Amazon might be trying to take a page from Apple’s playbook for the iPhone, encouraging you to upgrade your Kindle every two years for the new colors, the way superfans update their smartphones. While Kindle has a much lower cost of entry, that’s because a smartphone comes with many more features and upgrades. The Kindle will always have one use: as an e-reader that shows you books. Unlike the second- to third-gen Kindle Scribe update, Kindle isn’t providing a new homepage experience, though you will get two of the AI-powered features the Scribes have (Story So Far, to recap where you left off in a story, and Ask This Book—coming soon, to ask about a story). You aren’t even getting the auto-adjusting light that aluminum versions of the Paperwhite and Colorsoft will have.

It’s a good gift for Christmas for someone who already has everything, or an excuse to finally upgrade your own Kindle if it’s starting to lag. But you might also want to wait and see if the Paperwhite or Colorsoft Signature Editions are the way to go instead, especially since only those two models will be compatible with the new Kindle Page Turn Cover ($80) that will give you on-device page-turn buttons. Neither the 2026 Kindle Aluminum nor the plastic version will be compatible with this accessory, making it even harder to justify upgrading, but they will at least work with the Kindle Click remote ($35).

Again, this isn’t a bad Kindle. The faster book openings and slightly warmer (though still not actually warm) front light, and double the storage make it a legitimate upgrade to the 2024 model. If you don’t already have a Kindle, it’s not a bad choice if you want to get one of the prettiest models available. It’s up to you if that’s worth spending almost $200 on.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

You’ll likely be just as happy with the plastic Ube version and spend between $20 and $40 less, depending on whether you want ads or not (though it does have half the storage of the aluminum model, at 16 GB). Still, this is a much higher price than these basic Kindles used to be available for. Hopefully we will see these Kindles on sale for Black Friday, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any good sales this year.