It has been a bumpy begin for Amazon’s $280 Kindle Colorsoft, the corporate’s first E-Ink e-book reader with a coloration display screen. The corporate delayed shipments for a number of weeks to appropriate an issue the place a faint yellow band would seem throughout the underside of the display screen, one thing that has apparently been fastened for present variations of the reader (Amazon says it has made “the suitable changes” to repair the issue however hasn’t been particular about what these changes are).
Amazon did not ship us a Colorsoft for assessment on the time, perhaps partially due to this downside early reviewers had, however we lastly received one a number of weeks in the past and have been utilizing it since then.
My fundamental takeaway is that I do not thoughts the Colorsoft, but it surely additionally does not remedy any issues I used to be having with the monochrome Kindle Paperwhite, and it does not meaningfully remedy the massive issues with coloration E-Ink. It additionally makes the expertise of studying common textual content subtly worse, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of my Kindle exercise. I am curious to see future riffs on the concept, however this preliminary implementation leaves me chilly.
What’s completely different in coloration?
The Twelfth-generation Kindle Paperwhite on the left, the Colorsoft on the suitable. That is with the brightness and warmlight set to the identical ranges—the Colorsoft’s display screen additionally takes on a barely extra purplish hue right here.
Credit score:
Andrew Cunningham
Even in case you spend most of your time studying monochrome textual content, the Colorsoft does insert splashes of coloration wherever it may. The setup and sleep screens are all in coloration. Each e-book cowl in your library or on your property display screen is in coloration, and highlights will be made in 4 completely different colours (yellow, pink, blue, and orange).
These colours are the identical as you get within the Kindle cellular and desktop/internet apps, and highlights you make on the Colorsoft will present up in the identical coloration within the different apps (and vice-versa).
Comics, PDFs, webpages, and different coloration content material may even show in coloration on the Colorsoft’s display screen (although for webpages, you are caught with the identical restricted internet browser the Kindle has all the time had, and most pages will not render wherever near appropriately). Colours will not be represented as precisely as on an LCD or OLED display screen, since E-Ink helps simply 4,096 colours, relatively than hundreds of thousands. However the broad strokes will look principally appropriate.
