Any and all advice, guides, and reviews are unbiased and based on my personal experience. If you buy through affiliate links, I may earn commissions, which helps support my website. This does not have an impact on posts or my opinion of any reviewed products. If you find this post helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!
The past few weeks I have been reflecting on the Amazon and their Kindle devices and finally got around to putting it all into words. Opinion is my own and not a reflection of any employer past, present, or future.
I still remember when I bought my first Kindle. It was the Kindle Keyboard, and I bought it around 2010/11 direct from Amazon US. This may seem odd for me to note, but I was living in Australia at the time so ordering from Amazon US was a big thing and shipping was far from fast – no Prime in Australia back then. The Kindle also wasn’t available in Australia, in the sense, you couldn’t buy it anywhere but Amazon. I also had to get the WiFi version, because there were unresolved questions on whether the WiFi/3G version would even work in Australia. I think I got it delivered to my office (DHL) and recall showing my colleagues. We were all amazed at the screen and it was probably the first eInk screen any of us had seen in person. Let’s be honest, there’s something magical about the crispness, clarity and readability of eInk displays that is hard to beat even today. I still have my original Kindle Keyboard and it still works (despite Amazon discontinuing support – boo!). For what it’s worth, the battery on the Kindle Keyboard is easily user replaceable, which is why I held onto it so long and you can still side load books on them, or do what I do, convert them into clocks… but that’s a whole other blog post.
But thinking about Amazon’s Kindle, innovations like “WhipserSync” and my old Kindle Keyboard, I get the feeling that Kindle innovation has slowed, maybe even stalled. Sure, we now have touchscreens, frontlights, and water resistance which, while somewhat useful, none of them changed the reading experience in a meaningful way. If you look at other Amazon Kindle devices, like the Kindle Scribe, it arrived many years after the Remarkable and felt like a reaction than forward thinking. I tried but returned the Scribe because the writing experience and UI was just bad and not even close to comparable to Remarkable. The ColorSoft was a response to the Kobo Clara Color but what’s worse than being a late follower, it had awful quality control issues, mine had a yellow tint that made it difficult to justify keeping and to be fair, I didn’t keep it, it went back to Amazon too. Yes, in a true sense both these Kindle devices “worked”, but they were poor imitations of better products. What I don’t even get is Amazon demanding a price premium compared to competitors when the Amazon products are inferiors, what happened to the Jeff Bezos version of Amazon where “your margin is my opportunity”? Seems like others now get this message more than Amazon?
So, in the world of eReaders and eInk devices, I kind of feel that where Amazon once used to set the pace, now, at best, it’s, at best, a very slow follower.
Meanwhile, China has been moving faster. For those that know me, you know I used to live in Guangzhou, so I still follow Chinese tech closely having got addicted to the scene when living locally. The XTEINK devices are a good example of what Amazon should have been exploring. Challenging the market and listening to the voice of the customer who is fatigued from “doomscrolling” and “AI in everything”. I was an early adopter of the XTEINK X4, getting mine directly from China. It is everything the Kindle should be today, compact, practical and fun. What’s even cooler is that the modding community around the X4 (and the sister device, X3) is active. This adds to my enjoyment of the X4, there’s just this fun innovation vibe of building a future together. The Crosspoint custom firmware is stellar. On microreader and XTEINK subreddits, the comments are awash with people celebrating that they now ‘read more’. Wasn’t that the goal of the Kindle? Or is just me who remembers this?
I think this all matters because the Kindle was supposed to make reading easier. Instead, the size of modern Kindles makes them less convenient than they should be. Yes, the Kindle app exists for your iPhone or Android devices, but phones come with constant interruptions. A message. An email. A calendar alert. An alert from an app you forgot to disable notifications on which turns out to really be an ad in disguise. A dedicated eReader only works if it is small enough to be with you when you have a few minutes to read and separate enough to keep your attention away from your phone. Amazon seems to have forgotten that portability and focus are part of the value proposition of an eReader. Instead, we’re stuck with Kindles that are getting more expensive and almost comically huge – when you put the X4 or X3 next to a Kindle, the Kindle looks like an old CRT monitor sitting beside a modern flat panel. Kindle’s now feel kind of dated.
This is not me trying to spruik XTEINK devices (this is a personal not a paid post) and I’m buying all the microreaders out of China because I’m a tech enthusiast… but I will say companies like XTEINK or EEGO or LILYGO are building devices that reflect what people want and how they read today. Amazon is not. It’s lost its risk-taking mojo, and I am personally at the tipping point of when the XTEINK S4 gets released (XTEINK’s new Android based microreader) I would recommend it in heartbeat over Amazon. That’s got to be telling, yes? I wonder if Amazon is even paying attention to this, surely, they must see the trending sales of X4’s and X3’s on Amazon.com?
If there’s a lesson in all of this for Amazon, and an observation of consumer behavior, the best eInk reader is the one that fits in your pocket and is ready to go in in the micromoments of the day. Amazon should have recognized this long before microreaders from others appeared. If Amazon wants Kindle to remain relevant, it needs to rethink the device. Incremental updates are not enough. The market has moved on and for the love of all that is good, if they decide to make a microreader make it better not just another substandard slow follow on someone else’s innovation.
– Joshua
PS. And Amazon, if you ever stumble across this, contact me. I’d love to chat. I’d love to love Kindle again.
Any and all advice, guides, and reviews are unbiased and based on my personal experience. If you buy through affiliate links, I may earn commissions, which helps support my website. This does not have an impact on posts or my opinion of any reviewed products. If you find this post helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!