Never…
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I waited for the Kindle 3G before I bought one - in 2010? And very happy I was with it too, but after I replaced it with the G1 Fire I’ve just stuck with the app on tablets for reading.
I guess I can see the appeal of one of the ones with a nightlight - without that I’m happier to read on a tablet with white text on black background instead of needing a reading light. At least this one makes the PaperWhite look like a better deal (what’s that marketing strategy where you introduce something at a very high pricepoint to make what is now a middle-range item seem like a better deal?)
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Oh yeah the nightlight is huge, huge feature. I can definitely recommend the paperwhite, it is a very solid device. Early gen paperwhites had uneven backlighting but they fixed that by gen 2.
Voyage is good (if you can still get it?) mostly because the higher resolution screen is retina-licious, and it’s a bit lighter and more premium-metal-y.
I don’t want to read on an LCD at night. The eink displays are much easier on my eyes in general.
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Wow … that’s a bit pricey for an eReader but I still really want one. The size combined with the fact that they took lefties into account when making it. The battery life is nice too, I suppose. 
For the price, and the hype, I was hoping they would put text to speech and Audible whisper sync on it.
I use TTS extensively, and the Ivona voices that Amazon now owns are excellent for what they are. It’s easier to be aware, eyes up, listening to a book while commuting than eyes down, reading. But I like e-ink for when I’m in a good place for reading.
Hmm so
Voyage Oasis
180g 131g
That’s without cover. How much does the cover weigh? My basic $14.99 cover for the Voyage, which works totally fine and has the magnets to turn it on off:
Voyage Oasis
46g 107g
Survey says, devices with covers?
Voyage Oasis
226g 238g
OK, that’s closer than I expected. The good news is, outside the stupid origami cover for the Voyage, Amazon’s Kindle covers have been very high quality in the past, albeit expensive. And the Oasis cover is the fancy real-leather type, on top of the extra battery docking station hijinks.
Found a good comparison chart. The paperwhite is certainly the sweet spot in the lineup, though I find the higher resolution screen of the Voyage finally does “it looks identical to paper” justice and shouldn’t be underestimated, if you are the sort of person who that appeals to.
Also: Oasis has actual page turn buttons versus the press-and-vibrate of Voyage.
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This is perhaps the main reason why I preordered one. (Also the fact that my voyager got destroyed and was out of warranty)
I find the 30~ gram difference between both to be minor, considering that the new one has “more” battery life. For the first time I ordered without 3G tho. Never really used it much.
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Another subtlety covered in previous article is number of LEDs used for backlighting:
- Paperwhite – 4
- Voyage – 6
- Oasis –10
That one almost went to 11!
If they pushed the higher resolution screen down to the Paperwhite (I assume this will happen, eventually) there’d be almost no reason to recommend any other model except more fancy luxuries.
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FAIL!
20 months of battery life tho… I bet it’s “standby” time, but still, that’s a lot, not that kindles had bad battery life to begin with. I would have liked a slightly faster CPU, you can see it struggling with some books from time to time and I am afraid this one will be no different.
You don’t just tap on the screen?
The glass screen is a big factor for me, I assume the Oasis has it? Be crazy not to. That is the Paperwhite to Voyage difference to me.
Moving the battery largely into the case, creates a situation where you’ll really only use that case, or have wasted money on it and never use it. Having a lot more battery seems good, but you have to hope that case is what you like. I loved Kindle OG and Paperwhite cases. The Origami case was horrible.
Seems like a really minor set of upgrades in a new form?
I do, but it’s a lot less comfortable than the buttons to me. I always missed the hardware buttons to change pages. Especially if you’re holding it with one hand. It always felt less responsive and often I’d have to tap again (or tap back because it registered two taps).
I don’t know, I like the hardware buttons 
At only four times the price of a Paperwhite! What a deal!!
Agree that the prices have been slowly going up, when the Kindle (and other e-Ink readers) were always distinctive because they were only good for ONE thing (read books), so it made sense to be at/around 100 dollars.
Seems like Amazon’s trend is to move this into the 300 dollar realm, which is an exaggeration, considering the price of a new iPad (which can, arguably do over 9000 things better, except for battery life and reading quality).
I wish they’d just tone the prices down.
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Well, there are quite a few options, $79 for basic, $119 for Paperwhite, $199 for Voyage, and now $289 for the Oasis… so they’re pushing up with fancier models.
There is some trickle-down though, the lower end models are slowly getting better as well
I am not sure the top end differentiates very much. They are doing the same thing, with the same screen, and the same software. Buttons, Buzzers, and No Glass seems to be the tiering.
My Voyager suffered a crack in the screen and it started to work erratically… less than 2 months after its warranty expired. Amazon doesn’t offer replacement screens. You have to buy a new one. I tried to repair it, but the part I brought was not enough and ended up destroying it (it didn’t work anyway).
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Hmm, the 2015 iteration of the paperwhite actually has the same resolution as the Voyage / Oasis!
Here’s a side by side of the 300 ppi display (Voyage, Oasis, 2015 Paperwhite) and the 221 ppi (2014 and earlier?) Paperwhite, versus the 167 ppi plain old classic Kindle.
Actual dimensions seem to be
- 1072 x 1448 (300 ppi)
- 758 x 1024 (221 ppi)
- 600 x 800 (167 ppi)
