Kindles are by far the most popular brand of dedicated reading devices, but there are a lot of people that really dislike certain things about Kindles and Amazon’s way of doing things.
Back in 2020, I posted an article, Four things I hate about Kindles, and a couple of those points have changed since then but the number one thing, a lack of innovation, still applies.
Amazon hasn’t released a Kindle with page buttons since 2019, and at this point you have to wonder if they ever will. The Kindle Oasis has been outdated since they released the new Paperwhite in 2021, and yet Amazon is still selling it for full price hoping nobody will notice.
Other ereader companies have embraced color E Ink, and there are now several different models available with color E Ink screens. How long will it take Amazon to get release a Kindle with a color screen? Another 5 years? It took them about that long to release a 10-inch notetaking Kindle after other companies blazed that trail first.
The fact that Amazon finally released a Kindle with a large screen is a big win in my book. I really like the Kindle Scribe, despite its limitations as a notetaking device, and I like how they did away with the annoying screensaver ads altogether on the Scribe, but they’re still pushing them on other Kindle models. You have pay an extra $20 to get rid of the ads or pester customer support to remove them free and hope you get lucky.
None of the other ereader companies make you pay to remove ads—it’s just silly, as if Amazon doesn’t make enough money without forcing people to pay extra to remove ugly screensaver ads for vampire romance novels.
Currently, one of the things that bugs me the most about Kindles is just how slow and wonky they are to navigate. Everything requires a series of multiple taps and menu diving to get anything done, and if you use landscape mode for reading it’s a mess because other parts of the interface only support portrait mode so you’re always having to rotate back and forth. And something as simple as trying to go from reading a book to writing in a notebook on the Scribe is such a clunky process.
I also really dislike how few usable font sizes there are, and the fact that Kindles have had the same three (mostly useless) margin and line spacing settings pretty much since the very beginning.
At some point you’d think they could make some improvements in these areas but they’d rather just keep rearranging the user interface instead and make things more confusing.
So, what do you dislike about Kindles?
I have the Latest Paperwhite (non-signature), and I really have no complaints. I love the size (for one hand handling). I think the only thing that I would change, is being able to change page layout settings on a book by book basis…. unless I’m wrong, and you can do that. I don’t have my kindle with me right now.
I don’t like the lack of page turn buttons. I don’t like the lack of ability to turn off touch/swipe if using buttons. I don’t like the screen border turning pages when touched so especially if holding the small bezel side you will likely lose your place often. There should be a means to switch off 1/2 inch of border so you can hold with one hand and not turn pages unintentionally. I don’t like page number in book so often being unavailable. I especially don’t like Amazon PROMISING when originally introducing Kindles the price of books would never exceed $9.95 and now regularly, to possibly even frequently, charging over $9.95. I’m sure there are other things but that should keep Amazon busy for a while bringing Kindles up to par.
You do realise that you are blaming Amazon for prices that are set by publishers?
Amazon has nothing to do with ebook prices.
Are you kidding me? Amazon is repeatedly going to courts because of price fixing. They are fixing artificially high book prices together with publishers. Why? 90% of ebooks sold in the US are sold through Amazon and Amazon takes set percentage of every book, so the higher the price, the better for them. And when they fix the price high, publishers also get more money. And other ebook retailers can’t lower the prices because of that. Amazon has everything to do with ebook prices. That’s the definition of how monopoly is harmful.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/15/amazoncom-and-big-five-publishers-accused-of-ebook-price-fixing
I have an Oasis, and it drives me nuts how I can’t use the page turn buttons in many places in the interface. Especially the browser. I got a reader with buttons specifically so I wouldn’t have to move my fingers to the screen.
Also, if I have the library set to display most recent first, then when I open the add/remove collections screen, it should use the same sort so I don’t have to change it every time.
I would like an 8 inch screen which is just portable enough to fit into a jacket pocket without requiring a tote as with a device 10 inches or larger. With or without page turn buttons does not matter but with a flat back, not thicker on one side.
What I really want from a book reader is the ability to load apps for other file formats: Nook, Kobo, Google, and Libby, so I want access to the Google Play Store. My next book reader will likely be from a competitor, perhaps Onyx.
The most versatile full-fledged tablet is the iPad Mini or full-sized iPad which lets me load all those apps plus Apple’s own Books app, which is pretty good. The color screen helps too, but I also need an e-ink device for reading outdoors in bright line such as when I am sitting on a park bench, a typical pastime for an old guy like myself.
Regarding the most recent “standard” Kindle, which I think is very good, save for the following: I would like the ability, with one tap on the drop-down screen, to place a bookmark and delete all earlier ones, achieving the same thing in effect as moving a physical bookmark in a print book. There’s no need I can see for having a long list of legacy bookmarks or benefit to having to delete one or more old ones when placing a new one. If I’ve missed something here, at least provide an option for the above.
Also, give the bookmark area on the screen more real estate so touching it doesn’t—three times out of four, in my case—bring up the navigation controls. This can be a bit frustrating.
The lack of page turn buttons on a modern Kindle. The lack of customization options, as compared to Kobos (font sizes, margins, line height etc.). The closed system, which makes it impossible to manage the collections and metadata of your sideloaded books with Calibre and also makes it impossible for people to write patches to improve various default options. In short, there’s very little you can do with a non-jailbroken Kindle to improve your reading experience.
The lack of epub support and the lack of the ability to install apps don’t bother me. I sideload everything anyway and don’t read library books. All my purchases have the DRM removed.
“The lack of epub support…” Kindle devices have supported the ePub format since late last year.
Kindle devices don’t support epub. Amazon emailing and send-to-kindle services do. Amazon converts your epub to Kindle format if you email it. If you sideload the epub via USB, you can’t read it.
Kindles do NOT support epub format.
Amazon’s conversion service Send to Kindle does.
What Stas said… You can’t copy EPUB file on your Kindle and read it, which means it does not support it. You have to send it through Send to Kindle and they will convert the file in a format that is actually supported.
Format support is actually going to be worse than ever before. Now that they ditched MOBI, publishers will only use EPUB, which you can’t sideload to Kindles over cable, so new books will be impossible to copy to Kindles without conversion unlike until now when you could simply import MOBI files that publishers sold… They just want to make sure even less people will be able to sideload books.
It’s just Send to Kindle service that dropped MOBI support.
Kindle the device still supports MOBI files and those can be read on device.
You just need to send them through wire – connect Kindle to computer by data cable and copy MOBI files to Kindle.
Support for MOBI files is NOT dropped until and unless Amazon stops support of MOBI format by the actual devices.
FYI, my PW3 and PW5 see and read MOBI files just fine.
I’m talking about new books. Publishers will now only sell epub files because Amazon officially ditched mobi. And you won’t be able to copy these epubs to Kindle… So it doesn’t matter that Kindle still can read mobi files when there won’t be any new ones. All new ebooks will be unreadable on Kindles without conversion. So it will be harder for non-tech people to sideload. That’s what Amazon is really trying to do here, there is literaly no reason why Send to Kindle couldn’t support mobi in the future…
The paucity of options in customizing the e-book page exactly the way you like it i.e. margins, line-height, etc. Kobo is much better. Calibre to the rescue.
Ditto on font sizes, line height and margins. I just can’t think of a good reason to not allow this level of user customization. Has to be Simple to implement; All the other companies can, Amazon just chooses to limit reader options. Page turn buttons….
Kindle library navigation is very basic. No way to filter by the author or by series — and there’s no normal series support, they only recently started adding something for this.
Also another issue is that you can’t really turn off Kindle — it only goes into sleep mode and if you forget about your device, the battery will be dead in a couple of months, drastically reducing its lifespan.
Wow, you’re a lot more critical than I am. LOL! I still use a Paperwhite 2 (6th gen) and I love it. I dread the hassle of adapting to a newer one.
If I had my way, I’d like: color without sacrificing sharpness, native support of epub and PDF, and for them to fix the cover issue on side-loaded content. I’d also like an option which would show the book cover on first access (instead of chapter 1 or whatever) and a timed showing of the cover when accessing it again. Like picking up a book from the table – you see the cover first, then open it to your bookmark. I wish there was a way for Calibre book descriptions to be part of the press-and-hold menu. With hundreds of books on my Kindle, I sometmes forget what they’re about!
Native support of epub and PDF, showing the book cover on first access, covers showing with sideloaded content and Calibre book descriptions in the book details menu – those are all features available on Kobo readers. Perhaps you’d be better off with a Kobo.
Good to know – except I can’t afford Kobo devices. 🙁
You can set the book’s cover as a screensaver, it was added in the past couple of years.
I hate that you are at the mercy of Amazon’s UI design. If it changes on an update, and you don’t like it, tough luck. This goes hand in hand with the fact that the library UI is already difficult to navigate and does not have enough options.
I also miss the progress bar at the bottom from the early, early days. I will never understand Amazon’s need to strip basic features from their devices.
My complaint is that somehow when I swipe to change the page, I sometimes end up changing the font size instead. The other thing that bugs me is when I remove a download, the book still appears along with ones I’m keeping on the device. I only have it connected to download, not on all the time – is that perhaps the reason the book covers don’t disappear? (older Paperwhite)
I admit to being petty enough to not like something that doesn’t affect me personally, which is brand loyalty towards the Kindle. I have discovered that Kindles are insanely popular among the Booktok crowd. Whenever people ask for advice. on whether it is worth it to buy a ‘Kindle’, they don’t take any about trying other brands. There is something to be said about Kindles being chic with the YA reading populace.
When I had only a Paperwhite 3, I was very much dismayed by lack of options on font size. I just could not settle well with one that I would find cozy. It was either reading with a too large and unpractical font, or going with a too small font for the comfort of my eyes. In the end I chose the small font. Since then I have never bought a Kindle, that goes without saying.
Not reading for 2-3 months? I read 2-3 times a day, on a slow day. Probably 4-5 times most days. I couldn’t stand not reading every day. I’d like it even more if they fixed my previously mentioned complaints.
The pdf software is just horrible, I can’t understand how this kindle with a big screen have still such a bad functionalities to read pdf that make it unusable
Now where should I even start?
– lack of page-turn buttons (noc counting Oasis as it is old device)
– ugly and cheap looking design of Paperwhite (subjectively, some folks might like it)
– lack of personalisation with fonts etc
– lack of text-to-speech even in app on smartphone
– smartphone app has ugly old design of UI, Kindle new one (lack of consistency)
– series are not shown on Kindle
– Oasis never charges to 100%
– screens are less sharp than competition
– book prices are artificially fixed really high
– Amazon pushes trash self-published books everywhere from your lockscreen and homepage on Kindle to emails and their services like Kindle Unlimited
– constant software problems (once sideloading goes without cover arts, next time titles are showing filenames instead etc.)
– both amazon.com and eshop on Kindles are messy and finding anything through them is pain plus once you find a book, its page has so many information on it, its not much fun going through it as well
And the list could go on. Right now I feel like Kindle is hands down the worst ereader anyone can buy, but yet people still keep recommending them because in their minds Kindle=ereader (plus TikTokers and YouTubers are sponsored by Amazon). I especialy don’t understand how people are still buying them even if they don’t speak English and have to sideload all of their books in their native languages (it’s very popular here in Czechia)… Literaly any other brand would be better for them as other brands support more formats and are easier to sideload.
Sorry to sound as such a hater, I just really dislike Kindle lately (I currently own two of them) and I don’t understand its popularity.
Their small screens. (I don’t count the Scribe because I don’t want a note-taking device.).
Number 1 for me, lack of page turn buttons. Yes, I do have an Oasis and love it. But it has not been updated in forever.
Limited Font sizes – I have a lot of sideloaded fonts that I would love to use, but can’t find the right size because of this. How do you go from too small to too large with only one increment adjustment?
Limited line spacing options – Only 3 options
Limited Margins – Again only 3 options
While Kindle software may in some ways be superior to Kobo, this putrid lack of customization keeps me going back to Kobo every time. I like my Kindles, but they are basically on the shelf collecting dust while Amazon fixes this problem. Sadly, I don’t expect this to happen anytime soon. Something so important and obvious seems to be a non-factor for Amazon.
They remain oblivious to the needs of the customer.
Now when I do a search (from the home library page and not within a book) and I get a list of results, if I click on one and find out that it isn’t what I was looking for, I can’t just ‘go back’ like when we had a back button. No! I have to go to the home library page and re-enter the search again! I loved that back arrow button. Why did they have to remove it!!!
I agree with most of the hardware deficiencies, or lack of innovation, that others have posted but I think my main pet peeve is with the ecosystem and the behaviour of the company around locking people in. I tend to read a number of smaller indie and self published authors here and there, and in my experience they often don’t release anywhere but Kindle. This seems to be partly because it’s where the readers are, and partly because of the contracts and policies that Amazon has in place to encourage them to only release on Kindle. And those who might release elsewhere, often do so only sometimes, not everything.
I download and remove the DRM from my Kindle books (in case I ever need to use them on a non-Kindle device). It’s a small hassle for a bit of piece of mind, but for now my books are still portable if need be. I think I might be better off with a Kobo in some ways, from a hardware perspective at least, but I just can’t be bothered making the change to a new ecosystem when I’m going to have to make some/many of my purchases from Amazon anyway. Plus I think the only sure fire way to be able to download and remove the DRM at this point is to have a physical Kindle. I don’t need or want more than one device, so for now the sensible thing is to stick with Amazon.
Maybe one day I’ll have a reason to make the principled stand and stop using Amazon even if it makes my live worse, but it’s not today. Hopefully a bit of anti-trust action might improve things in the coming years.
Lack of page turn buttons on newer Kindles.
From a software side, mostly things they have taken away:
– prefer the old user interface to the new one
– want the back button and the home button back
– the way searches were displayed and navigated
– the progress bar that showed where you are in the book and the chapter marks to be an option in the settings to show or not show
– the ability to orient the page in any of the four directions. The K2, DX, K3, K4 and K5 (and maybe K1) all had this
I want:
– to be able to change the white and warm lights while seeing the page in a book. Apparently this has been in Kobo for years.
– page numbers in every book. It is cool to match to a real book but I never do that, I just like having page numbers. I hate when books don’t have them. I do like how page numbers are displayed, without how many pages in the book always on screen.
– to be able restore the “New” label to books
I hate that covers of books I bought change even though I never updated any book.
The only thing I liked about my default kindle paperwhite 11th gen is the hardware. It is tolerable now that I have it jailbroken, though.
I truly dislike the inability of not being able to move books by finger in my library other than to re-open them. Hopefully you’re organized enough to get them in the order one likes or you must start over again. The slowness of the Kindles seem to be a bit bothersome to me too.
Page turning buttons are very nice
I’ll preface this by mentioning that the Scribe is the best ereader I have ever used, and it has become my main ereader.
1. Footnotes usually appear in a pop-up window that shows only the first paragraph of the footnote. I prefer the old behavior of just jumping to the footnotes section. This lets me quickly see whether future footnotes are worth reading, it lets me read the full footnote when it is long, and it lets me look up definitions of words in the footnote. Fortunately, authors appear to be able to choose whether to use pop-up footnotes, and I’m currently reading a book without them.
2. I like to use different fonts with different books and with dark or light mode, but whenever I change the font, it changes it globally for all books.
3. I keep lots of custom fonts on my Kindle, but scrolling through them normally starts at the beginning instead of the currently selected font, and I have to go through them one page at a time instead of jumping quickly to where I want to go like I can do with long lists of books.
4.. There are not many options for font size, margin size, or line-spacing.
5. I cannot use my custom fonts in magazines.
6. Despite having a larger screen than my iPad, the Scribe will not let me view magazine pages in the full magazine page view like the Kindle app can,
7. The exception to this is old magazines that just display as page images. The problem here is that when zooming, I cannot get the same clarity I can get on a tablet running the Kindle app. So, old magazines remain easier to read on my iPad.
8. While I appreciate the big improvements to the browser, it’s still not as good as the browsers I can run on an Android ereader.
9. There is no longer an audio port and automatic text-to-speech, though I hardly use these on my older devices that do have them.
10. It does not support immersive reading of audio books like the app does, though I do have very little interest in audio books anyway.
11. Auto-rotation does not switch between portrait and landscape like it does in the DX.
I’m a Kobo user who picked up a Kindle Paperwhite (reluctantly) to read books that are not available on the Kobo store and that I can no longer convert to kepub since Amazon changed the DRM. I vastly prefer reading on my Kobo Aura One over the Kindle. The thing I most miss on the Kindle is the customisation that Kobo provides. And the one customisation that I most want is the ability to define and change tap zones
There is something I hate when I search my Kindle for content (searching from the home screen and not from within a book). I will get a list of results but if I click on one and find out that is not what I wanted, there is no way to just go back to the list of results to look at others. No, you have to go to home screen click on search and re-enter the search term! Arrggghhh! I have an older kindle that I kept from updating the firmware that still has the ‘back’ button that lets me simply go back to the previous screen. Why did they get rid of that?!?!?!
It’s like the software designers don’t even actually use Kindles at all. If they did they’d see how they’re making some things worse instead of better. The removal of the back button still drives me nuts on a regular basis.
I like to read my kindle e-books with the added audible narration. I listen to the audiobook while reading the text. The e-book highlights the text that’s being read to me and the pages auto turn so the audiobook and e-book are always in sync. Kindle devices don’t allow this functionality. They really should update the software to add this functionality.
Also, I don’t like The claustrophobic feeling of reading on anything less than an 8 to 10 inch screen. So until they offer a super light device with a 10 inch screen, with audible narration I will have to stick with my heavier iPad to do my reading.