This is a fantastic ereader that delivers a premium reading experience on almost all fronts. If you haven’t jumped on the ereader boat yet, however, the Kobo’s Aura ONE is an equally strong contender, albeit for different reasons. Consider carefully.