Now eBook readers are in color

Since the first Kindle debuted in 2007 and revolutionized how we read, portable eBook readers have seen only modest advancements. The introduction of touchscreens and built-in lighting – useful for reading in low light or enhancing screen clarity in brighter conditions – were arguably the most notable innovations. Otherwise, the devices remained largely unchanged: compact tablets with black-and-white eInk displays, offering a reading experience closer to paper than the screens of smartphones or tablets. That is, until now.

A new generation of color eBook readers has arrived. The idea of color eInk displays has been floating around for years, and now the technology is finally delivering. Early entrants included devices from Swiss company PocketBook and China’s Onyx Boox. There’s also the reMarkable Paper Pro, which is less an eBook reader and more a digital notepad, featuring an XL screen that supports color for underlining, highlighting, and note-taking. Compatible with both PDF and ePub formats, it’s particularly popular with academics, professionals, and students. We covered it in detail here.

More recently, two heavyweights in the eBook market, Rakuten and Amazon, have launched their own color readers. Rakuten’s Kobo Libra Color debuted this summer, equipped with a stylus that doubles as a tool for note-taking. Despite its compact 7-inch screen – a “standard” size for eReaders – it’s primarily designed for reading. Its color display brings picture books to life, allows multicolored text highlights, and shows book covers in full color. Manga fans might find it especially appealing, though it also works well for American comic books.

When it comes to color fidelity, the results are decent but far from revolutionary. Years of reading Marvel, DC, and Image comics on tablets have raised expectations for digital color quality. In this respect, Amazon’s new Kindle Colorsoft fares slightly better, with richer hues and an optional setting to enhance vibrancy further. Paired with Amazon’s Guided View technology, reading American comics becomes surprisingly enjoyable, even on its modest 7-inch screen. Amazon proudly claims this Kindle features the best eInk display on the market, while maintaining the hallmark long battery life and ergonomic design. It’s hard to argue with that.

Still, the question remains: who really needs a color eBook reader? Comics, once a cornerstone of pop culture, have been in decline for years. Manga is still popular but is mostly black and white, making a color screen unnecessary. Beyond seeing book covers in color or applying multicolored highlights, the practical benefits of color eReaders are limited – particularly at their current price point. The Kindle Colorsoft costs around €300, but early units shipped by Amazon suffered from a “yellow streak” defect, causing delivery delays.

The Kobo Libra Color is slightly cheaper and adopts the premium form factor of Kobo’s high-end models, featuring a wide side bezel and physical buttons for page-turning. Kobo also offers a smaller option, the Clara Color. As always, the key differences between Kindle and Kobo remain: Kindle ties users to Amazon’s extensive store, while Kobo supports a broader range of formats and offers integrations like Pocket for saving web articles or Dropbox for accessing personal files.

  The Libra Colour, which adopts the form factor of Kobo’s high-end e-readers, with a wide bezel on one side and physical buttons for page-turning, has received positive reviews over the past few months. Admittedly, it comes with a significant price tag, even if less than the new Kindle, but – differing from the latter – it offers a better balance of features, including the ability to write on it as a note-taking device. This is something the Kindle lacks, and perhaps the real “plus” of using a color e-ink device is precisely the ability to write on it. The Kobo Libra Colour doesn’t provide that refined “paper-like” feel of the reMarkable devices, but the experience of taking color notes directly on the eBook page — writing, underlining, and highlighting — is excellent. The new Stylus 2 attaches magnetically, and when paired with the official cover, you get a flexible, multi-purpose device that takes up very little space and, depending on your needs, could potentially replace a tablet. But there's a but.

The arrival of color eReaders raises doubts about their core purpose. Originally conceived as digital alternatives to paper books, eReaders were celebrated for their simplicity: an eye-friendly, distraction-free reading experience. Paper books are alive and well – if anything, thriving. Bookstores may be struggling, but that’s another story. Meanwhile, eReaders have carved out their niche, but their strength lies in mimicking paper, not competing with tablets or smartphones.

With these new devices, one wonders if eReaders have lost their way, transforming into quasi-tablets. We’re so accustomed to reading news and snippets of books on our smartphones that our habits, and the needs behind them, have inevitably shifted. Once, the “prayer of the bourgeois,” as Hegel called it, took place on the large-format pages of a newspaper. Today, it happens on the small screen of an iPhone, with the text perhaps just a subtitle beneath a TikTok reel. Maybe, unconsciously, we’re looking for eReaders that feel like smartphones, just as we once sought the familiarity of printed pages.

A similar shift happened in photography. Early digital cameras tried to replicate the look of film. Newer models embrace a fully digital aesthetic. Likewise, today’s eReaders feature increasingly bright screens that feel less like paper and more like optimized tablet displays. Chinese companies like Huawei and TCL have introduced technologies like PaperMatta and NextPaper, which matte tablet screens to resemble eInk – further blurring the line between eReaders and tablets.

Still, the old eReaders had a charm of their own, and we might soon feel nostalgic about them. Could the first-generation Kindles one day be cherished like CD players or point-and-shoot cameras? Only time will tell. For now, what matters most is simple: to keep reading.