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Amazon’s color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, is currently available for $206.99 in refurbished condition, which price trackers show is the lowest it has reached so far. A brand-new unit sells for about $279, so the discount is fairly noticeable if you are comfortable buying refurbished. This deal comes through Amazon’s refurbished program, meaning the device has already been inspected and cleared for functionality. Storage is 32GB, which is more than enough space for thousands of ebooks and a good number of audiobooks.
In terms of design, the Colorsoft Signature Edition feels similar to the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. It measures about 7 by 5 by 0.3 inches and weighs 7.7 ounces, so it still has that familiar lightweight Kindle feel. The main difference is the seven-inch Kaleido 3 color display. Black-and-white text renders at 300 pixels per inch, while color content displays at 150ppi.
That color layer is what sets this Kindle apart. Comics, graphic novels, magazines, and illustrated books look noticeably better than they do on a standard grayscale Kindle. The colors are closer to newspaper print than a bright tablet screen, but they still make panels and illustrations easier to follow. There’s also a guided comic feature that automatically zooms into individual panels so dialogue and artwork are easier to read without constantly adjusting the page, says Michelle Ehrhardt in her review of the device.
What do you think so far?
Aside from the color screen, the rest of the hardware matches what people expect from Amazon’s higher-end Kindles. The auto-adjusting front light changes brightness based on the room, the IPX8 waterproofing makes it safe for reading around water, and wireless charging is supported alongside USB-C. That said, there are a few trade-offs to keep in mind. The color display can introduce slightly uneven lighting in some situations, and battery life is shorter than on the Paperwhite. Amazon estimates up to eight weeks per charge, compared with roughly 12 weeks on the Paperwhite. It also lacks physical page-turn buttons (as is typical of Kindles), so navigation happens entirely through the touchscreen.
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