Amazon Kindle Colorsoft

Introduction

Amazon’s first colour Kindle – the Colorsoft – has been a long time coming. Especially as many of its biggest rivals already offer something similar.

The Colorsoft sits at the top of Amazon’s updated Kindle reader range, with only the large note-focused Scribe costing more.

With a hefty price increase over the Kindle Paperwhite (2024) and Kindle (2024), is the Colorsoft the best Kindle you can buy? I’ve been testing it for a month to find out.

Design

• Virtually the same design as the Paperwhite
• Single colour choice
• Waterproof

Considering this Kindle kicks off a completely new product line and introduces a huge new feature that users have yearned for, it’s strange that Amazon has simply recycled the design of the Paperwhite for the Kindle Colorsoft.

Aside from a shiny, metallic-looking Amazon swoosh on the back, the Colorsoft is visually indistinguishable from the Paperwhite. It has the same IPX8 waterproof rating, the same soft finish and the same touch interface.

For the most part, the design is fine. It’s functional, durable and simple. I don’t want my e-reader to be obnoxiously flashy. However, I do miss some of the elements Amazon used to include in its previous high-end reader – the discontinued Oasis.

Physical buttons for flipping through pages are still better than relying solely on the touchscreen, and I just can’t stand the placement of the power button here. It sits right next to the USB-C port on the bottom and I constantly knock it. Move it to the top, the side, even the back – anywhere but the bottom.

There’s a single colour option for the Colorsoft, and that’s black. While it would have been nice to have some more colourful options, I can see why Amazon has stuck with a solitary hue. This is a high-end item that probably won’t sell in the quantities of the Kindles, so having multiple colours at this stage wouldn’t make much sense. Hopefully we’ll get some variety in future updates.

Screen

• The first Kindle with a colour display
• A couple of screen issues
• Warm light

While it doesn’t offer much new in the design category, the Kindle Colorsoft is all about the display. This is the first Kindle with a colour screen, signalling a huge change for a series that has so far stuck firmly with greyscale panels.

The headline addition of colour is a no-brainer and something that Kindle fans have been craving for around a decade. Before I picked up the Colorsoft, I assumed the move to colour was only going to be a positive.

After plenty of testing, my opinion has changed somewhat. This isn’t the revolutionary colour display I was hoping for; instead it’s very much a first-gen change that’ll hopefully improve over time.

There are huge upsides to having a colour display. If you read comics or cookery books, these have more pop, and you can now see your highlights in four shades to help them stand out more. You can then filter by colour, although as you can’t label what each colour refers too, I am not entirely sure what the filtering benefit is.

Those benefits are nice – especially for comics – but, for me, more issues with this colour screen outweigh the positives.

My biggest issue with the Kindle Colorsoft screen is that text is not as sharp as it is on the Paperwhite. While the resolution is still 300PPI (this drops down to 150PPI when displaying colour) there’s a colour layer required over the display that adds a fuzzy finish. Look closely and text lacks the clean finish found on other Kindles.

This isn’t just an issue with the Colororsoft, but other colour readers too. The Kobo Libra Colour I reviewed last year had a similar screen effect, so it’s more of an issue with the tech in its current state rather than anything Amazon has done.

The screen is not anywhere near as uniform as previous Kindles. Read the reviews left on both Amazon UK and Amazon US and you’ll see many complaining of a yellow tinge to the lower portion of the screen. This is noticeable in my review sample, although certainly not to the levels I have seen on other units. Instead, it just makes the screen look patchy, with the top far whiter and brighter than the murky bottom. Switching on the warm light does alleviate this issue somewhat, but that’s hardly a solution.

The 7-inch screen uses Kaleido E Ink tech and can display 4096 colours – a lot less than the LCD or OLED panel on a tablet or phone that can display millions of colours. The result is a picture that lacks the punch of those other devices, with almost a watercolour appearance.

Of course, putting an OLED or LCD on a Kindle – a device supposed to look like paper – would completely defeat the point. If you’re deciding whether to buy this or an iPad for reading comics or books that look really good in colour, then the washed-out appearance of the Colorsoft’s display can’t compete. I found it much more immersive to read Batman Year One on the iPad Mini 7 than the Colorsoft – even with the Vivid colour mode turned on to enhance colours.

Features

• Good battery life
• Wireless and USB-C charging
• Plenty of Prime benefits

With the switch to a colour display, Amazon has had to sacrifice some of the battery life of the Colorsoft. The standard Paperwhite is touted to last for roughly 12 weeks, whereas the Colorsoft is listed as being able to last for eight. 

These claims are dependent on how much you read and how bright you crank the light. In our review of the Paperwhite 2024, we witnessed a drop of between 25-30% over 10 days. With the Colorsoft, during my testing over a two-month period, I would typically see a 5% per hour drop with colour content, and 3% with standard books.

You’ll likely be charging this up every few weeks, which is much better than a phone or tablet and on par with the basic Kindle.

Charging is via USB-C with the included cable. It takes about an hour to go from 0-100%, which is more than fast enough. There’s wireless charging too, although this is slow and only useful if you leave the device on a charging stand. If you want to charge wirelessly, I’d recommend the Amazon bespoke stand as the positioning of the charging coils means other wireless chargers struggle.

The Colorsoft is a Signature Edition device, the same moniker used for the pricier version of the Paperwhite. Along with the wireless charging benefit, this adds an auto-adjusting light and 32GB of storage.

Unlike on some of the cheaper Kindles, there are no lock screen adverts here. Considering how much you’re spending, that shouldn’t have been expected.

Elsewhere, the software experience is familiar—just with colour added throughout. Colour injects a bit more life into the software, from the lock screen displaying your current read to your bookshelves. It’s all more pleasing than before.

The home screen is split into Home and Library, with the former mostly there to display content from Amazon. The Library section contains books you’ve bought or borrowed from the various subscription services available, plus any Audible audiobooks. Amazon always encourages you to buy solely from its services, and this process is certainly the easiest. 

There is a Send to Kindle service for getting other content onto the device. With this, files can be transferred over a USB-C cable connected to a Mac or PC. I did have some issues with colour PDFs showing up in colour, although this wasn’t always the case.

Should you buy it?