Amazon Kindle Colorsoft e-Reader Review

November 13, 2024

4

The Amazon Kindle Colorsoft is a new color e-reader designed specifically for reading e-books. It is the first device from Amazon to feature a color e-paper screen, making it easy to read various types of digital content, including comics, magazines, manga, and webtoons. I was surprised that they chose a Kaleido 3 screen instead of a Gallery 3.

This new device came out two weeks ago and has a checkered history. Many of the e-readers that were shipped out have a yellow band at the bottom of the display. This is most noticeable when the front light and color temperature lights are turned on. Some people do not have this issue on their screens. Amazon is reaching out to customers to ask them about the yellow band and ask them to send it to their engineering department.

The yellow band is so widespread that it is causing shipping delays with the Colosoft Signature Edition. In the United States, there is no shipping date available. The United Kingdom is not fulfilling any orders until the end of December, and many other European countries have pushed back the release date even further.

Amazon has disclosed that this is a software issue that can be solved with a firmware update at some point. Well-known industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said on X “According to recent reports, Kindle Colorsoft displays are showing yellow discoloration bands along their bottom and sides – an issue traced to Amazon’s use of a different OCA (Optically Clear Adhesive) than that used in grayscale e-paper displays. This change was implemented to enhance the limited contrast capabilities of E Ink’s Kaleido color e-paper technology. While component suppliers have developed several hardware solutions, Amazon seems to lean toward a software-based fix.

All of the yellow band issues aside, the Kindle Colorsoft is one of Amazon’s most potent e-readers ever. The entire shopping experience is enhanced since you can see cover art for audiobooks, e-books and manga. The product description pages and starred ratings are also in colour. You might not notice a massive change in the actual reading experience for a typical e-book, but anything with many images or a PDF looks tremendous. Page-turn speed is also breakneck; Amazon said it was 25% quicker on this model than the previous generation Paperwhite.

The Kindle Colorsoft is $279, $120 more than the starting price of the new Kindle Paperwhite and $80 more than the Paperwhite Signature Edition. It is costly. However, will customers look beyond the price for a fully color e-reader?

Hardware

The Kindle Colorsoft features a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color e-paper display with a black and white resolution of 1264×1680 and 300 PPI and a color resolution of 150. A Kaleido 3 screen is typically able to display over 4,096 different colors. Amazon says this new device has custom-formulated coatings between the display layers to enhance the colour, a light guide with micro-deflectors to minimize stray light, and an ultra-thin coating in the display stack to improve optical performance. They built the display on an oxide backplane for sharper contrast and better image quality.

The Kindle Colorsoft is entirely based on a touchscreen, with no physical buttons. Amazon stated that, in the foreseeable future, they will not have buttons on any Kindle. It has an auto-adjusting front-lit display to automatically change the brightness of the warm and cool lighting based on your environment. The peak brightness is 94 units, with 12 White and 13 Amber LEDs.

This Kindle Colorsoft employs a dual-core 2GHZ Mediatek processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage to house your digital content. Bluetooth 5.1 will allow you to pair wireless headphones or an external speaker to listen to Audible audiobooks purchased from Amazon, but Audible only works in select countries. The Kindle Colorsoft is rated IPX8 and can withstand immersion in up to 2 meters of fresh water for up to 60 minutes and 0.25 meters for 3 minutes in seawater. A USB C port will transfer and charge digital content to your device. It also supports quick charging with an optional dock. It is powered by a 2310 mAh battery, which should be good for about eight weeks of light reading. The Kindle is made from 28% recycled materials. The battery is made from 100% recycled cobalt, and the packaging is made from 100% recycled cardboard.

I have noticed that the bezels on the side of the e-reader are slimmer than those of the previous generation of Kindle. The real power of this e-reader is reading in colour with no distractions. You won’t receive social media updates or anything else to distract you from reading. You can buy digital content on the device without visiting the Amazon website to place orders as you do with Kindle for Android or iOS.

Speaking of reading, black-and-white content seems a bit muted compared to the 12th Generation Paperwhite, Kindle Scribe, or base model Kindle. All of these other products provide a better reading experience. However, the Colorsoft makes sense when reading primarily image-heavy content, such as comics, magazines, replica newspapers, or browsing the Internet with the browser.

Software

Amazon has always used Linux as the operating system for the Kindle, and every generation has relied on it. There are several significant reasons for this choice. Linux is highly stable, allowing for the use of smaller batteries since it has no background processes, and all e-reader features efficiently consume less power. E Ink does not generate power independently; it only draws power when the state changes. For example, if you navigate the Kindle, access the settings menu, or click on Goodreads, power will be used. However, when you are simply reading what is displayed on the screen, no additional power is consumed.

The UI is straightforward; you have a home screen comprising the last three books you bought or read. A giant search bar at the top can find books in your library or on Amazon. Next to the search bar is a shopping cart icon, and clicking on it brings you to the Amazon Bookstore; if you live in a supported country, the bookstore will have two tabs when it’s opened: “Bookstore” and “Audiobook Store.” Three little dots are next to the shopping icon, which covers the settings menu. This is where the Goodreads link is, alongside many other options such as the settings menu, setting up the screen timeout, screensaver, and generation reading settings. Above the search bar is a downwards tab, where you can establish a WIFI connection, adjust screen brightness, turn the device into airplane mode, or sync. One of the good things about this e-reader is everything is in full glorious colour.

At the bottom of the UI are two options: home and library. Between is a small piece of cover art of the last book you opened; clicking on it allows you to jump right into the book, making it easier to jump into a story. The Library menu hasn’t changed much over the years; it lists your books on the device. You can sort them and make folder collections for better organization. Some people like the cover view, which makes sense on Colorsoft since all the cover art is in full colour.

The Amazon bookstore is one of the main reasons for investing in Kindle Colorsoft. They have the largest selection of books in the world. You will find all the same bestsellers by well-known authors that will be promoted at your local Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, or Chapters Indigo. There is also a slew of content from small and mid-range publishers specializing in one genre, such as TOR with fantasy and science fiction. Amazon has imprints, where they spend money, sign up established and up-and-coming authors, and publish the books themselves. There is also Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows anyone to publish and sell books on Amazon. If you like to read a lot, there is the Kindle Unlimited Program, where you can read millions of comics, books, and manga for a low monthly fee. If you also have a kid that uses your device, there is the Kids+ subscription, which has family-friendly content from publishers like Disney. There is literary something for everyone on the Amazon bookstore and all sorts of optional programs. You will find more content on Amazon than their rivals, such as Barnes and Noble Nook or Kobo.

Audible is one of Amazon’s secret weapons and something they have been leveraging on Kindle e-readers, starting with the 10th generation series and moving into the 11th and now 12th. They all had secret Bluetooth functionality and, once paired with headphones or a wireless speaker, allow you to listen to audiobooks right on the Kindle. The audiobook player is polished. Connecting your Bluetooth device and adjusting playback speed from various settings are options. You can skip chapters, view chapters, look for similar audiobooks, see the cover art and more. It is very similar if you have ever used the Audible app for Android or iOS. So, if you regularly listen on your phone, the same options are available on Kindle.

The Kindle Colorsoft is the first colour Kindle e-reader with an E INK screen that Amazon has ever made. The home screen with cover art images is in full colour and has ditto for almost every aspect of the device. Book discovery is the hardest thing on an e-reader. It is easier in a physical bookstore because there are sections where the best and new books are housed. They are usually from the world’s largest publishers, so it is hard to go wrong. Amazon has SO much stuff that discovery is sometimes a problem. Colorsoft makes things easier since you can look at what cover art grabs you while browsing and takes you to the product page, where you can read a book summary. Every month, Good e-Reader does a preview of the bestselling books of the month, and we are hardly wrong.

Reading

You would buy Kindle Colorsoft for many reasons besides reading a typical e-book. Sure, reading is fine; the text is sharp. However, the real power lies in non-fiction titles with many images, magazines, manga, comics, and more. Magazines are primarily found on Kindle Unlimited, but you can buy graphic novels, comics, and manga individually or purchase the entire series at the Amazon bookstore.

There is a current bug with the Kindle Colorsoft, and that is PDF files. PDF files do not show up in colour, no matter how you sideload them. They will only be in black and white. The only way to get them in colour is to use the Send to Kindle web link, Send to Kindle for PC, Send to Kindle for Email. We used Send to Kindle for Web, since it supports a 200MB document. This is what we did in our YouTube review, and it worked fine.

When buying e-books from Amazon, most customers don’t worry about the book format. This only applies if you are downloading free books from the internet or sideloading your collection. The Kindle Colorsoft supports Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX)

The Kindle reading system includes a profile section where you can save your settings, such as line spacing, margins, font size, and font type. You can share the Kindle with multiple family members, each with their custom settings. One feature I enjoy about the e-reading experience is the option to disable the time remaining in a chapter or the current page number. The ability to hide the status bar or turn it off completely is genuinely excellent. You can configure this in the Aa menu.

You can pinch and zoom to increase the font size when reading a book. This is useful since you no longer must do this exclusively on the Aa menu. You can do some options while reading, such as long-pressing on a specific word or body of text. This will provide options like making notes or annotations. You can look up words in the built-in dictionary and check what Wikipedia says. The Kindle also uses Bing Translations on all their e-readers so that you can translate a specific word or a body of text from one language to another. If you highlight a block of text or a single word, you can share it via Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, or email instead of looking it up.

Highlights in books are nothing new on the Kindle, but highlighting in colour on an e-reader is. You get six different primary colours when holding your finger on a specific word or a body of text. Highlights are saved on your device and then synced to the cloud. This is good since if you view the same book on the Kindle app for Android, iOS or a Fire tablet, all highlights will be preserved.

All Kindle models have a system called X-Ray. If you have never used it, it breaks down people, places, and things. It will tell you the book’s major and minor characters, let you know on what page they were referenced, and give a quick character biography. The Kindle 11th generation has an option in X-Ray called “Images,” which will show you all the images in a book you read. Most books have cover art, but there are many genres, such as autobiographies, that have dozens. Viewing all of this in colour on an e-reader is tremendous.

One of the downsides of this Kindle is that you can only buy content from Amazon, such as individual titles, full series etc. It cannot access Marvel Unlimited or DC Infinite subscriptions. You can maybe do that in the browser, but it is slow and sluggish.

Wrap Up

Ultimately, the Kindle Coloursoft is better than the Boox e-readers with colour E INK screens or other Android tablets with the Kindle app installed by either sideloading or downloading from Google Play. Nothing beats a native Kindle e-reader with the Linux operating system. Android tablets with the Kindle app tend to have little battery life, whereas the Kindle will last you close to 8 weeks of reading. I love the Kindle Colorsoft; it is the best Kindle ever made. It has the best hardware specs, page-turn speed and overall responsiveness.

The 7-inch screen is ideal for comics, manga, magazines, and nonfiction titles with colour images. Shopping is another significant part of the overall experience. Finally, on a Kindle, you can gravitate towards the excellent cover art that makes you want to learn more about the title. The same cover art experience bleeds into the audiobook section of the bookstore, too.

I hope Colorsoft is the beginning of a long and successful line of Kindle e-readers, despite the setbacks to the first-generation model, of which there are many. Hopefully, Amazon will get their act together and fix whatever hardware problems exist, and in a few months or even a year, everyone will forget all about “yellow bands.”