Amazon just revealed its first look at the Kindle everyone wants, but not so fast, Colorsoft

Amazon‘s Kindle catalog was in dire need of an upgrade and fast losing its appeal to bookworms thanks to other competitors like Kobo and Onyx, but the company expects the latest announcement of a new line-up of Kindle devices to win back its fanbase.

After the release of the 2021 Paperwhite and Paperwhite Signature Edition, which made the bezels thinner, the overall size bigger, and the display more immersive, Amazon fell behind in the race due to the introduction of colored e-ink devices like the Libra Colour and the Boox Go Color 7. These new devices incorporate a color filter array to give you a richer experience when reading certain titles, such as comic books, graphic novels, and books with a lot of charts and illustrations. But because of the fundamental technology that powers these e-ink displays, there are sacrifices to be made in the transition.

This is doubly worse for Amazon because not only is the company late to the party, but they’ve failed to circumvent the downsides of colored e-ink technology. Enter Amazon Kindle Colorsoft, the latest offering in the Kindle line-up that finally gives readers the ability to switch to a colored mode.

The Kindle Colorsoft is a 7-inch e-reader that can be charged wirelessly (if you opt to buy the Signature Edition) and allows you to highlight your text in different colors. You can use it to read comic books and graphic novels, as well as buy the illustrated edition of your favorite books without sacrificing what makes e-ink great in the first place. The contrast and color accuracy are admittedly low, but the feeling of reading a comic book straight out of the ’40s printers with a somewhat ragged look might be a charming prospect for certain fans.

Unfortunately, Amazon has not been able to make up for the drawbacks that colored e-ink devices have had to deal with by this point. For instance, if you want your texts as sharp as possible, you’ll have to switch back to black-and-white. The original mode shows text at 300 PPI (that stands for pixels per inch) while the colored version cuts it in half, with a grainy substitute sitting at 150 PPI. That’s a quite noticeable difference for a lot of folks, especially if you wish to continually switch between the different modes.

And that’s not the worst of it. One of the great things about Kindle devices is their top-notch battery life, touted as being able to last up to three months. With Kindle Colorsoft, that longevity also takes a hit, with Amazon admitting that the battery life is down to two months now. There also isn’t a range of colors to choose from, and it seems that for the time being, the Colorsoft will only be released in the conventional black.

On the brighter side, there are 32GB of storage, a USB-C port, a wireless charging option, and the auto-adjusting warm front light for day/night reading. Except for faster load times, the basic Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite haven’t received any major upgrades, though the latter comes with an even larger screen now. There’s also a new Kindle Scribe that comes with “uniform borders,” an upgraded display, and an optimized user experience.

The Kindle Colorsoft is priced at $279.99, which again isn’t very compelling when you realize the premium Kobo Libra Colour is going for $220 at the moment. Sure, the Colorsoft may have lower latency and faster page turns, but it’s hardly what we’d consider a revolutionary leap for the Kindle line-up. Besides, with some of these other e-readers, you get the chance to run Android on your device and access a range of different apps, as opposed to the limited Amazon ecosystem.

At any rate, you can pre-order the new Kindle Colorsoft here.