The Amazon Kindle Colorsoft is a brand new e-reader with the only function of studying e-books. That is Amazon’s first color E INK product, they usually now need to play catch as much as established gamers within the recreation, corresponding to Rakuten Kobo, Pocketbook, Onyx Boox and Exceptional. There are some key advantages of this system. It’s 25% quicker than earlier Kindle e-readers; you too can view cowl artwork within the Amazon bookstore, making discovering new e-books and audiobooks simpler. It additionally opens up different digital content material: webtoons, manga, magazines and comics.
The Kindle Colorsoft is $279, $120 greater than the beginning worth of the brand new Kindle Paperwhite and $80 greater than the Paperwhite Signature Version. It’s expensive. Nevertheless, will clients look past the value for a completely color e-reader?
The Kindle Colorsoft contains a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color e-paper show with a black and white decision of 1264×1680 and 300 PPI and a color decision 150. A Kaleido 3 display screen is usually capable of show over 4,096 completely different colors. Amazon says this new system has custom-formulated coatings between the show layers to reinforce the color, a light-weight information with micro-deflectors to attenuate stray mild, and an ultra-thin coating within the show stack to enhance optical efficiency. They constructed the show on an oxide backplane for sharper distinction and higher picture high quality.
The Kindle Colorsoft is solely primarily based on a touchscreen, with no bodily buttons. Amazon acknowledged that, within the foreseeable future, they won’t have buttons on any Kindle. It has an auto-adjusting front-lit show to robotically change the brightness of the nice and cozy and funky lighting primarily based in your setting. The height brightness is 94 models, with 12 White and 13 Amber LEDs.
This Kindle Colorsoft employs a dual-core 2GHZ Mediatek processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of inner storage to deal with your digital content material. Bluetooth 5.1 will will let you pair wi-fi headphones or an exterior speaker to hearken to Audible audiobooks bought from Amazon, however Audible solely works in choose international locations. A USB C port will switch and cost digital content material to your system. It additionally helps fast charging with an non-compulsory dock. It’s powered by a 2310 mAh battery, which ought to be good for about eight weeks of sunshine studying.
The Kindle Colorsoft is rated IPX8 and may face up to immersion in as much as 2 meters of contemporary water for as much as 60 minutes and 0.25 meters for 3 minutes in seawater). As well as, we’ve examined your Kindle to resist publicity to water in lots of fashionable locations to learn. Nevertheless, your Kindle is just not supposed for underwater use and will expertise non permanent results from publicity to water. Don’t deliberately immerse your Kindle in water or expose it to seawater, salt water, chlorinated water, or different liquids (corresponding to drinks). In case your Kindle will get by chance dropped in a bath, sizzling tub, or pool, splashed by the ocean on the seashore, or in any other case uncovered to water, shortly retrieve it and run it beneath contemporary water for a couple of minutes.
Not solely are you able to learn books and different content material in full color, however if you need to focus on explicit phrases and sentences, the highlights might be in color; at launch, there ought to be six colors. The Kindle is constituted of 28% recycled supplies. The battery is constituted of 100% recycled cobalt, and the packaging is constituted of 100% recycled cardboard.
Wrap Up
I’ve seen that the bezels on the facet of the e-reader are slimmer than these of the earlier era of Kindle. I didn’t see a considerable distinction in page-turn pace vs the Twelfth-generation Kindle Paperwhite and even the Eleventh-generation with a brand new firmware replace. The Colorsoft is “barely” quicker, but it surely’s by milliseconds.
The true energy of this e-reader is studying in color with no distractions. You gained’t obtain social media updates or anything to distract you from studying. Talking of studying, black-and-white content material appears a bit muted in comparison with the Twelfth Era Paperwhite, Kindle Scribe, or base mannequin Kindle. All of those different merchandise present a greater studying expertise. Nevertheless, the Colorsoft is smart when studying primarily image-heavy content material, corresponding to comics, magazines, reproduction newspapers, or looking the Web with the browser.
One of many controversies studying the brand new Colorsoft is the yellow band on the backside of the show. There’s some conjecture that this can be a hardware-based subject with defective screens or one thing that may be mounted in a firmware replace. There are large worldwide transport delays, too, whereas Amazon is scrambling.
An Amazon spokesman advised Good e-Reader, “A small variety of clients have reported a yellow band alongside the underside of the show. We take the standard of our merchandise severely. Clients who discover this will contact our customer support crew for a substitute or refund, and we’re making the suitable changes to make sure that new gadgets is not going to expertise this subject shifting ahead.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Publish and the New York Instances have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.