The new Kindle ditches the raised bezel in a push toward a smaller, lighter e-reader

Amazon is giving the Kindle its most significant physical redesign in years, introducing a refreshed lineup of e-readers built around a deceptively simple idea: getting rid of the bezel.

The redesigned Kindle unveiled Thursday replaces the traditional raised bezel surrounding the display with a flush-front design, creating a cleaner, more seamless look. But bezels also give readers a place to rest their fingers without accidentally touching the screen and triggering a page turn or another touchscreen command. Amazon says it has designed around that problem.

At a press briefing, Kevin Keith, Amazon’s vice president of devices, said the company is using “Cap” (capacitive) touch technology and haptics to create what he describes as a “dead zone.” As a reader grips the Kindle, the device detects where a finger is resting and adjusts the touch-sensitive area accordingly.

“When you’re gripping the Kindle, wherever you put your thumb, it will self-detect a dead zone in the Cap touch. It will just readjust, and it’ll know that the finger is there,” Keith said.

Alongside the bezel-free redesign, the standard 6-inch Kindle is now 6.8 millimeters thick and weighs 140 grams, making it both thinner and lighter than its predecessor. Amazon is positioning it as the most pocket-friendly Kindle in the lineup.

Amazon said the new display is also 30% faster at page turns than the previous generation. The lineup also introduces new colors, including Ube, Alpine Sky, Seaglass Green, Graphite, and Fig.

The new Kindle starts at $149.99 and is available in Ube and Graphite. For the first time, Amazon is also offering an aluminum-backed version, with 32GB of storage and color options, including Alpine Sky and Seaglass Green.

The redesign extends to the Kindle Paperwhite, which is also thinner and lighter than the previous generation.

Amazon describes the Paperwhite as having the largest display in the Kindle lineup, along with the highest contrast ratio. The company says the combination is designed to deliver “deep blacks and crisp text, and images that pop off the screen, whether you’re reading in bright sunlight or under the covers at night.”

The standard Paperwhite comes with 16GB of storage and costs $199.99 in Graphite. A 32GB Signature Edition costs $249.99 and is available in Graphite and Seaglass Green.

The Kindle Colorsoft, which Amazon introduced in 2024 as its first Kindle with a color display, also adopts the thinner, lighter, flush-front design used across the refreshed lineup. The standard Colorsoft has 16GB of storage and starts at $289.99 in Graphite. A 32GB Signature Edition is available in Graphite and Fig for $319.99.

The new Kindle and its aluminum version are available starting today in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Australia.

The new Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Colorsoft are available for preorder across the same regions.

Amazon is also continuing to offer its Kids lineup. The Kids Kindle is currently available for purchase, whereas the Kids Kindle Colorsoft is available for preorder in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, and Japan.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Lauren Forristal

Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.

You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal.

October 13 – 15

San Francisco

Get 50% off a second pass

The Disrupt experience is meant to be shared. Get your pass and bring a colleague, partner, or peer at 50% off. Cover more ground by making connections, building momentum, and discovering what’s next in the startup ecosystem.

OpenAI launches Dots, its bubbly agentic avatar

Lucas Ropek

AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2B

Tim Fernholz

Viral AI agent Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation

Sarah Perez

Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers

Kirsten Korosec

Unsecured OpenAI agents posted 53 user images on the internet without the lab’s knowledge

Tim Fernholz

Astra and Opus just passed Turing’s other test

Tim Fernholz

Kiteworks urges customers to shut down their servers amid ‘imminent’ threat of cyberattack

Zack Whittaker