Kindle Colorsoft 2024
Amazon
Amazon on Wednesday announced a new Kindle e-reader, and for the first time it has a color screen.
The retail giant introduced the Kindle in 2007, and since then every device has had a black and white screen. The new Kindle has a screen designed to ensure colors don’t appear washed out or pixelated, even when users zoom in on images.
The $279 device, which Amazon calls the Kindle Colorsoft, has “weeks of battery life,” the company said. It can be pre-ordered now and will ship on October 30th.
Amazon also introduced a refreshed $399 Kindle Scribe with new note-taking features, an updated $159 Kindle Paperwhite, and a 12th-generation Kindle, which costs $109. At a press event in New York on Tuesday, Amazon’s head of devices Panos Panai called the updates the “biggest single refresh the Kindle line has ever had.”
The Kindle Scribe, which Amazon introduced in 2022, comes with a pen that lets users take notes, make to-do lists, and write directly on the pages of the book they’re reading. With the new note-taking feature, called Active Canvas, users can take notes directly on the pages of an e-book and the text will automatically shift to flow around it. They will also be able to take notes in the margins of the book and hide them for later.
Kindle Scribe includes another new feature that uses genetic artificial intelligence to summarize pages of notes into a concise list. Amazon said the feature uses Bedrock, a software tool that allows users to access large language models from Amazon and other companies such as Anthropic and Stability AI. The device is available for pre-order now and ships on December 4th.
The new Kindle Paperwhite is faster than previous models and also has a larger 7-inch screen, up from 6.8 inches in the previous version. Amazon says the 12th generation Kindle is the most “compact” e-reader ever, with a brighter screen. Both devices are available from Wednesday.
