The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is one of the most successful e-readers ever and the 4th generation model has some big selling points. It has an excellent screen with 300 PPI, is waterproof and has Bluetooth for listening to audiobooks. The Amazon ecosystem is deep and rich, but how does the overall reading experience compared to a color e-reader? Today, Good e-Reader has produced a video that shows how reading ebooks and PDF files is totally different on a black and white display vs color.
The Kindle shows all content on the screen at 300 PPI in black and white E INK. This includes, cover art, PDF files, pictures and imagery of any kind. A color e-reader will display B&W content such as the content of an ebook at 300 PPI, but any color elements will only be at 100 PPI. A color e-reader can show both color and B&W text on the screen at any given time and the same resolution applies.
I believe a color e-reader makes sense for people who want to read color content. Although the e-reader in this video, is the iReader C6 is the first commercially available product of its kind, it only has a Chinese UI and is only available in China. Color e-readers in general are going to be a huge thing in 2020, Pocketbook and Onyx Boox are working on models of their own, and so are a slew of other companies. Color enotes, or digital note taking devices will not be available until next year.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
