Amazon’s website has gone haywire again. It seems to think it’s 2009 because the Kindle DX has suddenly resurfaced in Amazon’s search results, and it’s even available to order again for $489.
Yeah, right. The listing says it’s “Temporarily out of stock,” but you can place an order and Amazon will “deliver it when available”. You might be waiting a while considering they stopped making the Kindle DX over a decade ago.
Maybe Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, Dufus (sorry, Rufus), has gained sentience and has taken control of Amazon’s website but it doesn’t know what year it is (years probably blur together when you don’t have to live through them and yet know everything that happened).
Looking back at the Kindle DX, it’s surprising how much Kindles have changed since then. The Kindle DX had a 9.7″ E Ink screen with 150 ppi. It had a physical keyboard like the original Kindle, with page buttons and a nav controller since it didn’t have a touchscreen. It had 3G wireless to download books because it didn’t have WiFi, and it only had 4GB of storage space (which is actually plenty for ebooks).
One thing the Kindle DX did have was a rotation sensor to automatically rotate the screen from portrait to landscape view, which was considered a pretty big deal at the time. It also had a headphone jack and speakers, which is something all modern Kindles lack (along with cellular connectivity).
For a long time Amazon didn’t sell any large-screen Kindles after they discontinued the Kindle DX. But Amazon finally released the Kindle Scribe in 2022.
The Kindle Scribe is an upgrade in just about every way, and the funny thing is the most expensive version is still less expensive than the first gen Kindle DX—the E Ink tax was really high back then.
Some people really liked the Kindle DX but it was never nearly as popular as other Kindles. They only released two models over two years. It kind of seems like it’s the same story with the Kindle Scribe; hopefully it will stick around for longer than two versions.
Interesting how it says it has a native PDF reader. Wish they’d kept that little feature. But US$489? Is this a scam? Because it sure seems like it.
Amazon’s website has done this before. I doubt the order would go through, but $489 is what the original Kindle DX sold for new.
For real?! I thought that price was some kind of error. I wish I could say I feel better about the price of the Colorsoft compared to that, but I still feel ripped off. I adore my Colorsoft but $80 for a thin film is a bit much.
If it really was available, you might have a tough time getting Kindle books on it with no more download & transfer and ancient cellular.
I didn’t think of that. The DX has basically been bricked by Amazon at this point. You’d have to remove the DRM from your ebooks to even be able to use it, and I’m sure the PDF software hasn’t aged well. The PDF software on current Kindles isn’t even all that great when you can’t even crop margins.
The most popular review on the page is interesting. It’s a mock Q&A from 2009. One of the questions is “no color [screen]?” The answer predicts Amazon will offer a color Kindle one day but suggests the technology isn’t there yet. I doubt the person would have predicted one would come 15 years later.
Color e-ink has been a “Next Year™” thing for about that long.