Shade isn’t important in an e-reader, however let’s be trustworthy, it’s a pleasant perk that may convey digital books, magazines, comics, cookbooks, and different publications to life. The catch is that coloration book readers are usually considerably pricier, which makes right now’s offers stand out. Proper now, the Kindle Colorsoft (16GB) and Kobo Libra Color are matching their lowest costs thus far, with the Amazon e-reader going for $169.99 ($80 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, and the Libra Color going for $199.99 ($30 off) by way of Rakuten’s online storefront.
At their core, each are glorious e-readers with 7-inch, 300ppi E Ink shows, which drop to 150ppi when viewing coloration. The Colorsoft’s show is barely extra vibrant in most situations, however the distinction isn’t dramatic. Every additionally provides IPX8 water resistance, so that you don’t want to fret about spills and might comfortably learn within the bathtub or by the pool.
Which one makes extra sense for you largely will depend on the place you purchase your books, how a lot storage you want, and whether or not you wish to take notes. The Colorsoft is nice in case you’re closely embedded in Amazon’s ecosystem, as shopping for and accessing Kindle books is intuitive and doesn’t require any sideloading. Because the extra inexpensive choice in Amazon’s lineup, the usual Colorsoft delivers an almost an identical studying expertise to the Signature Edition, and it helps Amazon’s “Send to Alexa Plus” characteristic, which helps you to ship notes or paperwork to Amazon’s AI-powered assistant for summaries, to-do lists, reminders, and extra. The draw back is that it lacks wi-fi charging and an auto-adjusting entrance mild — that are commonplace on the step-up mannequin — and comes with 16GB of storage as an alternative of 32GB.
That mentioned, if I didn’t already personal so many Kindle books, the Libra Color could be my decide. It provides double the storage at 32GB and consists of intuitive bodily page-turn buttons. You too can write notes whereas studying, provided that it provides stylus assist, and it consists of built-in pocket book templates, in addition to the flexibility to transform handwriting to typed textual content. It additionally helps EPUB and a wider vary of file codecs, and allows you to save articles for offline studying with Instapaper. And it additionally provides adjustable heat lighting, which makes studying at evening a little bit simpler on the eyes.