We’re only four months into 2024 and Amazon has already discontinued two Kindles this year, while not releasing any new models since 2022. Meanwhile Kobo is releasing three new ereaders this month, two of them with color E Ink screens, and yet Amazon just keeps removing Kindles from their lineup without replacing them with anything new. What gives?
Amazon unceremoniously discontinued the Kindle Oasis back in February without replacing it with a newer model. Then last month I posted an article questioning if Amazon was phasing out the 8GB Kindle Paperwhite, and it turns out that was indeed the case. The 8GB Kindle Paperwhite is now gone and is no longer available to purchase.
In fact Amazon has removed the product page for the 8GB Kindle Paperwhite entirely; all old links now lead to a “Page Not Found” screen at Amazon, just like when they phased out the 8GB kids model last year.
Now customers have to pay $10 more for the 16GB Kindle Paperwhite, regardless if they’ll ever use the extra storage space or not. At $150 with ads and $170 without, the Kindle Paperwhite isn’t as affordable as it used to be, especially compared to previous generation models, and sales are less frequent than they used to be too, and the sale prices are higher.
In years past, Amazon increased the storage space on Kindles mid-run without raising the price at all, but now you have to pay extra for that even if you don’t want the extra storage space.
I always thought it was silly to offer three different storage capacities on the Kindle Paperwhite anyway when that’s one of the least important features on an ereader considering the small size of ebooks. Like is it really that important to be able to have 10,000 ebooks downloaded all at once instead of just 5000? Navigating and organizing that many ebooks on a Kindle with Amazon’s limited library management is a nightmare either way.
Hopefully at some point the number of new Kindles getting released will surpass the number of Kindles that Amazon is discontinuing. This is starting to get ridiculous…
It is all about cost of manufacturing. It is actually cheaper to by 16gig memory chips than 8gig chips. But it is also marketing that dictates that larger must carry a bigger price. I got a excellent PW with 8gigs refurbished and to be honest I have gotten worse looking kindles brand new.
I don’t believe Amazon is going to completely stop selling Kindles because they have such a market with kindle books. But I don’t know what devices Amazon will bring to market either.
What makes sense to me is it would be better if Kindles supported micro sd cards (like the gen 1 did) rather than having multiple memory variants of the same device. Have one variant of each line even but with a sd slot so you can choose what amount of storage you need. I’m not a fan of cloud storage services which unfortunately to me is what is becoming the norm.
The thinking and reasoning is that slot is a moisture hazard, and Amazon and marketing is going for the water resistant aspect of the device.
And it’s extra cost/complexity, and the vast majority of users won’t use it with the built in capacities these days.
Yes, it’s mainly extra cost. It probably adds a dollar or two to the cost, which then needs to be passed on to the consumer. IMO this was a big deal back in the day when storage was 2 GB or 4GB on e-readers — but once they went to 8 GB and 16GB for storage — SD card support is much less of an issue.
I understand the cost thing but I see it to be more expensive to have multiple production lines for different memory sizes. For books you have to try hard to fill your storage but add in manga series, comics, graphic novels and it goes quick.
Also I’m pretty sure Kobo uses a sd slot but the card is glued in.
I thought that whole waterproof gimmick was only for the Oasis not the PW or Basic Kindle. Also I’m curious to know just how may people need a waterproof device? Are people swimming and reading? Or falling asleep in bathtubs?
Sony Xperia’s have a microSD slot and are ip68 rated so that’s not an issue. But I don’t think Amazon would be interested in adding that. They rather offer more cloud Storage.
Agreed. Water resistance is not the issue for not including SD card slots — it is just the small extra cost of adding them to devices. Not really needed anymore in e0readers now that 8 GB is the lowest amount of storage you’ll see in an e-reader these days, which is easily sufficient for most people.
I suppose for marketing sake it didn’t make sense to have a basic model with double the memory of the more expensive PW. But I have the 8GB PW and it works just fine.
I have a jailbroken PW5 and the library management system was my main reason for jailbreaking it, another important one being the non-removable margins. But the newer firmware versions can no longer be jailbroken, so I won’t buy another Kindle ever again.
Relax… New Kindles are coming, I’m sure. We just don’t know when. But we can think the holidays would be a good time.