I don’t know why it took me this long to realize it, but one of the main pictures that Amazon uses to advertise the Kindle Colorsoft completely misrepresents the device in a number of ways.
First off, the picture (shown above) shows nine book covers in bright color. It looks like an LCD screen, not a color E Ink screen in the slightest. That’s not an accurate representation of color E Ink at all. The picture that Kobo uses for the Kobo Clara Colour is a lot more realistic.
Secondly, Kindles don’t show a full screen of nine book covers anywhere on the actual interface. The library view doesn’t look anything like that whatsoever. The most books you can see in cover view at one time is 6, and they often have different sized thumbnails, with more white spacing, and there isn’t a black background like that anywhere on the Colorsoft.
Another detail that most people wouldn’t notice is the fact the Colorsoft appears to be sitting upright on a flat surface based on the shadows. In real life that wouldn’t work since the power button sticks out on the lower edge, which keeps it from sitting flat, and it’s going to inadvertently trigger the power button if you set it up like that.
Companies often use phoney marketing pictures to make their products look better than they really are, but Amazon is taking things further than usual this time. Most of their Kindle pictures are pretty accurate, but that Colorsoft picture is so completely inaccurate that it should’ve never been used.
The auto-playing video that Amazon has on the product page for the Kindle Colorsoft is even worse. The colors look as bright and clear as a high-quality high-resolution LCD display. It’s completely unrealistic. Even though I think the screen on the Colorsoft looks better than other color ereaders, misrepresenting a product by that much is bound to lead to problems. Amazon is getting what they deserve with all the negative reviews for the Colorsoft.
A 32% 1-star rating. You don’t see that very often. About three times worse than any of the other Kindles.
Exactly right. I sent mine back.
Hyperbole by image! An oversold, under inspected device is a warning to all manufacturers in this digital device arena…don’t put out devices that don’t live up to advertising…buyers may crush you.
Actually the Colorsoft doesn’t look bad, if you are made aware of uneven lighting beforehand. The hefty price doesn’t help. I am waiting on the next wave of color devices. Hoping that Kobo noticed Amazon’s woes and puts out a premium large color device that avoids issues like this, with page turn buttons.
The only other Amazon failure on apar with this was the Kindle Oasis 1 with detachable battery( actually liked this model, super light, felt great in hand) but charging was a challenge for many buyers.
It reminds me of games that have a huge hype pre launch then they arrive all buggy and the attention is now to bludgen game devs and studios as they race to fix things that shouldn’t have been in the “finished” product. I used to feel sorry for them. Now I don’t. People forked over lots of money for this Color Kindle and what they got is a rushed to retail kickstarteresque device.
Your article must have hit home – there is now no video on the product page.
I had always wondered why they used that unrepresentative image of the nine book covers – similar to what you actually see in the kindle iPad app, but never on the e-reader. .
It’s still there. It auto-plays when you scroll down a bit.
Color ebook readers were always going to start off as a niche of a niche, but it was at least Some forward progress for an otherwise stagnant technology. I only hope this botched launch doesn’t decrease Amazon’s investments into future ebook reader development
Doubtful
They still need vehicles to sell ebooks. Although a tiny slice of Amazon’s pie, since Amazon began the Kindle, ebooks are still profitable. Their device philosophy seems to be, make devices that everyone can use easily, but not necessarily the best devices( think Fire tablets vs Ipads etc.)
Digital content is their focus…not the devices we may cherish.
Some innovation is necessary to keep content moving through their locked down platforms.
I have wondered why isn’t the Kindle Colorsoft listed on the Amazon Kindle Software Updates page!?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GKMQC26VQQMM8XSW
It’s probably because they haven’t released a software update for it yet.
Interesting Amazon tactics: On Amazon Germany they have Kindle Colorsoft listed twice. The second one is the same but is slightly cheaper and has no reviews yet… So I guess once enough people will buy that one, they will delete the original one with negative reviews… I wonder if they’ll do the same on Amazon.com.
Who knows what they’re doing. Twice over the past week I’ve gone to the US Amazon site and all the Kindle links at the top of the page directed to Amazon Canada. At first I was totally confused because all the prices were higher and I didn’t notice I was on the Canadian site. The weird thing is the Canada site doesn’t even have a main Kindle landing page with links at the top for each model like the US site does so it didn’t make sense on multiple levels.
Yeah, you’re right, it might be just some technical mess. But with the terrible reviews I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional… They fix the technical issues (yellow band), they list the device again and start new reviews… Easier than to try to get the original product reviews higher at this point…