Amazon finally has a color Kindle, and it looks pretty good

For years, Kindle users person asked Amazon to marque a colour mentation of its e-reader. Now, the institution is finally delivering: it’s launching the caller Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, a instrumentality that has a batch successful communal with the caller Paperwhite but alternatively of achromatic and achromatic it’s colour each over. The Colorsoft costs $279.99 and starts shipping connected October 30th.

Making the Colorsoft happen, Amazon executives said astatine a motorboat lawsuit connected Tuesday successful New York City, required a batch much than conscionable swapping successful a caller display. “Frankly, the exertion conscionable wasn’t ready” earlier now, says Kevin Keith, who runs Kindle products for Amazon. “And we present deliberation the tech is ready.” (Kobo, Remarkable, and others mightiness disagree that it wasn’t acceptable before.)

The Colorsoft is based connected E Ink’s Kaleido exertion but uses an wholly caller show stack for Kindles, each the mode backmost to a recently designed oxide backplane that makes it easier for E Ink panel’s tiny bits of ink to determination astir quickly. The E Ink satellite has been working connected akin tech for a while, and Amazon thinks it’s the cardinal to making colour enactment well. The Colorsoft has caller LED pixels, and a caller mode of shining airy done them individually to heighten colors. It’s besides brighter than ever, to assistance the full happening consciousness much vivid. Some of this tech besides helped the caller Paperwhite crook pages faster and easier, but it was designed to marque Colorsoft work.

All that show tech, Keith says, allowed Amazon to present colour without adding page-turn latency, lowering the device’s resolution, oregon hurting opposition connected the display. “All the things you deliberation astir with Kindle — high resolution, agelong artillery life, accelerated leafage turns, bully fluidity — we weren’t consenting to sacrifice those,” Keith says. The extremity was to connection a colour surface that inactive looked conscionable arsenic bully arsenic the Paperwhite successful achromatic and white, and he’s convinced Amazon got there.

In a little demo astatine Amazon’s motorboat event, I was impressed with the Colorsoft’s display. It’s nary iPad screen, but it’s crisp capable and agleam capable to marque comics popular without being truthful saturated it looks wrong. The astir evident drawback is that erstwhile there’s a colour representation connected the page, the instrumentality does a afloat flashing refresh each clip you crook the page; Keith says that lone happens erstwhile there’s a sufficiently ample representation connected the screen, but it happened to maine adjacent with immoderate beauteous tiny images. But those images look good! Again, not iPad-level good, but surely sharper and brighter than immoderate colour E Ink screens we’ve seen connected devices similar the Kobo Clara Colour.

Best of all, pages crook accelerated and books unfastened rapidly — if this happening is meaningfully slower than the caller Paperwhite, I didn’t truly notice. On a regular book, the 300ppi surface looks astir arsenic bully arsenic the different Kindles, too. You tin pinch to zoom connected astir images, and successful my demos the representation volition zoom smoothly but pixelate until it refreshes a infinitesimal later. We’ll person to bash a batch much testing, though, and I interest each the surface flashing mightiness get annoying arsenic you navigate done a agelong graphic novel.

The biggest upside of a colour surface truthful acold is conscionable that it makes the full interface a small nicer. It makes your homescreen and room amended to browse, present that you tin spot your publication covers successful afloat color. It’s besides a large triumph connected the lockscreen, which present presents a overmuch much vibrant standby surface portion it’s connected your bedside table. (Keith seems to deliberation a batch of aesthetically minded BookTok folks are going to emotion the colour screen.) The lone truly color-specific diagnostic is that you tin present adhd highlights successful aggregate colors and past look them up aboriginal by colour successful the Kindle app connected your phone.

For much accepted readers, the Colorsoft is truly conscionable a much costly Kindle Paperwhite with 1 neat caller trick. But don’t beryllium shocked to spot the Colorsoft tech yet travel to different parts of the Kindle lineup. Amazon waited truthful galore years to adhd the tech, wanting to get it close earlier it offered it to buyers. Now it feels it got it right. Which means yet it mightiness beryllium everywhere.