It’s only five days until the release of the new Kindle Colorsoft, which is the first color e-reader from the iconic brand. It will retail for $279 if you want to buy it, but our indications suggest that it won’t be flying off the shelves. We ran a poll of Android Authority readers asking if you’re likely to buy the Colorsoft, the results of which are below.
In fairness to Amazon, which owns the Kindle brand, we put our thumb on the scale before asking the question. Writer and Kindle fan Dhruv Bhutani wrote a well-reasoned article about why he won’t be looking to buy the Colorsoft just yet, and it was at the end of his piece that we ran the poll. He felt the device is lacking in useful new features, particularly note-taking and color-coded organization, which are available in competing e-readers like the Kobo Libra Color. The low-resolution color display (150ppi) was another concern for him, and he also criticized the removal of physical page-turn buttons, which he enjoys on the Kindle Oasis.
From the results of our poll, it appears that you agreed with him.
Will you buy the Kindle Colorsoft?
The poll results are pretty decisive. Almost 65% of you said that you weren’t going to buy the Kindle Colorsoft, suggesting that Dhruv’s concerns were well-founded. Only 17% of readers said that they would buy the device, with the remaining 18% of respondents indicating that they haven’t made up their minds yet.
This lukewarm reception could be an insight into why Amazon took so long to introduce a color version of the Kindle. The manufacturer will have done much more extensive consumer research than our poll, but it’s likely that we would have had a color version of the e-reader a long time ago if there was huge demand for it from fans.
