The Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon's first ever color Kindle, which brings book covers, graphic novels and comic books more to life than a monochrome E Ink display and allows you to highlight text in different color options. The Colorsoft uses the same oxide backplane with custom waveforms as the new Paperwhite (2024). Amazon says the custom display includes a new light-guide with nitride LEDs that, when combined with custom algorithms, enhances color and increases brightness. The E Ink display (it uses E Ink's Kaleido color filter) is 300 ppi for black and white and 150 ppi for color.
In all other respects the Kindle Colorsoft is similar to the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, though its battery life is rated for up to eight weeks instead of three months. In fact, the Colorsoft only comes in a Signature Edition with 32GB of storage. Priced at $280 (£270), it is fully waterproof and has wireless charging.
By comparison, the Kobo Libra Colour, which also has a 7-inch screen, costs $220 and is compatible with Kobo's Stylus 2 (available separately for $70). While the Kobo costs less, I do think Amazon's color e-reader offers slightly more vibrant color, as well as slightly better overall performance.
Editors' note: Amazon had an issue with faint yellow tinging on the bottom and sides of the smaller Kindle Colorsoft display when it first launched its color E Ink model in 2024 (the issue was more apparent with the front light on). It paused shipping the Kindle Colorsoft for some weeks while it came up with a fix and replaced the units of users who reported the problem. Amazon appears to have fixed the Kindle Colorsoft's yellow-banding issue -- or at least made it barely noticeable. Some E Ink e-reader aficionados have suggested that the way the Colorsoft's display was designed made it susceptible to the issue, while the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft's more advanced display design has eliminated the problem (according to my tests, it indeed has).