Amazon’s first Kindle with a colour screen had been a very long time coming and then suffered a rough landing last year, plagued with yellowing screen issues and shipping delays. But with those problems fixed, is a splash of colour the revolution the Kindle needs?
Amazon isn’t the first to use a colour e-ink screen in an e-reader, but it thinks its upgrades meaningfully improve on the tech used by others such as Boox and Kobo over the past four years by offering greater contrast and speed.
Costing £270 (€300/$280) the Kindle Colorsoft towers above the £125 black and white Paperwhite on which it is based, and is more expensive than top colour e-ink rivals. Having phased out the luxury Oasis, the Colorsoft is Amazon’s top 7in model, sitting below the big 10.2in Scribe tablet.
Despite the new screen the Colorsoft doesn’t break with the basic Kindle formula. It looks and feels just like the “signature edition” of the Paperwhite with a smooth black plastic back and a matt touchscreen on the front. The power button next to the USB-C port on the bottom edge is the only physical button, meaning all controls, including page turns are touchscreen-only.
Black and white books look ever so slightly greyer than the Paperwhite. But otherwise the page turns are fast and text is crisp and easy to read. The front light has 24 levels of brightness with automatic control and it can change the tone of white based on the time of the day. It works very well.
The colour screen makes browsing your library or the Kindle store much easier, as book covers are in colour so they are more recognisable at a glance. In-book diagrams, maps or pictures are now in colour and a lot more intelligible. And you can highlight passages in various colours to mark them out for later. The whole screen flashes on page turns when colour images cover more than about one-third of the screen, similar to some of the original black and white e-readers, which you quickly get used to.
The matt screen is not as bold or vibrant as a phone or tablet, looking more like newspaper print than a glossy magazine or photo, but with the brightness turned up a bit and the vivid colour mode turned on, the Colorsoft does a decent job of presenting the art of graphic novels.
Reading the text in speech bubbles can be tricky because the 7in screen is just too small when displaying a full comic page. The Kindle has a panel view mode that displays a few panels at a time but it is a bit clumsy. I prefer pinching to zoom and pan on the Colorsoft’s touchscreen, which is fast and smooth enough to quickly read sections while still getting an appreciation of the whole page.
One of the big advantages of the Kindle is Amazon’s vast ebook store, which is equally large for comics and graphic novels. Amazon bought graphic novel specialist Comixology in 2014 and has since integrated its library into the Kindle store, including existing purchases.
The Kindle can be loaded up with ePub or pdf files, allowing you to buy books elsewhere, though only documents sent via Amazon’s Send to Kindle service showed up in colour on the Colorsoft.
One thing that needs improving is library management on the Colorsoft, particularly if you have a lot of comics or books. The Kindle has filters for books and comic strips, but it didn’t recognise any of the graphic novels I own as comics, leaving them all bundled in a mess with regular books and hard to browse. The filters do work on the Kindle app on a tablet, however.
Specifications
Screen: 7in colour e-paper (B&W 300ppi; Colour 150ppi)
Dimensions: 127.6 x 176.7 x 7.8mm
Weight: 219g
Water resistance: IPX8 (2m up to 60 minutes)
Connectivity: Wifi 5, Bluetooth
Storage: 32GB
Battery life: 28 hours of reading
The battery life is a bit more variable than other Kindles because of the colour screen, but it lasted longer in my testing than Amazon’s estimates. I saw about 45 hours of reading of regular black and white books with about 40% brightness, which reduces to about 32 hours when reading colour graphic novels with the brightness set to about 70%. Standby battery life was very good too, losing less than 1% per day with the power save option enabled.
Sustainability
The Colorsoft will receive software and security updates for at least four years after it is last available new from Amazon. The company does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. Access to repair options varies by country. It contains 28% recycled materials including cobalt, magnesium and plastic.
Amazon breaks down the Kindle’s environmental impact in its report and offers trade-in and recycling schemes.
Price
The Kindle Colorsoft costs £269.99 (€299.99/$279.99).
For comparison, the Kindle costs £79.99, the Kindle Paperwhite costs £124.99, the Kindle Scribe costs £379.99, the Kobo Libra Colour costs £199.99, the Boox Go Color 7 costs €279.99 and the iPad costs £329.
Verdict
Despite its troubled start, the Colorsoft proves that colour e-ink can be great. It feels like it will eventually be the norm for e-readers, replacing black and white for books, not just comics and graphic novels.
Seeing your covers and in-book pictures in colour immediately lifts the experience without creating a big downside compared with the best monochrome models. Comics also look pretty good and are easier to read outdoors on the Kindle than a tablet. But the 7in screen just isn’t big enough to do justice to graphic novels; for that you would need a colour version of the 10.2in Scribe or an iPad with its much bolder and more saturated display.
At the same time the Colorsoft doesn’t feel like a luxury Kindle in the way other high-priced models such as the Oasis managed. Despite its meaty price tag, it feels utilitarian just like a Paperwhite.
That leaves the Colorsoft in a hinterland. The colour screen is great, but struggles to justify the extra cost at this size of screen suited most for regular textbooks. Buy it on a deal and you won’t be disappointed. And if you have one already that has a yellow tint at the bottom of the screen, contact Amazon’s support for a replacement.
Pros: colour and black and white, in-book images and covers look great, much better for comics, speedy pinch-and-zoom, water resistant, light, good battery life, auto front light, USB-C.
Cons: screen flashes on page turns for colour far more than black and white, no page-turn buttons, expensive, 7in screen too small for comics, colours not as vibrant as tablet, locked to Amazon’s ecosystem.
