The Amazon Kindle has lost its edge in the past few years. Instead of innovating, they issue minor incremental updates through an unnecessary amount of generations, which are currently at 11. They have a tremendous lack of features that are missing at an inherent level, like expandable storage or even speakers. Amazon disregards trying new things like colour e-paper, offering different speed modes, or even physical buttons. If you weigh the Kindle line against any other device in the respective screen sizes class, there’s virtually no reason to purchase Kindle e-readers anymore.

Amazon has faced increased competition from major players across the e-reader industry who do things better. Most Kobo or Pocketbook e-readers have physical page-turn buttons on most devices. Amazon has these two: the Voyage, discontinued, and the Oasis 3, five years old. The. Kindle Basic, their most affordable e-reader, is getting trounced by more capable devices such as the Onyx Boox Page, Onyx Boox Palma, Meebook M6 or the Kobo Clara 2e. The Paperwhite, once the gold standard with e-readers, pales in comparison to the Kobo Libra 2, Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight 4 Plus  Pocketbook InkPad Color 3, Pocketbook Verse Pro or the Meebook M7. The iReader Ocean Plus, Hanvon Clear, Bigme Pocketnote Plus and Kobo Sage annihilate the Oasis.

The Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s newest device, and it doesn’t offer great functionality regarding freehand drawing. There is limited customer interest in making notes inside of ebooks. So many better alternatives on the market provide various options, from cameras with OCR to 8GB of RAM, expandable storage and fast processors. The Onyx Boox Tab Mini C, Onyx Boox Note Air 3C, reMarkable 2 and Bigme S6 Color Plus are much better. All of these units have Android, Google Play and the ability to install free & paid apps. Most of them have colour e-paper screens, which allow users to draw, edit PDF files or read books, all in full and vibrant colour.

Amazon used to have the advantage in the e-reader and ebook space when they undercut everyone else in the market for ebook prices. The landscape in the last ten years has dramatically shifted. Publishers now determine the price of ebooks, so the pricing is consistent across all ebook retailers. Have lots of Kindle books? Buy an e-reader with Google Play and install the Kindle app to read your books. All Kindle devices are getting old, and most of the prominent advocates of the Kindle, as a whole, have all left Amazon.

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