It finally happened. Amazon has brought a splash of colour to its best-selling Kindle lineup.
The Kindle has been so successful for the US retailer that these devices have become synonymous with the entire e-reader category in most readers’ minds. While there are rivals to Kindle, you see them discussed or see them on sunloungers by the pool, or clutched in the hands of exhausted commuters. Amazon’s digital bookshop has more titles than almost anyone else, and its software experience is leagues ahead.
But one of the few differentiators that alternatives like Kobo or BOOX could offer was the potential of a colourful e-ink experience, offering vibrant graphic novels, colourful diagrams and maps, or faithful recreations of the book cover.
And now, all of those things are possible with the latest generation of Kindle.
Amazon hasn’t been resting on its laurels and has kept an eye on the competition. With the Kindle Colorsoft, it's bringing a welcome splash of colour to your favourite book covers, graphic novels, PDFs, and much more.
This new e-reader marks a new chapter for these popular gadgets. GB News has had a Kindle Colorsoft (frustratingly, like the GameBoy Color, the US spelling is the one used worldwide) for a few months and has put that new e-ink display through its paces with a series of page-turners and comics. Here's everything you need to know.
Kindle Colorsoft: 60-Second Review
Kindle Colorsoft does everything you'd expect from a Kindle, but adds a welcome splash of colour. Graphic novels, book covers, illustrations and artwork are all beautifully rendered in colour on the 7-inch e-ink touchscreen display. Elsewhere, Colorsoft boasts a durable, water-resistant design and weeks of battery life.
If you have a shelf with books that'll benefit from the colourful screen, this is a perfect upgrade. But if you plan on reading novels with the Colorsoft, aside from a gorgeous recreation of the cover when the e-reader isn't in use, there's little to justify the almost £100 premium compared to the bestselling Kindle Paperwhite.
What We Love
The biggest draw of the Kindle Colorsoft is the colourful electronic-ink display, and it really delivers. At a glance, this really does look indistinguishable from a printed (colourful) page.
Artwork, maps, and graphics — elements that've always lost something in the translation from print page to Kindle — are beautifully recreated on the seven-inch screen.
The sharpness of the screen is slightly diminished when viewing in colour (150 points-per-inch) compared to black-and-white (300ppi), but it's not so noticeable that it'll diminish your reading experience.
Your reading won't be hindered by glare either, with the screen acting like a paperback when viewed under a reading light or direct sunlight. Like its black-and-white counterparts, Amazon's colourful panel won't continuously draw power to keep an image displayed on-screen.
That means Kindle Colorsoft can maintain the same weeks-long battery life as the rest of the lineup, although it will need to be topped up more frequently than the Paperwhite.
Whether you're planning to read on your daily commute, keep the Colorsoft on your nightstand, or tear through a few bestsellers on the beach this summer, you won't often have to think about charging your Kindle. In fact, you'll likely only have to recharge every other book, a rarity compared to most of the gadgets in your life.
Recharging is handled via USB-C, which is present on most devices these days. That means you can only pack a single charging cable for your phone, Kindle, Nintendo Switch, portable fan, or dozens of other gadgets.
Amazon has kept the Kindle Colorsoft pretty compact, with the same seven-inch screen size as the Kindle Paperwhite (the entry-level Kindle is the only model that still boasts a smaller six-inch screen). That screen sits flush with the front of the e-reader, so you won't need to worry about sand or dust building up in the lip.
The curved edges around the e-ink display make this feel like the most premium Kindle since the Kindle Oasis, which was retired two years ago. It's a small touch, but one that visually separates this model from the entry-level Kindle. It's something we've seen across a slew of other product categories, with smartphones, tablets, and laptops matching the curves of the chassis with the screen.
At £239, Kindle Colorsoft isn't cheap. But it's much easier to justify that price tag when the hardware feels as premium and refined as this e-reader does. We've been using the Kindle Colorsoft for months without a case, and it's held up remarkably well to the bumps and scrapes of the daily commute and hours by the pool.
You don't need to worry about reading in the bath or pool, either. With IPX8 certification, Kindle Colorsoft can withstand submersion in up to three metres of water for around 30 minutes without any worries.
Like the rest of the Kindle lineup, the software experience is exceptional.
Amazon has spent years perfecting a feature-rich, mature operating system for its e-readers.
The operating system that powers the Kindle lineup is packed with useful perks that make it better than picking up a paperback, but it's also adept at getting out of the way so you can just read. That starts from the moment you wake up the device, which returns you right back to the page you were last reading.
As you navigate the operating system, Amazon keeps a shortcut at the bottom of the screen to instantaneously return to your book. Colorsoft lets you customise the spacing and justification of the text until it's the perfect fit for you. It also offers a decent selection of fonts, including a custom typeface designed from the ground up for e-ink displays. There’s also the OpenDyslexic font, designed to mitigate reading errors caused by dyslexia, which should make reading more accessible (and enjoyable) for millions.
If you're slogging through a particularly challenging read, Word Wise could prove helpful. It loads concise definitions beneath tough words in the body of the text, so you can continue reading with minimal interruptions. Of course, you can always press and hold on any word or phrase and load up a dictionary definition, translation, or Wikipedia entry.
If you'd rather not have numbers in the corner of the page, Kindle can substitute that with an estimate of how much time you’ve got left in any given chapter or the entire book. It's a really handy way to determine if you've got time to finish a particular chapter or not.
Of course, all of this is possible with reading apps on an iPad, Android phone, or iPhone. But what makes the Kindle Colorsoft — or really any e-reader in Amazon's bestselling lineup, since they all share the same software experience — such a joy is the combination of these intelligent 21st-century features with the lack of distractions. You will never be interrupted by the ping! or beep! of a notification from an incoming text message, email, or social media app. Kindle Colorsoft is completely silent and focused entirely on the page.
Connect the Kindle Colorsoft to Wi-Fi, and you'll have access to every book in the Kindle Store, which remains the best ebook store on the planet.
If you’re looking for an ebook, it’s almost certainly going to be here. Amazon has a phenomenal selection of fiction and non-fiction titles, as well as a constantly refreshing carousel of books on sale for 99p or less.
Finish the first in a trilogy of books on the first few days of your holiday? There's no need to wait until you get back to the UK to make a start on the sequel; you can buy it from the comfort of the sunlounger.
Goodreads, the social network for bookworms, is tightly integrated into the Kindle software too. If you have a reading goal for the year, each title that you complete on the Kindle Colorsoft will be automatically added to your tally. You can also share a rating direct from the Kindle software too.
What We Don't Love
There’s only really one major drawback of Kindle Colorsoft – its price.
It's taken years for Amazon to add a colour e-ink screen to its e-readers, and now it's charging for the privilege. Undoubtedly, this new device will cost more to produce than the Paperwhite, but the almost £100 premium is a little punchy. At £239 without a single book to read on the Kindle Colorsoft, this isn't an impulse buy.
While it's an utter joy to see the cover of your latest page-turner emblazoned on the Colorsoft in beautiful colour whenever the device is asleep, that alone doesn't justify the cost. If you read a lot of graphic novels or non-fiction books with complex graphs and illustrations, the colourful e-ink more than pays for itself.
But if you're going to spend most of your time reading a paperback thriller, aside from that stunning colour artwork that displays whenever you put the device to sleep, or browsing books in the Kindle Store, you're rarely going to see the benefits of the Colorsoft's killer new feature.
Bafflingly, the Kindle Colorsoft doesn't come equipped with an ambient light sensor, unlike the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which costs some £50 less. That means you'll need to manually adjust the brightness and temperature of the screen.
Granted, it's a small nitpick, but most would assume that paying more for a device in the lineup means you'll benefit from all of the same perks as the more affordable devices and more added extras. But that's not the case with Amazon's Kindle lineup at the moment.
If you're going to read black-and-white text, Paperwhite Signature Edition is a better buy. But if you read anything with colourful illustrations or artwork, it's worth the extra £50.
Final Verdict
Kindle Colorsoft brings a welcome splash of colour to your favourite paperbacks, non-fiction books, graphic novels, and PDF documents. The curved edges around the seven-inch display, which sits flush with the front of the device, make it feel like the most premium e-reader from Amazon since the Kindle Oasis.
It's also durable, with water resistance and a sturdy design that's held up to bumps and scuffs — and the occasional accidental plummet into a pool — in our months of testing. Charging via USB-C means you’ll only ever need a single charging cable for your Kindle, iPhone or Android, Nintendo Switch, and earbuds.
Battery life is superb. Long-haul flights and hours on the sun-lounger with a serious page-turner couldn't make a dent. Even after six months, we can count the number of times we’ve recharged the Kindle Colorsoft on a single hand. Yes, really.
But it’s that colour e-ink display that really steals the show. You don’t lose any of the benefits of earlier Kindle models – Colorsoft is clearly visible and resistant to distracting glare in bright sunlight, the backlight is gentle on the eyes when you’re winding down with a good book, and text is crisp and endlessly customisable.
While graphic novels are the best showcase for this colourful new display technology, it’s nice to see the cover of the book you’re reading in its full glory on the lock screen. If you can stomach the hefty price rise compared to the black-and-white models (or there’s a decent sale), Colorsoft offers an incredible reading experience.
Now, if you excuse us, we’re going to finish this next chapter...
