When Amazon released the Kindle Colorsoft last year, it was the first time the company had made an ebook reader with a color screen. It won many good reviews, but its Achilles’ heel was its high price ($279.99). A new model addresses that.
The first was called the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, a name Amazon reserves for its premium devices and which indicates extra storage or exclusive features like wireless charging.
The color-screen Signature Edition has 32GB storage, wireless charging and a front light which automatically adjusts to suit the environment in which you’re reading.
Now, there’s a new version of the Colorsoft that is cheaper. It still has the same seven-inch color screen, the same processor as the older model. It also still has the fastest page turns of any Kindle (the newest Paperwhite matches it for speed). Oh, and it’s still waterproof so you can read in the bath.
The Kindle Colorsoft has half the storage of the Signature Edition, 16GB. Is that a problem? With regular black-and-white text-based books, 16GB is more than enough storage for most people. You could manage with half that and still have room for thousands of titles.
Color books, such as graphic novels, cookery books and travel guides really benefit from the color screen, but they take up a lot more storage. Even so, 16GB is decent, and remember you can delete and re-download content if storage is momentarily stretched.
The price savings is $30, meaning it clocks in at $249.99 — you decide if that’s worth having or you’d rather pay $30 for extra storage.
There’s also now another color-screened Kindle in the range, Colorsoft Kids. The tablet is identical to the just-released Kindle Colorsoft but it comes with a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+, with plenty of age-appropriate content thrown in. This costs $6 a month after the first year, and it accounts for the higher price of $269.99. The Kids version also comes with a colorful wraparound cover: choose from Starlight Reading or Fantasy River, as Amazon calls them.
