The age-old question (if “age-old” can be used for technology developed in the past 20 years) persisted as I tested the newest designed-for-kids Kindle: Should you give kids a screen when you could give them something else?
If you are going to give your kids a screen, a reflective e-paper screen that's easier on the eyes than an emissive screen is one of the best ways to go. While a Kindle can't fully replace the experience of turning a page on a physical book, I loved reading from a young age and would have loved to be able to bring every book I wanted anywhere I went. That's something I can do now with my son. While he's a little too young (only 3!) to be in charge of his own Kindle, I was happy to find I could pull up classic picture books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to read with him on the go.
While you could always do this with the Kindle Kids and Paperwhite Kids, the Kindle Colorsoft Kids ($270) levels up the experience with a colorful E Ink screen. It's a new version of the Colorsoft that's designed with kids in mind, with two pretty cover options to boot. Now my son and I can see that the brown bear is brown, rather than me just telling him that. It's a fun on-the-go option for picture books, and even more ideal for older kiddos who love comic books and graphic novels.
Picture This
Photograph: Nena Farrell
The Colorsoft Kids is the same size as both the Colorsoft Signature Edition that came out last year and the Paperwhite Kids, with a 7-inch display. That screen is an inch larger than the cheaper base Kindle Kids, but it doesn't have the auto-adjusting front light you'll find on the Signature Edition Colorsoft. The Colorsoft Kids (and cheaper baseline Kindle Colorsoft) also doesn't have Qi-certified wireless charging like the Signature Edition, either, and has a smaller storage of 16 GB. That should still be plenty for several colorful books, though you could run out of storage faster if you download too many large comic and illustrated files. But it's pretty easy to unload and re-download books to adjust your storage.
Like the Colorsoft Signature Edition, the Kindle Colorsoft Kids has 300 pixels per inch (PPI) for black-and-white content, and 150 PPI for color. The colors aren't super saturated compared to a real-life kids' book, but it still makes for a nice visual experience, especially for more colorful stories. It's a similar color experience you'll get on devices like the ReMarkable Paper Pro and Kobo Libra Colour.