Amazon’s full lineup of Kindles are on sale again, and the prices are the same as they were last month during Prime Day, but this time the sales aren’t available through Amazon.
Best Buy is doing their Black Friday in July sale, and all Kindles are deeply discounted, at least the ones that are still in stock. It looks like the basic Kindle is already sold out, unless you can find one at a nearby retail store. But they do have the Kindle kids bundle for $99.
During the sale, which ends Sunday, Best Buy has the Kindle Paperwhite marked down to $124.99 from $159.99, and the upgraded Signature Edition is on sale for $144.99. The Kindle Colorsoft can be had for $159.99 in its base configuration, and the Signature Edition is $219.99. The Paperwhite kids bundle is on sale for $139.99 and the Colorsoft kids bundle is $179.99.
The newer Kindle Scribes are on sale too. The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is marked down to $479.99 from $629.99. The black-and-white frontlit version is $379.99, down from $499.99. The only one that’s not on sale is the new Kindle Scribe without a frontlight—it wasn’t on sale during Prime Day either.
On a related note, Amazon has like-new 2024 Kindle Scribes on sale right now too. All versions are 20% off. The 16GB model can be had for $287.99, the 32GB version is $302.39, and the 64GB variant, which includes the metallic jade color, is $323.99. The 2024 model doesn’t have all the features of the newer Scribes—like Google Drive, OneDrive and OneNote support, and some of the latest AI features.
Best Buy always seems to do these late Prime Day sales on Kindles and other Amazon products; it must be part of their partnership agreement. The cool thing about Best Buy is you can get the same prices as Prime Day without having to pay for Prime or some other membership. There are some good deals to be had if you can get Best Buy’s molasses-based website to load properly.
On a different note, the new non-lit Kindle Scribe is shaping up to be a complete commercial disaster. Only three reviews, roughly 50 units sold in the last month, and Amazon still can’t justify a 20% discount. This may go down as the biggest Kindle flop Amazon has ever released.
It really is crazy considering how many millions of people shop at Amazon, and yet they’re only able to sell like 2 or 3 of the non-frontlit Kindle Scribes a day. Somebody really misjudged the market on that one.
If you have the money—and can justify spending $430 on a 16GB Scribe without a front light—how much harder is it to justify spending $500 for a 32GB Scribe with a front light? Better yet, since the front-lit model qualifies for the 20% trade-in discount while the no-light version doesn’t, the front-lit Scribe actually ends up costing less, as Rico pointed out.
Here’s my conspiracy theory: I’ll bet if you opened up one of the “no front light” Scribes, you’d find the LEDs are still in there. Amazon may have ended up with a large batch of units that had defective front-light systems. Instead of scrapping them, they simply reprogrammed the software to remove the lighting controls and sold them as “no front light” models.
There are several things wrong with your theory:
a) The Scribe model without a front light has gray bezels, while the front-lit version has bright white bezels.
b) The surface of the frontlight-free Scribe is less slippery and marginally whiter than that of the front-lit version.
c) All the 2025 Scribe models were announced at the same event.
Damn! You’re right.
Now… about that grassy knoll…