With Amazon releasing a new 16GB version of the Kindle Colorsoft last week, along with a kids bundle, and with them finally bringing the Colorsoft to several additional international markets, color Kindles are here to stay.
If the initial release of the Colorsoft was an experiment to gauge the market for color Kindles, things are clearly moving forward now with a second Colorsoft model and international expansion.
I can’t help but wonder if this is the first step to all Kindles and all ereaders in general having color E Ink screens in the not-to-distant future. Some people (myself included) don’t want to hear that, but I could see it happening because something just like this has happened before.
Other companies, including Onyx and Pocketbook, have released several color E Ink devices over the past few years. Kobo already appears to be fully onboard with color E Ink after one year; they don’t even sell a black and white version of the Libra anymore, and they don’t appear to have any plans to release one in the future. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of device Kobo releases next; if it’s color only like the Libra than we know where things are headed.
Color E Ink screens have some notable drawbacks compared to regular black and white screens, mainly the screen is slightly darker and less clear because of the added color filter layer. But color E Ink has improved a lot over the past few years, and it could improve even more in 5 years. It might reach a point where enough people are willing to accept the drawbacks in order to have color.
This Happened Before
I can’t help but think back to when frontlights first started becoming a thing. Back in the early days of frontlights, there was a lot of resistance to them initially for some of the same reasons that people don’t like color E Ink.
Some people didn’t like frontlights at first because they made the E Ink screen look worse compared to non-frontlit ereaders. The main complaints with the first frontlit devices were they had less contrast, the light layer added a fuzzier appearance, and the screen looked darker with the frontlight off.
Early frontlights had a lot of problems, like uneven lighting, weird color tones, shadow cones, and bright spots. The first Kindle Paperwhite had so many complaints about the frontlight that Amazon put a disclaimer on the product page acknowledging the issue. At the time, I said the fate of the Paperwhite was up in the air because of the new frontlight, and it could turn out to be a huge success or a huge flop. Well, 13 years later we all know how that worked out. It could end up being the same story with color E Ink.
Now it’s nearly impossible to buy an ereader without a frontlight. They all have them, except for a few larger eNotes like the Boox Go 10.3. And the one thing most people complain about is the fact that it doesn’t have a frontlight.
I still barely use a frontlight. I don’t have much use for color either. I have tablets for that.
As a person with low light vision issues I depend on the front light on my PWSE. And I find that the color of the ColorSoft screen gives me eye strain.
100% my experience, I love the Kindle Colorsoft, but it strains my eyes, so I use my Paperwhite 95% of the time.
I hope not. My vision is such that I can no longer read paper books as the print is normally way to small. The screens on tablets causes me eye strain. I love my Kindle PaperWhite SE screen. I can adjust the lights to suit my needs, and of course I can adjust to font size. I went to Best Buy to experience the ColorSoft and the screen tires my eyes way too quickly.
I have a Kobo Libra Colour, and it is more than a little darker inside, and is much darker in bright sunlight, than my Clara 2E. If the Kobo Libra Colour had a B&W screen, it would be great ereader.
Of course we’re going in the all color direction. It’s the same thing that happened with TVs, photography… Black and white screens were here because the technology wasn’t able to show colors. Now that it can, the logical thing is that color screens are very quickly gonna replace the old black and white ones.
I also don’t like the color screens right now. But at the same time I believe in couple of years there will be better technology which won’t need the special layer on top and the screen will have full resolution and won’t be darker. And everyone is gonna love it then.
Also now that color e-ink is turning into mainstream, there will be much more pressure on E-ink to improve the color technology so I think we will see the improvements pretty soon.
Until then I will stick to my BW ereaders, but when we get there I will buy ereader for sure 🙂