This Pricey New Accessory Gives Your Kindle a Feature That Used to Be Standard

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It has been 14 years since Amazon made a Kindle e-reader without a touchscreen, and while I certainly don't miss the days of slowly paging through my e-book library with the arrow keys on my Kindle Keyboard, the move to touch navigation did have one unfortunate result, at least for a small subset of readers: the loss of physical page-turn buttons. Once standard on all Kindles, they eventually became a premium feature available only on the pricey Kindle Oasis, before being dropped from the lineup entirely when that device was retired in 2024.

While this fall's overhaul of the Kindle lineup introduced upgrades like a metal enclosure and a flush-front design, Amazon hasn't exactly reintroduced physical buttons, but the company has launched a new accessory to appeal to the roughly 5% of the market (per Kevin Keith, Amazon's vice president in charge of Kindle) that essentially turns your new Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition into a Kindle Oasis: the Kindle Page-Turn Cover.

The Page-Turn Cover builds the buttons into the case

Releasing alongside the new flush-front Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, the Page-Turn Cover is made of plant-based leather (in one of three colors to match your Kindle—Graphite, Fig, or Seaglass Green) with a magnetic front flap, a soft interior, and a right-hand bezel made of lightly textured plastic that houses two thin, elongated buttons. When you slot your compatible Kindle into the case, connecting it magnetically and via the built-in pogo pins, it will automatically pair with the device, allowing you to turn pages with a button press instead of a tap.

By default, the top button will advance you forward by one page, and the bottom button will do the reverse, though you can change which does which in your device settings. While the physical buttons on some Boox and Barnes & Noble Nook devices allow you to map different functions—like skipping an entire chapter or scrubbing through a book quickly—to a long-press or double-tap, as of this writing, the Page-Turn Cover will only let you turn one page at a time. The buttons also only work for turning pages; you'll still navigate your library and the device menus using the touchscreen.

If you're a lefty, or prefer to swap which hand you use to hold your e-reader, you can change up the orientation by turning off Lock Rotation on your device; when you flip it over to hold in your other hand, the text will automatically reorient itself, and the buttons will continue to work with your existing settings.

The Page-Turn Cover makes your Kindle even faster

You might think that changing pages with an accessory would slow down your device, but in my testing, the Page-Turn Cover actually seems to turn pages faster than tapping the touchscreen. Though the new Kindles are quite speedy, there's still a perceptible lag between when you tap the screen and when the display changes to a new page. Not so with the Page-Turn Cover attached; although the very first page turn after attaching it is a bit laggy, after that it is basically instantaneous. I can't imagine this will be a game-changer for anyone—the difference is a mere fraction of a second—but it's worth noting all the same.

Physical buttons come at a high price

Amazon Kindle Page-Turn Cover $79.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $79.99 at Amazon

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (2026) $249.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $249.99 at Amazon

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition (2026) $319.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $319.99 at Amazon

While this is Amazon's clever solution to satisfy the physical button die-hards without overhauling the design of its entire lineup, it does come at a cost to the reader—a literal cost: The Page-Turn Cover is around $80, and it's only compatible with the $250 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition or the $320 Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, the only models with the metal backing, pogo pins, and accelerometer necessary for the case to function.

In short, that means if you want a Kindle with physical buttons, you'll have to shell out at least $330, or $80 more than the third-generation Kindle Oasis cost when it launched back in 2019. (For what it's worth, you can get the Oasis-like Boox Go 7, one of my picks for the top non-Kindle e-readers, for around $270).

Why physical buttons matter on an e-reader

While most people probably don't think twice about tapping the screen to turn the page, some folks just prefer the feel of tactile buttons or would rather not have to worry about holding their device wrong and accidentally jumping forward a chapter or two.

If you've made do without them so far, you probably aren't missing them, but if you're an old-school e-reader (or just a particularly tactile person), they are definitely a nice bonus. Are they worth an $80 upgrade? That's going to depend on the reader.