The Kindle Colorsoft Isn't the Color E-Ink Revolution Amazon Promised
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The Good
- Higher contrast
- Fast page refreshes
- Access to Kindle ecosystem
- Long battery life
The Bad- Makes black-and-white content worse
- Expensive
- Can't download local copies of Kindle purchases anymore
- No access to comics apps
Table of Contents
The Kindle Colorsoft isn’t the first color e-reader, but it is Amazon’s first stab at the technology, and according to the company, it's the best color e-reader on the market. (They would say that.)
Released late last year, the Colorsoft garnered controversy at launch thanks to a nasty yellow bar that kept showing up on the bottom of certain devices, although affected customers have since said Amazon has offered them refunds, and complaints appear to have died down in the most recent Amazon customer reviews. My review unit displayed no such issues, but even minus obvious bugs, I'm not convinced the Colorsoft is worth the premium price—$80 more than the Paperwhite Signature Edition, and $120 more than the basic Paperwhite—especially considering the tradeoffs involved.
What is the Kindle Colorsoft?
Amazon’s first color e-reader looks and feels a lot like a typical Kindle, and if not for its colorful lock screen and a slightly larger display (7 inches vs. 6.8 inches), I’d be hard pressed to tell it apart from my 2022 Kindle Paperwhite at a glance. Despite being the second-most-expensive of Amazon’s current Kindle lineup, the Colorsoft lacks premium features like physical page turn buttons and a stylus. (It's also only available in black, if you care about such things.)
I’ll get into specifics in a bit, but suffice it to say that this is about as basic as a tablet can get, design-wise. You have to actually use it to appreciate the unique experience you've paid so much for, one that Amazon thinks justifies a high price tag, even in comparison to other color e-readers.
What makes it so soft?
Colorsoft is a bit of a strange name for the first color Kindle. There's really only one company producing color e-ink, which means the Colorsoft uses essentially the same base display as almost every other color e-reader on the market—the 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3—so it could have just been called the “Kindle Color." Nothing about it exactly reads as “soft” to me.
But the unusual name hints at what ostensibly sets this e-reader apart: In addition to the Kaleido 3 screen, Amazon has uniquely decked out the Colorsoft with an “oxide backplane” that’s supposed to support faster refreshes and higher contrast than its competitors, as well as “a new light-guide with nitride LEDs” that’s supposed to enhance the color. Essentially, then, the “soft” in the name is intended to suggest that Amazon has done some tinkering to try to make your color images look a bit more natural than you'd see from a color Kobo or Boox tablet—despite all of them using the same underlying technology.
Does the device actually look better that any other color e-reader though? Kinda, yeah: Reading the same Sonic the Hedgehog comic from 2022 on both the Kindle Colorsoft and the Kobo Libra Colour (another e-reader using the Kaleido 3 screen), the Colorsoft’s image is noticeably more consistent. Shading in particular is less prone to “blotching,” and looks more like solid blocks of shadow (pay close attention to Sonic’s purple buddy, Espio). Colors are also a bit deeper and less washed out, relatively speaking.
Older comics, like X-Men’s Dark Phoenix Saga from 1980, fare a little better across both models due to the limited printing standards of the time, which make the content a bit more manageable—but even still, you'll notice slightly more detail on our titular hero-turned-villainess’ face on the Colorsoft due to its increased contrast. Even black-and-white content appears smoother on the Kindle than on the Libra, as the rainbow effect, which I’ll get to a little later, is far less noticeable when reading manga like Berserk or Sailor Moon.
I haven’t personally handled color e-reader under the sun, but as most of them opt for an unaltered Kaleido 3, all of this means that the Colorsoft likely offers a better color e-reading experience than many or most of its competitors. Page turns also live up to Amazon’s hype, and are noticeably snappier than on the Kobo (at least when you have page refresh off).
The issue is how much you’ll actually notice this Amazon difference when you aren't looking at it side-by-side with another device, and if color is even worth it over the other compromises color e-ink asks of you. Faster page turns, for example, are pretty meaningless to me, as I usually refresh the screen with every new page, which takes about the same time on any device. They’re not something I would have noticed unless I was looking hard for them, which I could say about a lot of the Colorsoft’s improvements. That they’re there at all at least means Amazon wasn’t blowing smoke when it said the Colorsoft is different from other color e-readers, but the tech still doesn't exactly feel fully baked.
Do you really want a color e-reader?
The problem is that even if the Colorsoft is the best color e-reader, color e-readers are still kind of a solution looking for a problem, and the Colorsoft does nothing to change that. Essentially, all of these devices work by filtering a black-and-white image through an additional color layer and carefully controlling which pigment shines through where, a process that creates the appearance of different colors. The E Ink Kaliedo 3 screen that most current models (including the Colorsoft) come with can produce up to 4,096 of them, which might be enough for you if you’re willing to trade the billions of colors available on a more traditional tablet for the unique, easy-on-the-eyes feel of e-ink.
Even if you don’t read a lot of color content, it’s nice to have the option if you can afford it, right? But it comes with a few drawbacks that can affect your overall reading experience, and you need to be sure you’re willing to live with them before you commit, even if your wallet is bottomless. Especially because the Colorsoft also has some problems unique to it, at least once you start looking past the image quality.
First, using a color e-reader makes black and white content worse than on a standard e-reader. That’s thanks to the rainbow effect I mentioned earlier—a noticeable shimmer left behind by the inactive color layer—and even when it’s not being used, it can leave visible artifacts on your screen. These can range from a light glittery effect on your novels, to full-on rainbows on black-and-white imagery, as on this page from Berserk.
This problem is entirely absent on black and white-only devices, and means that if you don’t intend to read color content, or only want to read it sparingly, shelling out extra for a model capable of color might actually end up hurting your experience the majority of the time. From what I saw while comparing it to the Kobo Libra Colour, Amazon’s model does go a bit toward correcting this, but it’s still not all the way there. Compare the same page of Dune on my 2022 Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Colorsoft, and you’ll quickly see what I mean.
Second, using color actually hurts the clarity of your image. That’s because much like a 3D TV, turning on the color feature will cut your resolution, or PPI (pixels-per-inch), in half. It’s a necessary drawback to using the color filter, as not halving the resolution would result in your eyes being assaulted by every possible color, but it does mean that when you choose to read color content via e-ink rather than using a more traditional tablet, detail in the art will be reduced. Luckily, this doesn’t affect black-and-white content, but it’s another issue the Colorsoft can’t escape.
Because of the drawbacks they present for novels and black-and-white comics like manga, the best use case for a color e-reader is either western comic books, or books with a heavy focus on color diagrams, like textbooks. However, both of these suffer from the e-reader format, especially when it comes to discoverability.
What it's like reading comics on the Colorsoft
Let’s start with the issues you might encounter when you’ve actually opened a digital comic. While the Colorsoft's implementation of the Kaleido 3 screen tops out at 7 inches diagonally, most American comic books are about 11.75-inches by the same metric, with textbooks not far behind. That means your art is going to be shrunk down (in addition to being lower-resolution and with less vivid colors). That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker when you’re already compromising resolution and vibrancy, but it might make the text in some comics too small to read.
Zooming in is not an ideal solution either—it's not as responsive as an LCD tablet, and takes a few seconds every time—and while the Colorsoft has a “crop margins” option, in testing, using it cut actual content out of the image more than once. I also couldn’t get the “virtual panel” option to trigger on any of my comics, although I’m not a huge fan of messing with the artist’s planned layout anyway. If you can get a sample of the comic you want to read before buying, be sure to check how readable it is first.
But it’s actually finding comics to buy that’s the bigger issue for me. Like it or not, there are two major color comics publishers in the U.S.—D.C. and Marvel—and each has apps for iOS and Android. Outside of loading your own comics files onto your e-reader (I won’t ask how you got them), these apps are easily the best way to find old comics, having most available back issues from their respective publishers dating back to the ‘30s. Unfortunately, neither is available on a Kindle, meaning you’ll either have to buy your digital comics piecemeal, or hope they’re on some other subscription you might own, like Prime or Kindle Unlimited.
If I wanted to read Amazing Spider-Man from the start, for instance, I could get the first volume of Peter Parker's collected adventures through Prime and the second through Kindle Unlimited, but after that I’d be on my own. Buying the rest would be pretty costly (each volume costs $6 and includes about 10 issues), but on Marvel Unlimited, I’d get access to all of them—as well as pretty much every other Marvel comic not published prior to the previous three months—including stories that might not be available on the Kindle store.
If Kindles could run Android apps, this wouldn’t be an issue, but as it is, it’s just much pricier if you want to read your comics legitimately here than it is on a tablet or desktop. (There are color e-ink Android tablets out there—Lifehacker has tested one of them, the Boox Note Air 4C—that can run any app from the Google Play store.)
While my complaints about image quality might come across as nitpicking—color e-reader aficionados know they’re making compromises—this is the nail in the coffin for me. What could be a fun alternate way to read is instead so siloed off that using it every once in a while would mean paying for the same content twice, since I’m already subscribing to the app. Meanwhile, using it as my sole way to read comics would give me a smaller, pricier library. At this point, I’d only read comics I can’t get on the apps here, and while I love a good indie title, that’s just not enough for me to justify buying specialized hardware. It’s a problem that’s not unique to the Colorsoft, but that probably goes a way towards explaining why its Amazon rating is so much lower than the Paperwhite's. It’s just too niche.
Which leaves me feeling stuck. Black and white books are worse on this device. Color content is better than on similar devices on the market, but still involves compromises and, more importantly, more hunting for things to read, and more of an investment. So, what am I paying extra for? Color-collated highlighting? My book covers looking a little prettier on my library page? There’s novelty here, for sure, but even if the Colorsoft does deliver the best color e-reading experience currently possible, I’m not sure that's a problem that needed to be solved. Certainly for now, most color content is still better left for a traditional tablet.
But is the Kindle Colorsoft a good color e-reader?
To be fair to the Colorsoft, most of the complaints I have about it are, again, shared across all color e-readers that can't run Android apps. Say you understand that and are still committed to getting a color e-reader. Is the Kindle Colorsoft at least a good choice?
I’ve already gone over the higher contrast, and given that the rest of the competition pretty much looks the same, that means this is one of the better looking color E Ink screens yet. And while the 7-inch display is smaller than a physical comic book and is on par with the new Paperwhite’s screen, it is slightly bigger than the 6.8-inch screen on the last generation Kindle models, so that’s another improvement. Its screen resolution (300 PPI for b&w content and 150 PPI for color) is industry standard, as is its IPX8 waterproofing, and like on other premium e-readers, there’s an adjustable front light with warmth settings.
You do lose out on a stylus and page-turn buttons, things that are available on competitors like the Libra Colour, but you gain wireless charging, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to test as it requires a special dock. There’s also audiobook playback over Bluetooth—I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use your phone for this, but it’s another industry standard feature—and a promised 94 nits of max brightness, which is on par with previous generations, as is the weight (207g on my 2022 Paperwhite, and 217g on the Colorsoft).
The battery’s supposed to last 8 weeks, which is long enough for me. While I didn’t have that long to test it, I was only down to 78% charge after a week of regular use, complete with frequent reading at max brightness as well as use of wifi. If I had used the e-reader with the auto-brightness setting instead (or just at lower brightness), and in airplane mode (which is usually my go-to for e-readers), I could see it actually lasting longer than the promised time period.
There’s also 32GB of storage, which is to be expected in this price range, and all-in-all, aside from the addition of color, it matches the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, and bests the cheaper standard Kindle Paperwhite, which lacks wireless charging and auto-brightness. That, combined with its improved display, does make it a good choice if you’re set on a color e-reader and don’t mind a lack of extras like physical buttons or a stylus. But there are two more big exceptions.
First, the price: $280 is not cheap for an e-reader, even a color one. But you should also take into account that buying a Kindle means dealing with the Amazon ecosystem. While Amazon still allows you to bring non-Kindle files onto its devices, there is no longer an official way to download DRM-free Kindle books for use on other devices, incentivizing you to stay on Kindle in the future. There's a reason the Kindle store is the easiest way to get content on your Kindle. On the flip side, if you already have a large Kindle library, getting a new Kindle will be the easiest way to upgrade and still have access to your content, however you may feel about the ecosystem you’re now trapped in.
So should you buy the Kindle Colorsoft?
I’m torn. The Colorsoft is a neat little device that offers objective improvements over other e-readers when it comes to displaying color images. But it’s also far more expensive than its black and white cousins, and arguably being worse in some ways. That makes it a pretty niche device, and I’m just not sure it justifies being priced so much higher than even the other devices in its niche.
The Kobo Libra Colour, the device I tested the Colorsoft against for most of this review, might suffer a bit more when it comes to contrast, but it is also $50 cheaper, has page-turn buttons and a stylus, and doesn’t rope you to the Kindle store. Given that using a color e-reader already means sacrificing image quality, those may be trade-offs you're willing to make. The Boox Go Color 7, alternatively, runs Android and thus has access to a wider array of apps, plus it has physical page turn buttons, and it still comes in $10 cheaper than the Colorsoft.
If all you care about is image quality, the Colorsoft isn’t a bad choice, but the truth is that all color e-readers still require getting comfortable with compromising. When viewed holistically, all of the available options are still roughly on par, which makes paying extra to be locked into the Amazon ecosystem a bit unappealing. When it comes to color e-ink, I'm still waiting for my a-ha moment.
Michelle Ehrhardt is Lifehacker's Associate Tech Editor. She has been writing about tech and pop culture since 2014 and has edited for outlets including Gizmodo and Tom's Hardware.
