Ooh, a Color Kindle Is Finally Here
I think this counts as a FINALLY! Amazon is coming out with a full-color e-reader called the Kindle Colorsoft. You can pre-order it now for $280 and it ships on October 30. This will be great for comics, graphic novels, and books with art & photography. I am a committed ebook reader and it’s always been disappointing to view photos on the Kindle…they look like they were faxed from the Voyager space probe or something.
As it happens, I’m in the market for a new e-reader — I lost my Kindle Paperwhite a few weeks ago and haven’t replaced it (partially because I’m in the midst of an actual paper book right now but mostly because I am stubbon and don’t want to believe I have become the sort of person who loses things — my driver’s license also went missing recently). Anyway, I’m trying to decide between the Colorsoft ($280), the Boox Palma (aka the Gentle Librarian, also $280), or getting the new & improved Paperwhite (faster, bigger screen, thinner, higher contrast, $160). Hmm…
Discussion 7 comments
Have you considered the Kobo line? There's the Kobo Libra Colour for 220. Honestly much prefer Kobo's UI and reading experience to Kindles.
I don’t have experience with the Kobo colour (I’m Canadian okay!) line. But I sort of commandeered my daughters a few years back and would find it hard to lose the page turn buttons. So much nicer to just click to then a page vs futzing around on buttons.
I also wonder how good comics would look on any of these given the size. And I reaaaallly wish any of them supported Marvel Unlimited. Reading comics is basically my only valid current use case for owning an iPad.
Oh hmm I really like the basic black and white of the Paperwhite! I like how stolid it.
Do totally relate to not wanting to believe you're the type of person who loses things by denying you need to get a replacement.
Finally! We can start to reduce the giant pile of kids/YA graphic novels in our house.
I have the palma, and frankly, it's outstanding.
Kindle's focus on Amazon's bookselling was a turn off (Though I loved the gen 1 kindle that I used for years; I was finally able to read infinite jest, cryptonomicon, and other physically awkward books!)
And I had a nook glowlight that was great, except for two fatal flaws (three, if you're not a tech nerd). 1. Locking the screen does not prevent button presses from advancing the page. If it's in your bag, you're going to open to an entirely new place in the book if you didn't think to go back to the home screen before locking. 2. The buttons aren't reassignable. 3. Getting more than a few hundred megabytes of space for user books requires rooting the devise and resizing a file that it mounts as a block device for external storage.
The boox stock reader isn't the best, but it's good and you can install any android reader you like (I stuck with stock). The buttons and screen are also fully customizable, and the file management is no worse than any other ereader that I've tried (they are all inexplicably various shades of bad?)
I'm very anti-drm, so the epub format suits me just fine. I'm sure there are also a number of benefits to running on android, but I really just use it as a small book reader that is large enough for a satisfying reading experience, but small enough to tuck into the smallest day bag or carryon.
I'm waiting for a 15" colour e-reader or thereabouts so I can look at the equivalent of a full A4 printed page without endless panning and zooming.
Scott McLeod makes a point in Understanding Comics that the content is designed not just at the frame level but at the page level.
I'd pay for a regular tablet as an e-reader for that purpose except none exist: those with a diagonal dimension of 14.4" or more are now all built with an aspect ratio designed for movies rather than printed content.
I read The Verge's review where they said that color refresh was a bit of an issue, so I'm staying away for now, but I'm excited about what's on the horizon. I'd basically only use it as a comic book reader, and for that, I'll need the color refresh to be superb. But it's been a long time coming.
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