[badtux]

This is the best eReader that Amazon currently sells.That said, it's far from perfect.

So let's talk about the good parts:

1) The display is nice and large for my old eyes. My Paperwhite just doesn't display a lot of text when I make it big enough for me to read. The larger display on the new Oasis makes it possible for me to enlarge the text while still having nearly a full page of text on the screen.

2) The Paperwhite's touch screen is very sluggish and its display is quite laggy. The Oasis is butter-smooth and quick.

3) You're not going to fill up 8 gigs of memory with text eBooks. Don't bother getting the 32gb version unless you also intend to put a lot of Audible ebooks onto it.

4) The backlighting is great. It's smooth and even across the screen.

5) The page flip buttons are far more reliable when reading magazines than screen swipes are -- their magazine UI flips between stories sometimes when you're trying to screen swipe to the next page, having the buttons makes it much easier to read magazines.

6) The lack of a raised bezel means I can *finally* select things near the borders of the book with my big fat fingers where the bezel of the Paperwhite kept my fingers away from there.

Now for the bad parts:

1) Battery life SUCKS. Read one eBook, and half my battery is gone! My estimate is that this thing has roughly 1/4th the battery life of the Paperwhite.

2) The general shape is awkward. The back is sort of stepped so it doesn't lay flat on the table like the Paperwhite, and its width caused by that ridiculously enlarged bezel at one side makes it awkward to put into the pocket of a rain jacket. I would have preferred that they spread out the components behind the screen and had only a slightly enlarged bezel at the side for the page flip buttons, somewhat like the Voyager. A slightly thicker but narrower e-reader would have been much more usable for me, *and* would have given enough room for a decent size battery.

In short, it's good, good enough for a four star rating -- but sorry, Amazon, you still didn't nail it. Give us more battery and a more regular shape, please?