Amazon’s new Kindle Oasis is (finally) waterproof, a little less expensive and will play audiobooks

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Amazon’s new Kindle Oasis is (finally) waterproof, a little less expensive and will play audiobooks

Perhaps the most welcome news for Kindle diehards is that the new Oasis is waterproof. Amazon says the device is IPX8 rated, which means it should survive being dunked in roughly two meters of water for up to 60 minutes. Though it’s lamentable that waterproofing is still limited to Amazon’s priciest Kindle, the addition is long overdue; competing manufacturers like Kobo have sold waterproof e-readers for years now.

The device itself should also be a bit faster than before — an Amazon spokesperson said the new model runs on a dual-core 1GHz NXP i.MX7D processor, up from the Cortex-A9 chip in the last Oasis. The new Oasis also comes with ambient light sensors, which were strangely missing from the last model but should now allow the reader’s backlight to automatically adjust to the surroundings.

All of this comes with the usual Kindle store and software. There’s still no native support for open source EPUB files, and the company’s Alexa assistant is still nowhere to be found, but Amazon’s e-book platform remains massive either way.

The big feature the company is touting is the ability to play audiobooks from the device through its Audible app. Amazon says that will arrive through a software update when the new Oasis ships, but since the reader doesn’t have a headphone jack or built-in speakers, you’ll have to hook it up to a Bluetooth device to take advantage of the new functionality.

My comment: Not sure if this is going to budge me yet from my Paperwhite model (which is probably still the best value for money in the Kindle range). I'll certainly wait a bit first and read the actual reviews to see how it fairs.

See https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/amazon-finally-makes-a-waterproof-kindle-with-the-new-kindle-oasis/