Along with eye strain, in the last few years we've also come to realise the importance of a screen's colour temperature, with exposure to cool blue-ish light making it harder for our brains to wind down at the end of the day.

The 2019 Kindle Oasis has joined most handheld devices in offering a night mode, which adds more of a yellow-ish tinge to the white screen. You'll find a new "warmth" setting in the menus, which you can adjust manually or schedule to gradually shift at certain times of day.

While the Oasis' new warmth settings might help combat insomnia, they also help the screen look more like the pages of a real book. You might choose to leave warmth dialed up all the time as, without it, the Oasis' screen looks more like bleached printer paper; similar to the cheaper Kindle Paperwhite.

The Oasis 3's crisp 7-inch screen and slender design make it a joy to hold; the slight bulge on the back making it more comfortable to grip in either hand. Unfortunately the new warmth setting is the only significant change since the previous Oasis landed two years ago.

Loading

It's obviously difficult to hone what is already such an elegant user experience, but it's hard to justify the upgrade considering that you don't need to replace your e-reader as often as you'd replace your smartphone or even your tablet.

The $399 entry-level Oasis 3 offers 8GB of onboard storage, which should hold more than enough eBooks to satisfy even the most voracious reader.

You'd only step up to the $449 32GB model if you intend to load up on Audible audiobooks, which take up about 150MB each. There's no built-in speaker or headphone jack, instead the Oasis relies on Bluetooth. You can download books from Amazon via Wi-Fi, or else upgrade to the $559 32GB model featuring both Wi-Fi and 4G mobile broadband.

That's a ridiculous amount to spend on an e-reader, even one as gorgeous as the Oasis, when you consider the other options in the 10th generation Kindle lineup. The 6-inch Kindle Paperwhite starts at $199 and offers almost all the same features as the Oasis, including IPX8-level waterproofing. If you're on a tight budget you might look to the basic Kindle starting at $139, which is not waterproof or quite as sharp but still has a light.

Apart from warmth mode and an extra inch of screen size, the only key things you miss out on with the Paperwhite compared to the Oasis is support for audiobooks and physical buttons to turn the page. If you mostly want to listen to audiobooks then it's probably easier to use the app on your smartphone.

Taking a leaf out of Apple's book, Amazon seems determined to ensure that its top-shelf e-reader remains a luxury status symbol. While the Kindle Oasis 3 is a joy to behold, you need to decide whether you'll appreciate all the improvements over a cheaper Kindle once you're engrossed in a good book.