New Kindle season is nearly upon us, and there are some leaked product images to prove it. Update: A few days later, Amazon officially announced a full new lineup of Kindles.
A German website has posted some product images of what appears to be a new basic Kindle for 2026. It looks a lot like the 11th gen basic Kindle, except the corners of the display are rounded like the Paperwhite and the power button has been moved from the bottom to the top right edge, which should make some people happy, as that’s been a hot topic for years.
I can’t help but notice that none of the images show a warm frontlight, which is disappointing. Even the Xteink X4 Pro has a warm light and it only costs $99. But there’s no conformation on that yet; it could still have a warm frontlight for all we know.
At this point we only have a few pictures to go off of, and none of the technical details have leaked yet, but it doesn’t look like much has changed. It will most likely still have a 6″ screen with 300 ppi.
Based on the pictures, there will be four colors to choose from, black, light blue, green, and purple (of course Amazon will use more creative terms than that to describe the colors, like plum or ocean wave).
Some of the images look slightly different from each other, like maybe some have flush screens and others have recessed screens, but it might just be a quirk with the lighting. The images appear to be legit, though, if you ignore the watermarks added by that German website.
I wonder if Amazon will consider this a 12th gen Kindle or a 13th gen Kindle. The current basic Kindle from 2024 is considered 11th gen, the same as the 2022 version, which never made sense. The Paperwhite is considered 12th gen, and in came out in 2024, so maybe they’ll skip to 13th gen with this new model, or it could be a 12th gen. Who knows…
Regardless, this new Kindle will most likely get released in October after the Prime sales are over.
Nice colors, but the 6″ screen is too small for me and I need a front light. If I could, I’d probably get Ocean Blue.
All current kindles have front lights. The difference is the warm light option that the basic currently doesn’t have. The only kindle that doesn’t have a front light is the cheapest Scribe that specifically eliminated the front light, I guess to cut costs.
I meant warm light. I’m not sure how I made that typo. Thanks for pointing it out. I love warm lights for nighttime reading.
I think you mean than that, not that than
Thanks, fixed.
I’m curious to see what the start point in price will be for these; since they raised the basic to $150 now. I’m hoping these will also start at $150, I do wish they kept the recessed screen though vs. flushed. It made the basic unique from the other lineup with that.
All the leaked pictures look like it has flush screen. Which would be a huge downgrade. Basic has the sharpest screen out of all Kindles, so I hope they will keep that. The warm light will definitely not be there, we would see it in the pictures. So it seems like the difference is new colours, repositioned power button and flush screen. Disappointing.