Novels may simply be the Kindle Colorsoft’s ...

Earlier this week, Amazon made a small however essential change to its Kindle FAQ web page (as noticed by Good E-Reader)all-but-confirming what many E-Reader fans have identified for a while: Studying on colour gadgets does not fairly hit the identical because it does in black and white. The up to date textual content on the FAQ web page says, partly,

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is designed to offer a high-quality studying and writing expertise in each colour and black and white. You might discover that the feel or brightness of the show appears to be like totally different than the Kindle Scribe show. That’s due to the colour filter layer that creates the straightforward on the eyes colour studying expertise on Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. If you’re in search of a barely crisper black and white studying expertise, it’s possible you’ll need to take a look at Kindle Scribe.

Although many on the web had been fast to say that that is Amazon admitting that its customary Colorsoft mannequin and its upcoming Scribe Colorsoft aren’t as much as the duty of normal text-based studying and writing, I do not assume that is precisely what’s occurring right here, and a fast understanding of how E Ink expertise for colour fashions may assist clarify why text-only novels look totally different once you transfer from a normal or Paperwhite Kindle to a Colorsoft mannequin.

Filtering in colour

There’s one thing in between you and your textual content

The expertise that powers virtually all fashionable colour E Ink shows is known as Kaleido 3, which makes use of an RGB Shade Filter Array to current colours on the display. This colour filter sits on high of the black E Ink and mixes purple, inexperienced, and blue with the underlying black and white to create a complete of 4,096 colours. The expertise, whereas it does not produce colours as vibrant as one thing you’d see on an iPad, works very effectively for many who learn colour content material like comics or manga, and the impact of the colour filter on high of the black and white appears to be like just like that of an old-school newspaper’s Sunday colour web page.

Whereas this expertise helps carry colour content material to life on an E Ink show, it does put further distance between the viewers’ eyes and the textual content on the display. This impact is especially notable in E Ink Tablets just like the Boox Note Max and Tab 4C which emphasize their writing capabilities. Having the extra colour filter between your stylus and the display can produce small delays and a distinct writing really feel, which may result in those that use these gadgets for drafting, drawing or taking detailed notes to desire black and white over colour.

And whereas the writing downsides of Kaleido expertise are one thing I’ve written about before, this replace from Kindle does accurately level out one thing that I’ve roughly ignored in my time with each colour and black and white tablets: textual content sharpness.

Is the Kindle Colorsoft actually worse than the usual Kindle for studying?

It is all about your utilization and luxury

As you may anticipate, including a filter on high of an present E Ink show does hamper how clearly you’ll be able to see textual content on a display. Although it’s one thing my eyes adjusted to slightly rapidly, if that is one thing that might hamper your enjoyment of studying a purely text-based novel, it’s value contemplating if you’re on the fence about selecting a Colorsoft mannequin of Kindle, or actually any color-enhanced E Ink system over one with a black and white show.

As a result of I learn a mixture of comics, manga, and novels, I typically preserve my Colorsoft as my “major” Kindle system. I can not say that the discount in textual content sharpness has ever actually hampered my enjoyment of a text-based novel on the system, however as with something, your mileage might differ. In my review of the Kindle ColorsoftI mentioned that if you happen to solely learn novels, this system most likely is not for you, and I believe that is most likely true for actually any color-enhanced E Ink pill. Not solely do black and white E Ink tablets have further textual content sharpness, however they’re usually a lot inexpensive as effectively.

I do not assume that studying novels on the Kindle Colorsoft (or any colour E Reader for that matter) is essentially a nasty expertise, but when studying textual content is your one and solely objective, I believe the Kindle Paperwhite and even simply the standard Kindle may be your greatest guess if you happen to’re in search of a brand new E Reader, as you are assured to get one of the best studying expertise obtainable, with the one concession actually being color cover screensavers. And if you happen to ask me, that single characteristic is not value paying an extra $100 (or extra!) for within the first place.