Review of the Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition 2025

Amazon has recently revised the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition with 32GB of storage. It did this in July 2025 and made several improvements. The screen was dramatically improved, resulting in a grey background and deep black fonts. It is slightly on par with the black and white e-paper display of the base Kindle or the Kindle Paperwhite. The result is the complete elimination of the yellow band issues that plagued the Colorsoft that came out in 2024.

Not only did Amazon change the display, but they are also using a different mainboard. This makes it more powerful and noticeable when changing the pages of an e-book or navigating around the UI. The charging coils were positioned in a different place, and there is a new FCC and model number on the back plate.

The 2024 Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition features 18% recycled materials, while the 2025 edition utilizes 28%. The new model is 1 gram lighter, along with the new REV 2 model number. The retail box has also undergone a slight redesign, and inside the box, new documentation is provided.

Amazon is slowly rolling out the 2025 Colorsoft in more countries. Currently, it is available in Europe and Japan. How do you know if you are buying the 2024 or 2025 Colorsoft? If the UPC on the back of the box ends in 7439 and the DSN contains H7035, you have the new model. If you remove the Colorsoft from the box and look on the back, you’ll find small text with FCC information, indicating the new model. Finally, the Amazon listing would likely say “All New Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition 32GB.”

Hardware

The Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition features a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 color e-paper display with a black and white resolution of 1264×1680 and 300 PPI and a color resolution of 150. A Kaleido 3 screen is typically able to display over 4,096 different colors. Amazon says this new device has custom-formulated coatings between the display layers to enhance the colour, a light guide with micro-deflectors to minimize stray light, and an ultra-thin coating in the display stack to improve optical performance. They built the display on an oxide backplane for sharper contrast and better image quality. It is hard to know exactly what they did to improve the screen of this model, since it is not available in the USA or Canada at the time of this review.

The Kindle Colorsoft is entirely based on a touchscreen, with no physical buttons. Amazon stated that, in the foreseeable future, they will not have buttons on any Kindle. It features an auto-adjusting front-lit display that automatically adjusts the brightness of warm and cool lighting to match your environment. This is due to the inclusion of an ambient light sensor.  The peak brightness is 94 units, with 12 White and 13 Amber LEDs.

I am not sure if the processor has been changed on the new node, but the 2024 Colorsoft employed a 2GHz Mediatek processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage to house your digital content. Bluetooth 5.1 enables pairing wireless headphones or an external speaker to listen to Audible audiobooks purchased from Amazon, but Audible is only available in select countries.

The Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition is rated IPX8 and can withstand immersion in up to 2 meters of fresh water for up to 60 minutes and 0.25 meters for 3 minutes in seawater. A USB-C port will transfer and charge digital content to your device. It also supports quick charging with an optional dock. It is powered by a 2310 mAh battery, which should be good for about eight weeks of light reading. The Kindle is made from 28% recycled materials. The battery is made from 100% recycled cobalt, and the packaging is made from 100% recycled cardboard.

Comparisons

We have some comprehensive videos that compare the new 16GB Colorsoft with the 2025 model. We also compare the 2024 Colorsoft Signature Edition with the 2025 model. This will provide a solid visual aid.

Software

Amazon has always used Linux as the operating system for the Kindle, and every generation has relied on it. There are several significant reasons for this choice. Linux is highly stable, allowing for the use of smaller batteries since it has no background processes, and all e-reader features efficiently consume less power. E Ink does not generate power independently; it only draws power when the state changes. For example, if you navigate the Kindle, access the settings menu, or click on Goodreads, power will be used. However, when you are simply reading what is displayed on the screen, no additional power is consumed.

Every couple of months, Amazon releases new software updates for the Kindle. Usually, the changelogs do not have any pertinent information on what is included. However, they do have features that are enabled remotely at a later date. Recently, they developed a new “Spacing” setting. The new features include: Paragraph Spacing, Word Spacing, and Character Spacing. These new options will provide users more flexibility and control over the e-book experience. This new system is not only available for books purchased from Amazon, but also for sideloaded ones.

The spacing system has been relocated slightly and is no longer displayed on the front page of the font menu. To make changes, navigate to the font menu and tap SPACING. There are four spacing options available for each, and they feature a small slider bar to control the text easily.

At the bottom of the UI are two options: home and library. Between is a small piece of cover art from the last book you opened; clicking on it lets you dive right into the story, making it easier to get started. The Library menu hasn’t changed much over the years; it lists your books on the device. You can sort them and make folder collections for better organization. Some people like the cover view, which makes sense on Colorsoft since all the cover art is in full colour.

The Amazon bookstore is one of the main reasons for investing in Kindle Colorsoft. They have the largest selection of books in the world. You will find all the same bestsellers by well-known authors that will be promoted at your local Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, or Chapters Indigo. There is also a slew of content from small and mid-range publishers specializing in one genre, such as TOR with fantasy and science fiction. Amazon has imprints, where they invest in established and up-and-coming authors and publish the books themselves. There is also Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows anyone to publish and sell books on Amazon. If you like to read a lot, there is the Kindle Unlimited Program, where you can read millions of comics, books, and manga for a low monthly fee. If you have a child who uses your device, consider the Kids+ subscription, which offers family-friendly content from publishers like Disney. There is something for everyone on the Amazon bookstore, along with a variety of optional programs. You will find more content on Amazon than its rivals, such as Barnes and Noble Nook or Kobo.

It is said that Amazon controls 80% of the e-book market in the USA and 85% in the United Kingdom. The success of the Amazon store is attributed to Kindle Direct Publishing, which is their self-publishing arm. New authors are discovered, and small presses also use it to submit both their backlist catalog and new titles. KDP is a double-edged sword because there is an avalanche of AI-generated garbage that is polluting the Kindle ecosystem. This makes it difficult to determine if a real author wrote the book on ChatGPT. In 2023, Amazon changed its AI guidelines, but has done nothing to stem the tide.

Audible is one of Amazon’s secret weapons, a feature they have been leveraging on Kindle e-readers, starting with the 10th generation series and moving into the 11th and now 12th. They all had secret Bluetooth functionality and, once paired with headphones or a wireless speaker, allowed you to listen to audiobooks right on the Kindle. The audiobook player is polished. Connecting your Bluetooth device and adjusting playback speed from various settings are options. You can skip chapters, view chapters, look for similar audiobooks, see the cover art, and more. It is very similar to using the Audible app on Android or iOS. So, if you regularly listen on your phone, the same options are available on Kindle.

Goodreads is the largest book discovery and social media service. It excels at setting reading goals and reviewing friends’ reading lists. The Colorsoft does a good job on Goodreads, since everything is in color, which makes book cover art stand out.

Reading

You would buy a Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition 32GB for many reasons beyond just reading typical e-books. Sure, reading is fine; the text is sharp. However, the real power lies in non-fiction titles with many images, magazines, manga, comics, and more. Magazines are primarily found on Kindle Unlimited, but you can buy graphic novels, comics, and manga individually or purchase the entire series at the Amazon bookstore.

When buying e-books from Amazon, most customers don’t worry about the book format. This only applies if you are downloading free books from the internet or sideloading your collection. The  Kindle Colorsoft supports Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX)

The Kindle reading system includes a profile section where you can save your settings, such as line spacing, margins, font size, and font type. You can share the Kindle with multiple family members, each with their custom settings. One feature I enjoy about the e-reading experience is the option to disable the time remaining in a chapter or the current page number. The ability to hide the status bar or turn it off completely is genuinely excellent. You can configure this in the Aa menu. Lots of enhancements and changes are always being implemented.

You can pinch and zoom to increase the font size when reading a book. This is useful since you no longer must do this exclusively on the AA menu. You can do some options while reading, such as long-pressing on a specific word or body of text. This will provide options like making notes or annotations. You can look up words in the built-in dictionary and check what Wikipedia says. The Kindle also uses Bing Translations on all its e-readers so that you can translate a specific word or a body of text from one language to another. If you highlight a block of text or a single word, you can share it via Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, or email instead of looking it up.

Highlights in books are nothing new on the Kindle, but highlighting in colour on an e-reader is. You get six different primary colours when holding your finger on a specific word or a body of text. Highlights are saved on your device and then synced to the cloud. This is good since if you view the same book on the Kindle app for Android, iOS, or a Fire tablet, all highlights will be preserved.

Wrap up

“All new” is a prefix used for Amazon devices and has been so for many years. It’s a way for the company to refresh its device without having to redesign or change the inherent product itself. In this case, we have a nine-month gap between the 2024 color soft and the 2025

The differences are as follows.

1 G lighter
All new box art
10% more recycled plastic body construction
$20 USD more
Certification stamps and model number written on the back

That’s pretty much it.

Amazon did this before with the Kindle Scribe, releasing the first one in 2022 and the second one in 2024. Changing nothing. But back to the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition 2025.

The unit itself features all-new packaging and is 1 G lighter, possibly due to changes in the internal components of the printed circuit board.

Other than that, the software is fully updatable, whether you have the previous version or not, and it performs identically.Since there are no release notes for the processor, RAM, or other components, we cannot determine what refinements have been made to the latest unit.

These changes might seem insignificant, but the fact remains that, splitting hairs or not, the devices are indeed different. When purchasing on the secondary market, you need to identify each device and decide which one to buy.