New Kindles announced (2024-10-16)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Without a copy of the original JPEG of the cover, there's no way to tell which is "better". The original might have more variation in the "white" than you would suspect, and so the Kindle is more accurately depicting the lack of smoothness.

Look at post 241 of this thread. I posted the cover.

Also look at post 238 and you'll see the full screens of the Kindle and Kobo. Look at the text on the top of the screen. It's more readable like it is on the actual cover on the Kobo screen.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Without a copy of the original JPEG of the cover, there's no way to tell which is "better". The original might have more variation in the "white" than you would suspect, and so the Kindle is more accurately depicting the lack of smoothness.

We don't even know that they're both using the same cover. I'm actually leaning towards the option that they are using different cover images. It's not unusual for a publisher to marginally change images for different stores. Just setting up the same source to comply to various standards will change appearance. Seeing original image from each book would help.

What's certain is that both devices are capable of displaying very low colour bit rates, so they rely on dithering to alleviate this. It's curious that they're both using Diagonal dithering, but that Kindle's is leaning the other way.

[DNSB]

For what it may be worth, I created an empty book in calibre, added the title, author and ASIN for the Kindle edition. The cover download showed the same size for Apple Books, Amazon and Kobo. I downloaded all 3 files and they looked identical and had the same jpeg setup other than a minor difference in the number of colours. I sent the cover images to my Kobo Libra Color and they looked identical to my naked eye.

[Josieb1]

I just thought I’d mention the UK delivery dates for the Kindle Colorsoft is now 3-6 months, 8th Feb to 16th April. Surely that’s going to hurt their Christmas sales

[FrenchBookworm]

I've decided to return my Colorsoft which I got on Monday: it has the infamous yellow band at the bottom of the screen (not always very noticebale, it depends on the lighting and the settings) and I just don't like the shape and the design of the thing so back to my beloved matcha green basic and my Oasis.

[BionicGecko]

I just received my Colorsoft and unfortunately it also has that yellow bar at the bottom. In fact it's more than a yellow bar, the whole screen has a pretty visible gradient which ramps up rapidly at the bottom of the screen.

For those interested I attach a couple of pictures of my Colorsoft's screen at full brightness on a white background, one with the left half flipped vertically, and the other one with the bottom half flipped horizontally, so the gradient can be observed more easily. The gradient is not uniform, with lighter blotches around the center of the screen. Overall it seems to be slightly better horizontally than my Libra Colour, but significantly worse vertically.

The Kindle does seem to handle dark mode (or "black page color") significantly better than the Kobo, with a much more uniform look on a dark background. As for color rendering, it's a bit of a toss-up; out-of-the-box I prefer the Kindle in vivid mode, but Kobo offers more rendering modes via the developer menu.

[JoeC]

Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share this.