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

Oct 16, 2024 08:00 PM - 4 months ago 147539

For years, Kindle users person asked Amazon to make a colour type 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, isolated from alternatively of achromatic and achromatic it’s colour each over. The Colorsoft costs $279.99 and is disposable for preorder today, pinch shipments starting October 30th.

Making the Colorsoft happen, Amazon executives said astatine a motorboat arena 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 now deliberation the tech is ready.” (Kobo, Remarkable, and others mightiness disagree that it wasn’t fresh before.)

The Colorsoft is based connected E Ink’s Kaleido exertion but uses an wholly caller show stack for Kindles, each the measurement backmost to a recently designed oxide backplane that makes it easier for E Ink panel’s mini bits of ink to move astir quickly. The E Ink world has been working connected akin tech for a while, and Amazon thinks it’s the cardinal to making colour activity well. The Colorsoft has caller LED pixels, and a caller measurement of sparkling ray done them individually to heighten colors. It’s besides brighter than ever, to thief the full point consciousness much vivid. Some of this tech besides helped the caller Paperwhite move pages faster and easier, but it was designed to make Colorsoft work.

A photograph adjacent up connected a book screen connected the Kindle Colorsoft.

Up close, the Colorsoft’s surface looks arsenic bully arsenic you’d expect from colour E Ink.

Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

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

In a little demo astatine Amazon’s motorboat event, I was impressed pinch the Colorsoft’s display. It’s nary iPad screen, but it’s crisp capable and agleam capable to make comics popular without being truthful saturated it looks wrong. The astir evident drawback is that erstwhile there’s a colour image connected the page, the instrumentality does a afloat flashing refresh each clip you move the page; Keith says that only happens erstwhile there’s a sufficiently ample image connected the screen, but it happened to maine moreover pinch immoderate beautiful mini 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 for illustration the Kobo Clara Colour.

Best of all, pages move accelerated and books unfastened quickly — if this point is meaningfully slower than the caller Paperwhite, I didn’t really 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 image will zoom smoothly but pixelate until it refreshes a infinitesimal later. We’ll person to do a batch much testing, though, and I interest each the surface flashing mightiness get annoying arsenic you navigate done a agelong schematic 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, now that you tin spot your book covers successful afloat color. It’s besides a large triumph connected the lockscreen, which now presents a overmuch much vibrant standby surface while 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 only really color-specific characteristic is that you tin now adhd highlights successful aggregate colors and past look them up later by colour successful the Kindle app connected your phone.

For much accepted readers, the Colorsoft is really conscionable a much costly Kindle Paperwhite pinch 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 correct earlier it offered it to buyers. Now it feels it sewage it right. Which intends yet it mightiness beryllium everywhere.

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