Amazon has announced a new version of the Kindle Oasis as it looks to make this flagship reader the most accomplished Kindle so far. 

Amazon launched the Kindle Oasis in 2016 as a high-end reading device to appeal to Kindle and reading fans. It was incredibly thin and very light, but also expensive considering some of the features it couldn't accommodate in its svelte frame. 

Accordingly, the new Kindle Oasis has been designed to address some of these shortcomings. Firstly, the thing has increased in screen size, with a 7-inch E Ink display. This is the first time - apart from the Kindle DX - that Amazon has changed the size, giving you more space to read.

The design is very much as laid down by the original Oasis, with a slim body behind the display and a pronounced bulge at one side, housing all the brains and the battery. 

That battery is good for 6-weeks of reading and there's now 12 LED illuminators down the side to front light that E Ink panel.

The body work is now seamless aluminium, rather than having different sections that the 2016 model offered, but there's a big step forward here with the inclusion of IPX8 protection, meaning it won't matter if your Oasis gets caught in the rain or dropped in the bath. 

The story doesn't end there, because the new Oasis adds one of the features that was missing from the original and that's adaptive illumination. That means that the illumination will change brightness depending on the ambient conditions, potentially saving you battery life.

Amazon has also added Bluetooth to this model. Why? So that it can support Audible of course. The new integrated Audible feature will mean that you can switch from reading a book to listening to that book - as long as you have the Audible files, of course. (You'll need a separate Audible account, or have access to Audible books, perhaps through redeeming a code.) 

You'll then be able to connect your Kindle to your car, speaker or Bluetooth headphones, with syncing between the two, meaning you can flip straight from reading to listening and back again. 

On the storage front, Amazon is making quite a change to the capacity, with the Wi-Fi version coming with an 8 or 32GB capacity, meaning more space for those Audible files. The prices for those devices are £229 and £259 respectively (the original was £269.99, so you're now getting less for more). 

For those who want to be permanently connected, the Kindle Oasis will also come as a 32GB version with mobile network connectivity and Wi-Fi and that will set you back £319.

Pre-orders for the new Kindle Oasis are now open with deliveries from 31 October.