Kindle Colorsoft: Is Amazon's first color e-reader worth it?

The company offers a device capable of reproducing colors, but at a higher price than its traditional e-readers.

Amazon continues to innovate in the e-book market and at the end of last year announced its first Kindle with color, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition , a device with an E Ink Kaleido 3 display capable of reproducing up to 4,096 colors.

I've been testing this kit for several weeks to try to answer a key question: Is it worth paying a premium just to add color?

The Kindle Colorsoft maintains the essence of Amazon's popular e-readers with a glare-free screen, a paper-like experience, weeks of battery life, and a relatively light weight (215 grams). The novelty is its 7-inch color screen , which integrates E Ink Kaleido 3 technology, allowing images to be displayed with greater color fidelity and 30% more saturation than previous versions.

However, this display operates at two levels: 300 pixels per inch (ppi) for black and white text—where the device maintains its usual sharpness—and 150 ppi for color content, which means a noticeable loss of resolution that can be noticed in illustrations or graphic details.

Additionally, the device's response slows down when interacting with complex visual elements, such as flipping pages in a comic book or zooming in on an image, but it's not particularly distracting. The reader remains fluid overall, but it can't compete with a tablet in terms of speed or vividness if you want to see bright colors.

In fact, the color of the Kindle pages is similar to that of a notebook painted with colored pencils; the photographs look like soft illustrations, closer to a sketchbook than a glossy magazine. However, it's attractive for reading comics, illustrated books, recipe books, technical manuals, or documents with color highlights . For reading traditional books, the only difference will be seeing the covers in their original colors.

In terms of compatibility, the device reads Amazon's own formats as well as PDF, DOCX, JPEG, and others, but it is not compatible with ePub. It has a battery life of between 8 and 12 weeks and allows you to adjust both the brightness and color of the screen automatically or manually for reading in sunlight. It can also be wet for reading in the pool or bathtub.

It is sold in a single 32 GB configuration, which ensures that you can store a good number of books without any problems.

The big drawback is the price. The Colorsoft costs about €100 more than the Kindle Paperwhite (€229 versus about €129 for the non-color model), but it doesn't offer significant improvements in performance, speed, or overall functionality . The price increase is justified only by the still-nascent technology of color, which improves the experience in certain cases but doesn't completely transform it.

With its Kindle Colorsoft, Amazon seeks to make clear where Amazon is headed in its e-reader hardware business. With e-reader sales stabilized and a mature market, the company is exploring segmentation by range and use. This device responds to a specific demand from professionals, visual readers, or users who already own a Kindle and are looking for a new product.