As someone who has been following the dedicated ereader market for the past 16 years, it seems like Kindles, to some extent, have lost their shine over the past few years.
There has always been an anti-Amazon crowd, and there has always been plenty of Kindle detractors out there, but it just seems like Kindles are slowly becoming less appealing to the average consumer with each passing year.
Amazon is largely to blame for the decline of the Kindle brand. With all the things they’ve done to anger and alienate customers it isn’t surprising to see the Kindle’s reputation being tarnished and talked down on constantly on social media.
Amazon’s decision to remove the ability to download Kindle ebooks for USB transfer earlier this year was a major turning point, in part because there was a lot of misinformation and confusion about what that meant exactly. And things have gotten steadily worse since then.
The general view of Kindles online has shifted. They used to be regarded as a marvel with their long battery life and high contrast screens that are easily readable outside, with the ability to download books anywhere anytime. But now Kindles are largely viewed as the “uncool” brand because the perception is they’re too locked down and overly controlled by Amazon. Now anytime the topic of buying a Kindle comes up online, you see a bunch of comments from people saying not to buy a Kindle for a myriad of reasons, and most are exaggerated half-truths.
The talk of jailbreaking Kindles has increased dramatically. Now everybody thinks they have to jailbreak their Kindle in order to make it “useable” and people continue to push that narrative even though it isn’t necessarily true because they want to stick it to Amazon.
Amazon would be wise to make an effort to change the general perception of Kindles being too locked down and overly restricted. Even doing something as simple as adding native EPUB support would go a long way. Quit forcing people to use Send to Kindle to convert EPUBs to Kindle format if they don’t want to—what difference does it make. Another thing they could do is stop deleting sideloaded ebooks on Kindles. That would help the Kindle’s reputation a lot right there. Other brands aren’t participating in that kind of nonsense.
I bought the 2024 PaperWhite SE and I couldn’t be happier. It has the speed, ans screen size i really like. I have added extra fonts to help with my vision issues. No it doesn’t have page buttons and I wouldn’t use them if it did.
My only frustration is the now “lack of innovation” with Kindle e-readers. Amazon just keeps releasing essentially the same form of e-reader (not counting the color version, although the body form is the same). I really want a Kindle with buttons with an updated screen. I’d even be happy with the ability to scroll up and down. I don’t like having to tap on the screen.
My “travel” Kindle is the last generation Oasis and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I eventually got over the fact that the buttons are only on one side. (I’d prefer to have buttons on both sides.)
Luckily for them, the competition continues to shoot itself in the foot by focusing on colour ereaders, at least in the 7 inch market
Unfortunately true. The competition, i.e. Kobo, really ought to get a new 7″ reader out there, and also an update to their 8″ reader.
Whether either will happen is unknown. It’s also unknown whether Kobo just plans to focus on color mostly going forward, or if the lack of new BW devices is more about the current tariff situation. It’s too bad, because Kobo has made some fine BW readers and not all of us want the compromises of color e-ink. And now would be an EXCELLENT time to collect a few disgruntled Amazon customers.
Very happy I picked up a second Sage recently!