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TechRadar
TechRadar
David Nield

Amazon admits its black-and-white Kindles offer the best reading experience – not the Colorsoft

Kindle Colorsoft 16GB.
  • Monochrome Kindles are "slightly crisper" Amazon says
  • The information appears on color Kindle FAQs
  • You still get a high-quality experience on Colorsoft Kindles

When Amazon introduced the Kindle Colorsoft last October, we were wondering what kind of compromises might come along with the color display – and Amazon has now officially admitted that its black-and-white ereaders offer a superior reading experience.

As spotted by Good e-Reader (via Android Police), the FAQs on some of the color Kindles have been updated to say that the monochrome Kindle Paperwhite offers a "slightly crisper" display for your ebooks.

While the text seems to have disappeared from the page for the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft introduced just last month, it can still be found on the listing for the Kindle Colorsoft and indeed the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition.

That's not to say there's anything particularly bad about the Colorsoft models, though: Amazon says these ereaders deliver a "high-quality reading experience", albeit with a different brightness and texture level to the black-and-white Kindles.

Color me interested

The new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft adds writing capabilities (Image credit: Amazon)

We certainly had no complaints about the display in our Amazon Kindle Colorsoft review, calling the ereader's display snappy, sharp, and fantastic for content such as comics. Of course, the screen isn't glossy and saturated like a phone or tablet.

The color element is added by a separate color layer: specifically, a Kaleido 3 color display from E Ink, with support for 4,096 different hues. It's the same screen technology you'll find on the color Kobo ereaders as well.

Kobo actually beat Amazon in the race to get a color ereader out into the world, and there's a case to be made that the Kobo models – the Libra Colour and the Clara Colour – are going to give you better value for money.

We haven't had chance to review the latest Kindle Scribe Colorsoft in full, but our first impressions are good ones, and of course it adds stylus support. The color ereader displays may well be slightly less sharp, but it's not something to worry about.

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