Amazon upgrades Kindle Colorsoft already – new model addresses customer complaints

If you’re keeping track of your Kindle news, you’ll know that the launch of the new Colorsoft wasn’t as smooth as Amazon might have wanted. Soon after the brand's first full-colour e-reader was released, reports of yellow banding on the screen started to surface online. Thankfully, that problem has been fixed.

The yellow banding towards the bottom of the screen was reported by users of the new device and even elicited a response from Amazon, with a notification on Amazon.com that mentions this phenomenon.

It’s now reported by goodereader.com that the problem has been fixed and that the new batch of Kindle Colorsoft devices don’t show this problem any more. That’s going to apply if you buy your device from Amazon itself, but stock from other retailers might still exhibit the issue.

It’s worth considering however, that not all Colorsoft devices have the yellow banding. The Colorsoft devices that I’ve seen have had a clear display, and in our review we didn’t find discolouration to be a problem, so it might be that the model you’ve bought is absolutely fine.

Where next for Amazon Kindle?

Late in 2024, Amazon refreshed all of its Kindle models, releasing the fantastic new Paperwhite, while also stepping into new territory with the Colorsoft, its first colour e-reader.

The Paperwhite is Amazon’s biggest seller and most popular Kindle, now with faster page turns and a larger display, making it a great device for reading. The Colorsoft is much the same, but that colour display opens up a range of new opportunities for Kindle as a platform.

However, Amazon didn’t change the store, or the user interface, with the launch of the new devices, saying that it didn’t want to alter too much and upset the many fans of its devices. And in our opinion, the weakest part of the Kindle ecosystem is the user interface and the Kindle Store experience.

I’m sure that there will be more changes to Colorsoft to speed up its use, but I suspect that the big breakthrough in colour will come with a colour Scribe. The larger format device lends itself to colour – especially for comics and graphic novels – in a way that the smaller devices don’t.

What I personally want to see, as a Kindle user, is a return of the Kindle Oasis, principally for its page turn buttons. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be something that’s going to happen.