Whenever there’s an issue or a lot of negative reviews surrounding a new Kindle or a Kindle-related product, Amazon puts up a “We Want You To Know” disclaimer on their website.
This has happened several times over the years, and now Amazon has two “We Want You To Know” warnings on their website regarding the new Kindles for 2024, and one of those warnings replaced a previous warning so there’s actually three.
The Kindle Colorsoft is getting flamed by reviewers at Amazon because of the frontlight issue. It has a 2.7-star rating with nearly 1500 reviews. Before that hit, there was a “We Want You To Know” warning about the Colorsoft not supporting full dark mode, but I guess they don’t want to have two disclaimers up at the same time.
They also recently added a disclaimer to the product page for the overpriced premium leather cover for the new Paperwhite and Colorsoft, which has a 3.6-star rating with 113 reviews. There are a lot of complaints about the cover scratching easily, so Amazon added the following disclaimer:
Our Premium Leather Cover develops a natural patina and may mark with use. It arrives with an authentic scent from the leather tanning process. These characteristics are normal for high-quality leather and ensure your cover tells your one-of-a-kind reading journey.
The marketing spin they put on that is good for a laugh. It’s supposed to be like that!
Amazon is unusually easy to influence under certain circumstances, and if they get too many complaints they might just pull a product entirely, like they did with the official covers for the Kindle Oasis 2, so people should be careful before making too big of a deal out of something.
Most people probably don’t know or remember, but after Amazon released the Kindle Oasis 2 in 2017, the reviews for Amazon’s official covers were so scathing that they stopped selling them. They then discontinued them and started recommending third-party covers instead.
It was weird, especially considering there really wasn’t anything wrong with the covers. People just didn’t like how they didn’t cover the full back, and some complained about how the magnet that held the cover on wasn’t strong enough. I actually really liked those covers because they weren’t bulky and they were easy to remove (they were designed to be removed while reading, but for some reason people didn’t like that idea), and I was shocked when Amazon discontinued them a few weeks after they were released.
A few months later Amazon released redesigned covers for the Kindle Oasis 2 that covered the full back and weren’t meant to be removed while reading like the original covers. The Kindle Oasis was designed to have those original magnetic covers that fit the unique contour on the back so bailing on that idea entirely after just a few weeks was surprising. Then when they released the Oasis 3 with the same exact design, they removed the magnets on the back since they did away with the magnetic cover concept. Personally, I liked the idea and wish they would’ve stuck with it.
I can’t help but wonder if the folks in charge of Kindles are regretting releasing the Kindle Colorsoft right now like they did the magnetic covers for the Oasis. It’s going to be really hard to dig out of a 2.7-star rating at this point.
The funny thing is, aside from the frontlight issue, I think the Kindle Colorsoft is the best color ereader on the current market. Amazon did a better job than their competition in terms of color/screen quality and software optimization to minimize ghosting, but all the negative reviews about the frontlight make it seem like the Colorsoft is the worst color ereader on the market.
I can’t help but think that Amazon is getting what they deserve. When they decided to price the Colorsoft at the top of the color E Ink market, and then failed to deliver on proper quality control of the frontlight, it set things up controversy.
There’s always going to be some level of controvery with color E Ink because of the fact there are some notable drawbacks compared to regular black and white E Ink screens. Amazon should have anticipated there would be some negativity anyway, but putting a price of $279 on a first-gen color device just compounded matters.
Other companies only charge $20-$30 more for their color ereaders, but Amazon decided to charge $80 more for the Colorsoft, and to make matters worse the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is currently on sale for Black Friday for only $155. How can Amazon expect people to pay $125 more for the Colorsoft right now with all the negative reviews? They’re setting the Colorsoft up for failure. It doesn’t matter how many disclaimers they put on the product page now.
I took a review’s advice and gave my Premium Leather cover for my Colorsoft a rub down with leather conditioner. It worked to stop marks from showing up so easily. I have an Amazon brand faux leather cover on my 2021 Paperwhite and I vastly prefer the Premium Leather cover. Which is saying something because I prefer the faux leather cover over several third party covers I have purchased for Kindles over the years.
I should probably state that I prefer keeping my Kindle in a cover at all times. I prefer holding it open like a phsyical book then reading one-handed like a phone.
The genesis of the half cover for the Oasis began with the original Oasis, which had an optional half cover that contained a supplemental battery. The magnets that secured the cover were inadequate, and the cover did detatch inadvertantly at times. With the second generation Oasis they dropped the battery cover, this is why all Oasis models had such miserable battery life compared to other readers. They did continue producing half covers without the batteries for a while, but the weak magnets continued to be a problem. I had two of these half covers and I really liked them, but I secured them with double sided tape.