Review: Kindle Colorsoft

The most requested feature on a Kindle? A color screen, according to Amazon. Wish granted. The Kindle Colorsoft is here, a little late to the party following competitors like Kobo and Boox (even ReMarkable). This ebook reader has a lot to live up to, and Amazon said it wanted to build it right—from the ground up. From custom coatings to an oxide backplane to an improved front light, the Colorsoft has been reengineered to deliver vivid colors with increased brightness.

The job is done, and done well, but perhaps Amazon should have also been listening to all the other features Kindle customers have been asking for. Page-turn buttons! Stylus support! The Kindle Colorsoft is a great color e-reader, but it's $80 more than the higher-tier version of the Kindle Paperwhite, and I'm not sure $280 makes sense for what's on offer here.

Editor's Note: Following customer complaints of a yellow bar at the bottom of the Colorsoft's screen and discoloration along the edges, Amazon has temporarily paused shipments of its latest Kindle. “Customers who notice this can reach out to our customer service team for a replacement or refund,” an Amazon spokesperson told WIRED. The company said it's "making the appropriate adjustments to ensure that new devices will not experience this issue moving forward.”

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

Color Me Impressed

The Colorsoft looks and feels similar to the 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite—it's not as thin or light as the latest 12th-gen Paperwhite, but it does have a similar 7-inch display and slim bezels around the edges.

The screen is a bit more complex than what we've seen before. It comes equipped with an oxide backplane, which Amazon says delivers sharper contrast and better image quality on both color and black-and-white content. The screen also has custom-formulated coatings designed to do everything from magnifying color and improving optical performance to minimizing glare. Amazon also tweaked the front light and incorporated nitride LEDs to increase brightness and maintain color accuracy.

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

This all works together to produce book covers, photos, images, and highlights in colors that appear more vivid than most other e-readers. It enriches the overall Kindle experience, especially when scrolling through the library and Amazon's storefront. I can identify my own books a lot quicker, and it's also fun searching for new books to read. (Yes, I judge books by their covers.) The lockscreen images are also in color, and it's a nice touch, especially when the Kindle is just lying around on my kitchen counter or coffee table.

While the Colorsoft screen features 300 pixels per inch for black-and-white content, it's capped at 150 ppi for color. (This measures how many pixels there are on the screen per inch, with more delivering a higher resolution and sharper image.) Color illustrations still look detailed and vibrant—I downloaded a comic book called Paper Girls and it almost felt like I was reading from the hardcopy I own. You won't lose on quality when zooming in either—even minor details, like shadows, look great. Speaking of, you can switch between two color styles in the settings menu. The Vivid option enhances color in less saturated images, while the Standard mode doesn't try to boost them.

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

However, I did notice that text looks a little fuzzy—not just with color content but black-and-white too. I only spotted this because I came from using the new Paperwhite, which has the highest contrast ratio of any Kindle and delivers super-sharp text. When I switched to the Colorsoft, my eyes had to adjust a bit. It's not as noticeable with comics, but it took me a moment to get used to while reading standard books.

It's tougher to ignore the loading time when turning pages on illustrations. The screen will typically flutter once or twice while processing the color. The same thing happens when zooming in too. At one point, I was zooming in on a frame and noticed a small black loading square appear. This has yet to happen again, but it was slightly concerning. Amazon isn't alone with this though—this kind of refresh lag exists on other color ebook readers too.

Even if the flashing colors are commonplace on all color e-readers, it's an important factor to consider if you're largely buying one for comic books and graphic novels. The blinking screen might feel jarring while turning pages or zooming in, particularly during long reading sessions, and it can sometimes break you out of the experience or distract you from the story. I enjoyed reading comics on the Paperwhite a little more for this reason, even if it meant no color.

Looking for More

Setting aside the color screen, the Kindle Colorsoft doesn't feel too different from the Paperwhite. It has up to two months of battery life, there's wireless charging support, and the screen can automatically adjust its brightness based on your environment. You're spending an extra $80 over the 12th-gen Paperwhite for a color screen.

With all the claims to have completely “rebuilt” the Kindle, the $280 Colorsoft was the right opportunity to bring back page-turn buttons, which we haven't seen on a Kindle since the Oasis in 2019. That model also had a similarly large 7-inch screen and was made of a metal-infused plastic that felt super-premium, not the soft-touch plastic in the Colorsoft. But I digress. Buttons! Which turn the page forward and back! It's not hard. The #Booktok community has resorted to using unsightly remotes for sheer convenience.

Photograph: Brenda Stolyar

Similarly, it's confusing that there's no stylus support. A device that lets you highlight in color expects you to do this with your finger instead of a stylus. Why? It's such a natural pairing. Readers can annotate ebooks in color (pink, yellow, blur, and orange), but stylus support would have made this super simple. Right now, you have to long-press the screen, and then select the word or passage you want to highlight or make a note of.

Other e-readers come with page-turn buttons and stylus support at a lower price. The Kobo Libra Colour is $220, and you can snag its Stylus 2 for $70—only $10 more than the Colorsoft. The Boox Go Color 7—which I haven't tested yet—comes with page-turn buttons, support for the Google Play Store, a microSD card slot, and more for $250.

None of this means the Kindle Colorsoft is a bad product. I'm just disappointed in what the first-ever color Kindle could have been, especially since Amazon takes its time to release new versions of these devices. That said, there's a chance the road map will be more aggressive considering the competition and renewed interest in the e-reader market. You can always wait for a major sale event like Prime Day or Black Friday to pick one up.