Verge Report - Amazon Rep comment on Colorsoft Issue

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

Mine may be reducing with time.

Oh, the power of self-deception...

I know what you mean; I've had a few ereaders with pretty uneven frontlights and I've never bothered to return them. My Sage is uneven as well. Usually I stop noticing this after a little while. But it has never gotten automagically better; when I make the effort, I can see the issue perfectly well. I just prefer not to make that effort and focus on reading instead.

[Hollow Man]

It's tricky because the lighting and warmth settings, plus how much light is in the room, all affects it. At the end of the day I decided to minimize thinking about it and instead continue to read. If Amazon eventually comes up with a reasonable solution, I'll revisit.

Why let this affect my reading (especially since in person, it's less noticeable; camera photos do funky things to exposure and color balance)?

[JoeC]

It does look/feel like you are reading an old paperback after a while. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

[Hollow Man]

The exposure pumps it up more, which is why the screen is so bright, but the Kindle logo is so hard to read. It's less noticeable in person than the photo lets on.

[Sirtel]

It's not terribly noticeable even in this photo. I would not return any ereader because of this. I've seen worse.

[Hollow Man]

My eight year old Oasis also has some uneven lighting. It's just less noticeable because it has no warmth dial.

[Morpheus Phreak]

I'm finally throwing in the towel on Kindles after 15 years, and doubtful I'll be back, barring a miracle.

I tried to go back to a Paperwhite SE when they kept pushing how great the new one is, and it just wasn't doing it. I got used to the color too quick, and won't go back. Sent it back, and got contact from someone in the "second tier" of the ECR the day after. They gave me about $145 on a gift card (as credit for all the hassle), and told me when the Paperwhite got back I should be able to get the refund expedited. Especially since it was going to be refunded to the account to fund the rest of the Colorsoft purchase.

Evidently UPS misplaced the return, and it was a pickup so there's evidence that they had it. It's stuck in Illinois and now they're fighting me on providing the refund for quite some time. Even the ECR agent who had been helpful basically told me to just wait it out until after the holidays for a potential refund.

Bought a Kobo Clara Colour for $129 instead with the courtesy cash they gave me and already have almost all my Audible & Kindle library downloaded (close to 600GB of data, almost all Audible) & ready for when it gets here this weekend. I also filed a dispute with PayPal since it was bought on my PayPal debit card since they're pulling so much crap.


I was literally trying to throw my money at them, and instead they literally end up paying me to buy the competitor's product.

Amazon support has become such a farce.

Let them close my account. I don't care anymore.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

camera photos do funky things to exposure and color balance)?

It's called white balance. Everything effects it. From lights of your room to lights of the device. The way movies and photography handles this is using colour checkers, and setting the scene correctly. Anyway, It doesn't look too pronounced to me. Many Kindle users are just used to having uniform lighting. Old palm-pc's tended to have major problems with colour bleed at the edges. Lcd screens and batteries were both very weak, so they used eink style lights at the edges for extra brightness, and you tended to see similar issues on them. I don't like Amazon's response to the problem, though. It's clearly not fixable with firmware, saying that it is is just sales tactic. They should just come forward that it was a design issue, and offer refunds for everyone that doesn't like it.

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by jackm8

I don't like Amazon's response to the problem, though. It's clearly not fixable with firmware, saying that it is is just sales tactic. They should just come forward that it was a design issue, and offer refunds for everyone that doesn't like it.

I concur. Both the replacements they are sending out and ones people are getting for the first time are the same as mine: slight push toward amber toward the bottom, slight push toward pink at the top. If you choose to focus on reading over perfect image quality, you deal with it (in the same way a person reading a real book likely chooses to deal with a smudged word, or pages that are printed slightly unevenly). I get why people are annoyed and return it (over and over!), but I've personally learned that searching for perfection in anything is a long, bumpy road to travel upon.

It's more peculiar that they haven't released any upgrades to it yet, to fix the bugs I've seen with whispersync (it tends to not work after waking from deep sleep) and skipping directly to another page (if you swipe up, choose the 9 page selection option, then try to go to a different page, it'll often freeze, then drop you right back to your current page).

[tomsem]

Well, we'll see if anything has changed: looks like they are starting to ship again. Last week said something 'available Dec 28' and now it is 'Jan 3'. I assume that date shifts represents backlog due to incoming orders.

I can see no amber band on mine (a preorder). So this means not all of the ones shipped have a problem, at least in the eye of the beholder.

The only update I got was immediately after registration, and for all I know it fixed something. There is still no downloadable update for it.

[Hollow Man]

I can see it in pretty much every photo I've seen of the Colorsoft. Once you know what to look for, it's visible. It's not a "band." It's simply a color gradient, that slightly shifts as the light goes across the page. Its presence is very dependent on amount of lighting and warmth dialed in, plus the type of overhead lighting. There are plenty who say "mine doesn't have it," they upload a photo, and yes...they do have it. They just can't tell.

If you don't see it...great! But there's no doubt from me, based on the photos I've seen of replacements (which come with a note from Amazon saying it's been checked and has no issues), that the issue is still present.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

I can see it in pretty much every photo I've seen of the Colorsoft. Once you know what to look for, it's visible. It's not a "band." It's simply a color gradient, that slightly shifts as the light goes across the page. Its presence is very dependent on amount of lighting and warmth dialed in, plus the type of overhead lighting. There are plenty who say "mine doesn't have it," they upload a photo, and yes...they do have it. They just can't tell.

If you don't see it...great! But there's no doubt from me, based on the photos I've seen of replacements (which come with a note from Amazon saying it's been checked and has no issues), that the issue is still present.

I do not see it, period. I have really really tried.

[Hollow Man]

Do you see it in my photo above, reply 137?

Take a photo of yours, with brightness at 16 and warmth at 10, of the menu that has the "home" and "library" links on the bottom, and I'll tell you if it's there.

[drofgnal]

I've been following reviews on Amazon, they have ticked up slightly, with the number of 1 and 2 star reviews ticking down a bit, but still horrible. 4 and 5 star reviews ticked up a bit. It seems from reviews it's either a love it or hate it. Not many just so-so reviews.

[BionicGecko]

So I received my replacement Colorsoft and unfortunately it doesn’t seem the issue was fixed, at least for devices currently shipping in Europe. The replacement has a yellower base warmth so the defect (while still very obvious) is slightly less noticeable, but the color reproduction is not as good, and dark mode is definitely worse (more light “bleeding” in the background). The text also seems to be less crisp, although I can’t really explain this one, as there should really not be any difference on that front.

So I guess I’ll be returning the replacement, and as it’s too late for a refund I’ll just keep my original one. Hopefully other people will have better luck than me; I’d perhaps advise people considering buying a Colorsoft now to wait a bit more, as it doesn’t look like Amazon has the issue under control yet.