Amazon's New Kindle Is Only $80, Comes In White, and With More Storage

Found the $290 Kindle Oasis too expensive? Amazon has a new, familiar e-reader for you. On Wednesday, the e-commerce giant announced a new, more-affordable Kindle that is pretty much identical to the Kindle Paperwhite, but costs only $80. It comes in white as well as black, and has 512MB storage space (the Kindle Paperwhite sport a 256MB internal storage chip). From an Ars Technica report:In addition to the extra memory, the $80 Kindle will have a slightly thinner, lighter, and more rounded design than its predecessors. It will have a touchscreen display as well, but it won't be the 300 PPI screen that the $120 Kindle Paperwhite has (it will sport a 167 PPI display instead). Some reports also suggest that the new Kindle will come with Bluetooth support so blind readers can hook up a pair of wireless headphones to listen to books, along with a note-sending feature that will let you send yourself messages and highlights, which can be exported as PDFs or spreadsheets.

Comments

Wait

[fustakrakich]

No headphone jack?

No thanks.

[mfh]

I'll read PDFs and use audiobooks on devices that won't delete my library whenever they want. That goes for you too, Apple.

Users > Companies

Re:No thanks.

[dslauson]

I read on a Kindle every day, and it's almost entirely content not purchased from Amazon. I use SendToKindle and InstaPaper to send interesting articles to my Kindle, I get books from the public library, Project Gutenberg, or buy them from other DRM-free sellers. Sometimes you have to convert from ePub using Calibre, but if you're already using Calibre to manage your eBooks, it's easy and seamless.

Re:No thanks.

[CRCulver]

I'll read PDFs and use audiobooks on devices that won't delete my library whenever they want

I have owned a Kindle now for three years (upgraded to the Paperwhite last year) and have never bought an ebook -- everything that I read comes from pirated ebook communities or Project Gutenburg. Since the moment I took the Kindle out of the box, it has been in airplane mode, so it doesn't connect to anything outside. Kindles have been problematic if you use them to read content purchased from Amazon, but if you simply don't do that, they are great and reliable e-readers.

Get the facts right please

[MarcAuslander]

It has 4G if storage just like the paperwhite.
It does NOT have a screen light so it's not just like a paperwhite at all.

https://www.amazon.com/All-New...

Re:Get the facts right please

[angel'o'sphere]

I recommend the Kobo GLO, 6", touch interface and light. Micro SD slot.

It runs _linux_ not Android, is easy "hacked". I find it convenient. Most of my books I read on it and not on my iPad.

Re:Get the facts right please

[Lacrocivious Acropho]

Kobo rarely even gets mentioned in ereader discussions, but it is better than any other device on the market for myriad reasons, chief among which are that: (1) it reads just about every format ebooks have ever used; (2) It is arguably more easily independent of any vendor lock-in, walled-garden BS than any other ereader; and (3) it *functions* better than most ereaders in the first place.

Combined with Calibre, nothing can touch it. I have the Kobo Aura H2O with well over 1000 hours use and that device has definitely qualified among the 'cold dead fingers' realm of my possessions. Note that I avoid all non-locally-controllable anything like the plague, especially including walled-garden, proprietary-diseased clouds and their ilk, where I am supposed to trust some third party -- who holds my wellbeing in the lowest possible regard -- to act in my best interests. No thank you. The Kobo line is as close to Open Hardware ereaders as we are likely to see in the near future.

Re:Get the facts right please

[dbIII]

The Onyx Boox and a few others are very open but don't have the integration with a "store". None of them are as cheap as the ones that are associated with a "store" so the Kobo is a midpoint with "enough control" for the user. The ones where you buy a device outright and do what you like without any attempt to tie you into ongoing costs are very expensive, but they exist. The eink patent holders really screwed over the small players.

please, editors

[dabadab]

So, to get this right:
  - it's an update of the basic Kindle
  - the "memory" referred to in the summary is the system RAM, the storage space probably remains 4 GB (but Amazon is not very good at supplying exact specs for the Kindle line)
  - its screen has nothing to do with the Paperwhite's, it remains the same old 167 ppi, unlit screen of Kindle 4 vintage
  - the touchscreen was introduced by the 2014 update, it stays the same
  - the price also stays the same, $100 or $80 with ads
  - it actually got a little lighter and smaller

Re:please, editors

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to the page on Amazon for this or the other devices and click on the "Technical Details" link, it will display exactly how much storage is on the device, which is 4GB for all the Kindle e-readers.

Pretty much the same ...

[thegarbz]

"Pretty much identical to the kindle paperwhite. "

Except for the backlight
Oh and half the screen resolution (same as the one from 5 years ago)
And no 3G

Yeah so pretty much identical except for lacking all the features of the more expensive model.

I love reading on the Kindle

[93 Escort Wagon]

But I also prefer the page turn buttons - which means my only option, if I want to replace my aging-and-somewhat-dog-chewed third-gen Kindle, is to spend a lot more money. And so, given how silly it seems to me to spend that much money basically on buttons, I'm thinking why bother spending so much on a single-purpose device?

So, in the end, my next "Kindle" will probably just be a new tablet. I already read on my iPad Mini sometimes, and it's not a bad experience. Plus I can play SpellSpire on it.

Calbre is Awesome

[CrashNBrn]

I was extremely surprised and impressed with Calibre. I tried at least a half-dozen different applications to just be able to "view epub's" on a PC.
Microsoft's Store was useless. Over half of the apps listed weren't even epub readers. You can't install even or download a "windows store" app without activating a Microsoft Account.
The included "pdf" viewer can't read epubs.
Every single other native-windows (non-Windows Store) app that I installed required an account to be setup with them - just to manage LOCAL files.

Then finally, ok lets try Calibre. It just works.

Then... I realize (after "Inspecting") epub|mobi is freaking just HTML.

Even FF requires a 1MB extension add-on to view epubs. W-T-F.

Re:What decade is this

[MightyYar]

RAM, not storage. It's only displaying some text and the occasional black-and-white image. Half a gig is overkill - this thing isn't doing anything that your $2000 486 couldn't do in 16MB.