Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
The thing about that argument is that Amazon seems to get to have their cake and eat it to.
When people compare the big 3 readers, Kobo Aura Edition 2, Nook Glowlight 3 and Kindle Paperwhite they are usually mentioned as costing about the same: $120.00. But only one of them requires a surcharge to remove ads.
Then if you grumble about the ads, you hear 'yeah, but you get a price discount for buying one with ads.'
So why can the small fries market similar devices and it's the 800 pound gorilla that has to use ads to subsidize their cost?
I think Kindles are fine readers. But the $20.00 to remove ads always sticks in my craw. To me it makes Amazon feel like money grubbers.
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I agree to the nth with this entire post. I fault the review sites in particular for not making a point of the ad-free price of the devices. It's not a fair comparison; at a minimum, when comparing pluses and minuses across devices, the $20 surcharge is a honking huge minus.
For me, the surcharge is lose/lose. With lower end devices, that $20 is a colossal percentage of the selling price (like OEM cases, but that's a different rant). With the more luxe devices, it's just cheesy to have a premium product used as a billboard.
I think of how the assumption is that the Glo HD was discontinued because Kobo couldn't produce it to sell at the market price point of $120 without losing money and scaled back to the Aura Edition Two. Perhaps had $140 been the set point, the Glo HD would still be sold. And think of the device B&N might have produced to sell for $140!