Amazon's New Kindle Accessories Bring Back Physical Controls

Alongside a refreshed Kindle lineup, Amazon today introduced two accessories that bring physical buttons back to its touchscreen e-readers. The $34.99 Kindle Click is a Bluetooth remote that lets readers turn pages and adjust brightness without touching the device, while a new $79.99 magnetic cover is available for select Paperwhite and Colorsoft models. GeekWire reports: Amazon says [the Kindle Click is] meant for reading under the covers, on a treadmill, or on an airplane tray table. It's available for preorder and ships Oct. 28. It recharges over USB-C, includes side buttons for adjusting brightness, and works with Kindles released in 2024 or later. The company cited BookTok as an inspiration, Bloomberg reported, a reference to the community of readers on TikTok who post book recommendations, reviews and their reading setups. Kindle fans there have been showing off third-party clickers for years.

Amazon is also bringing back physical page-turn buttons, which disappeared when the company discontinued the Kindle Oasis in 2024. This time they come in a separate $79.99 magnetic cover, which works only with the new Signature Edition versions of the Paperwhite and Colorsoft. The new Kindles have screens that sit flush with the edges, colors that wrap around to the front, and optional aluminum housings. They also have user-replaceable batteries to comply with European Union rules, Amazon told The Verge.

The base Kindle starts at $149.99, or $189.99 in aluminum. The Paperwhite starts at $199.99 and the Colorsoft at $289.99, with Signature Editions at $249.99 and $319.99. Those prices match what Amazon has charged since August, when it raised Kindle prices by $40 to $50, citing memory and storage costs. The base Kindle is available now. The Paperwhite and Colorsoft ship Oct. 28.

Amazon Reinvents the Page-Turn Button for $80

[CustomBuild]

The remote makes sense if you read on a treadmill or keep your hands under the covers. The $80 cover is harder to love: Amazon removed page-turn buttons with the Oasis, then brought them back as an accessory for its pricier models. At this rate, the 2028 Kindle will offer a $29.99 clip-on headphone jack.

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[TwistedGreen]

Kindles still have headphone jacks?

Sure, why not

[TwistedGreen]

That's pretty nice, actually. I recently bought a Kobo Clara and don't like it too much because it doesn't have any physical buttons. Kobo does have the Kobo Remote which they released last year, which is probably why Amazon is playing catch-up here. I occasionally still use my old Kindle 3 (the one with the keyboard) because I prefer the physical buttons to turn the page. The magnetic cover is actually appealing... although I doubt I'd want to go back into the Amazon ecosystem at this point. It's far too n

Re:

[dskoll]

I have a Kobo Clara too and I love it, despite the lack of physical buttons. However, I finally caved and bought the remote and I'm surprised by how much it improves the experience. I stand the Kobo up and can read while I eat breakfast or supper and not worry about getting food on the e-reader.

I want nothing to do with Amazon, so a Kindle for me is out of the question.

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[A nonymous Coward]

My Oasis batteries (Kindle and cover) gave up the ghost a year ago, and I can't stand the replacement without buttons. I switched to a TCL 11 NXTPAPER tablet and use the Kindle app. The screen has zero glare, zero reflections. It's not readable in bright sunlight, and the table is slow, but the price ($300) is about the same as a good Kindle but I can scroll books instead of flipping pages, and it runs regular Android apps. I gave my two Kindles (Scribe, Paperwhite?) away a week ago; hadn't used them in

Forty bucks

[Speare]

Forty bucks lets you turn pages on a non-paper device. What a world we live in.

Re:

[Reeses]

It's also yet another device to lose, misplace, and replace batteries in.

Re:Forty bucks

[bill_mcgonigle]

I use a bluetooth page turner pedal for sheet music.

I think it was $14 for two buttons. Maybe there's a third, I only ever use forward and back.

$40 is wild.

a wireless button dongle

[OrangeTide]

Great. Nobody asked for this.

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[A nonymous Coward]

Lots of inventions were unasked-for until they were invented.

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[OrangeTide]

This one belongs in the trash though.

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[s0nicfreak]

You must not frequent online Kindle communities, because a lot of people have been asking for this.

The feature I really want

[jenningsthecat]

Whether it's on an eBook reader, a tablet, or a computer, digital books just don't work for me. When I read, I flip back fairly frequently to refresh my memory, confirm a detail, or revisit a previous passage in the light of things I've read since seeing it the first time. Digital readers aren't good for this because I can't quickly search a bunch of previous pages to randomly access what I'm looking for.

What would be useful to me is a section of the screen that I could use to 'flip' through pages other than the one I'm currently on. I'd take the hit of having a larger device so the current page could be big enough to read with my deteriorating eyesight while still giving a kind of scanning random access for the rest of the book.

Short of that, no eReaders for me, regardless of the brand.

love me some PaperWhite...

[Archfeld]

PaperWhite is a game changer. I can't stand reading the Kindle app on my phone, and my really nice PC monitor sucks too. PaperWhite is a different thing entirely. No eye strain; you can read it in the sunlight. You can read it in total dark. I honestly HATE Amazon, but I've been using KindleUnlimited as a library card for many years now. I've 3 kindles in 3 places. I picked up the Ericson Malazan Omnibus in hardback and it was so heavy, and the pages wouldn't stay turned, and I couldn't read it in the dark.

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[A nonymous Coward]

Kindles and the Kindle app also allow changing font size, a real benefit as my eyes age. I bought a 1200 page book recently. The main font was just readable with a bright light. The 200 pages of footnotes were illegible. I bought the eBook version and breezed through it. Kindles might be able to change fonts, I don't know and never had reason to try before. I do miss flipping pages for something I read 10 pages back, but search more than makes up for that.

Re:The feature I really want

[CaptQuark]

The Kindle has thought of this and has a few features that make things easier.

1. Just tap the upper-right corner of the page to create a bookmark for that page. You can later view your bookmarks, jump to them, or erase them.
2. Highlight a paragraph or section of the page you're reading. You can review, jump to, or clear the highlights later.
3. Create your own notes to review later. You can add notes like "proves earlier occupation" or longer entries
4. Search for text. If you are on page 456 and remember somewhere previously in the book it mentioned geode crystals, you can search for that phrase to find it

Kindle bookmarks, notes, and highlights [amazon.com]

I understand that an ereader is not perfect for research, but knowing what features are built in can help make it slightly easier to use

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[pruss]

It's probably a bit faster to put a finger on a physical page, flip back keeping the finger in place, and then return to the finger than to set a bookmark, flip back, return to bookmark, and then delete the now no-longer needed bookmark.

It wouldn't be hard to make a UI for this use case, though, that is just as good. Maybe you hold a corner, and it creates a temporary bookmark. Now you can flip back and forth at your leisure, while having a semi-transparent "Return" button, and when you click that button yo

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[s0nicfreak]

You don't have to set a bookmark to return, it does create a temporary bookmark.

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[Gilgaron]

It's nice for reading fiction and can download the book free from the library. For reference books then paper is certainly more amenable to flags and slowly accreting a desk surface while you recompile your sources. Searching local electronic document stores is something LLMs have gotten pretty slick at, though, so I suppose doing it with paper will become a more rarified skill.

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[JSilvers]

As an avid reader of BOOKS I too refer back to remembered elements. I have a physical idea of where in the book and where on the page to look.

A small remote...

[Torp]

... is just what you need for reading in bed. You are going to lose it under the sheets at best the 3rd time you change position.

Plus it will obviously run out of battery just when you're 20 pages away from the climax of the book.

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[dskoll]

The Kobo remote has a wrist strap you can use, so you won't lose it.

And it takes a standard AAA battery, so you can have one on standby if it's really important. I use rechargeable AAA batteries to keep the cost down.

Do the hardware designers use them ?!

[greytree]

Do the designers of the Kindle use them ?!

When one reads with an ereader in bed, one holds it on the covers with one hand and the other hand is on or under the covers.

If the device is well-designed then one should be able to scroll ( or switch pages if one wants to stick to that unnecessary analog legacy ) WITH THE HAND HOLDING THE DEVICE.

Requiring people to buy extra add-on devices to enable page turning shows the designers never understood their users.

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[pruss]

I used to think pages are just an unnecessary analog legacy. However, many of us who work a lot with texts have visual memories, and remember where on a page a given thing was said. Even the difference between left and right pages can help with remembering the content.

That said, I like the way that a scrolling text gives a finer-grained bookmark than a whole page: you can align the next part to read with the top of the screen and go away and come back to it.

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[pruss]

If it were really cold, I could imagine wanting the Kindle to be on a bedside stand, and reading lying on the side with both hands under the covers. But this seems a really niche use-cae.

It's the built-in page turning buttons that I miss. I dislike swiping (sometimes I don't swipe far enough) or having to touch a specific area of a page. Clear clicky buttons are so much nicer, especially for one-handed use. At least my phone has volume buttons I can use to page through books.

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[greytree]

Exactly. Real buttons you can feel are the obvious correct solution and their lack shows the answer to my title is "No".

More than just adding buttons, they should be placed so that a single hand holding a device for reading can reach, feel them and operate them.
Good hardware designers would have thought about that problem and solved it.
Bad hardware designers keep churning out touch-screen-only ereaders ( and massive, thin, fragile phablet phones, but I digress ).

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[s0nicfreak]

That's how YOU do it. Some people balance the Kindle (on a pillow, or on their lap if sitting up in bed, or etc.) and put both hands under the covers, which means they have to put a hand out every time they turn the page (even with physical buttons). Or when sitting on the couch under a blanket with the Kindle on the lap or on a table (something I like to do when it's cold), you have to put a hand out even with physical buttons. This device eliminates the need to put a hand out, which is convenient to me. I

Remote controls are not hard buttons.

[Fly Swatter]

Nope, that would be like claiming your Tesla has hard buttons but they are in fact on a remote (including the steering wheel, teehee).

Enshittification proceeds apace

[denny_deluxe]

Taking away buttons only to make you pay to get them back is the literal definition of this trend.