reMarkable Paper Pro was launched in September and became the world’s first e-paper tablet to use color. Touted as “the best writing and reading experience ever on a paper tablet,” the device features over 20,000 colors on a textured screen that you can use to write, read, and organize.
Kindle Colorsoft, on the other hand, was announced just last week and is also Amazon’s first foray into color. Customers now have access to a complete palette of 15 million titles on Kindle. That means you can view travel guides, cookbooks, comics, and graphic novels the way they were intended.
While the two devices don’t necessarily match in terms of features and specifications – one is a digital notebook and the other an e-reader – they both represent important changes in the paper tablet market.
With that in mind, it seemed right to compare which one is better value for your time and, more importantly, your money.
Below, we’ll take a closer look at the design, features, price, and color quality of these two tablets, and give you a verdict on which one is better.
Read our complete guide to Kindle Colorsoft release dates and a comparison between Kindle Scribe and reMarkable Paper Pro.
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What is Kindle ColorSoft?
Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon’s first e-reader with a full color palette. Like the standard Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, this device has access to more than 15 million titles, including novels, textbooks, and magazines, which can now be viewed in color.
Colorsoft features a 7-inch display with an auto-adjusting front light for varying light levels. Additionally, compared to previous Kindles, battery life has been extended by 8 weeks and page turning speeds have also been improved.
Another feature of Colorsoft is that you can now highlight passages in your book in yellow, orange, blue, or pink, and you can now search for passages by highlighting color.
reMarkable Paper Pro is a digital notebook designed to look and feel like paper. The previous version was reMarkable 2, which lets you take notes, mark up documents, and organize your work into easy folders on either tablet.
Paper Pro comes with markers (or the more expensive Marker Pro) that you can use to take handwritten notes and turn them into text. You can also import documents from Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive, and Dropbox, and share notes between mobile and desktop devices.
It has an 11.8-inch full-color display with an adjustable reading light and a glass screen that feels like writing on paper. Last but not least, it features 64 GB of storage and up to 2 weeks of battery life.
The first major difference between the two paper tablets is the price. Kindle Colorsoft is priced from £269.99 and reMarkable Paper Pro is priced from £559.
This makes Colorsoft the most expensive e-reader in the Kindle series, and the second most expensive overall after Kindle Scribe.
The reMarkable Paper Pro is also the most expensive of the reMarkable range, costing £190 more than the reMarkable 2.
However, given that the Colorsoft can only be used as an e-reader, while the Paper Pro is a more capable tablet that can write and type, this £300 difference doesn’t seem all that shocking.
When comparing Paper Pro and Kindle Scribe, the features and specifications are much closer. However, the reMarkable tablet still costs nearly £200 more than the Kindle Scribe (£379).
The biggest similarity between Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro is, of course, the colors. reMarkable Paper Pro features a True Color ink display that uses millions of E-Ink particles to produce over 20,000 colors. Kindle Scribe, on the other hand, claims to contain “nature’s complete palette,” which we can only assume means it has lots of colors, too. .
Both can display book, textbook, and paper covers as they appear in real life, and can use color to highlight passages of text.
However, reMarkable lets you choose up to nine colors for highlighting, writing, and sketching, and you can layer and blend them, whereas Kindle only lets you highlight in standard yellow, orange, blue, or pink.
The Kindle Scribe is also much smaller at 7 inches compared to the reMarkable’s 11.8, but that’s not the biggest concern either. One is designed for handheld reading and the other is designed for note-taking and work.
Both feature adjustable reading lights to protect your eyes and are slim, durable and waterproof.
Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro UK features and specifications
As I mentioned, Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro serve very different purposes.
Kindle Colorsoft is an e-book reader that gives you access to millions of titles from Amazon’s library. Use it for entertainment or independent reading, but also to highlight parts of text.
reMarkable Paper Pro is a smart notebook used to convert handwritten notes to text, mark up PDFs, and sync documents on cloud-based platforms such as Google Drive and One Drive. You can also use it to organize your notes and share your reMarkable screen in work meetings.
Comparatively, the Kindle Colorsoft has up to 8 weeks of battery life compared to the reMarkable two, but only 32 GB compared to the reMarkable’s 64 GB. Both have improved speeds: faster page turns for the Kindle, faster write latencies for the reMarkable, and fast charging via USB-C.
Given the differences in functionality between Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro, I’m not going to compare them too closely. Instead, I’m going to frame this question around which colors are worth paying the extra money for, and how much of a difference it really makes.
For both, the answer is definitely reMarkable Paper Pro.
It’s great that the Kindle is now in color, but I think most of the books I read on my Kindle will still be black and white novels and full-length novels.
Sure, you can now view cookbooks and graphic novels in color, but this seems more likely to be purchased physically.
The big advantage is for students who don’t want to have to deal with a million different textbooks and need to see graphs and images in color. You can also highlight passages for homework or review purposes, so if you like that, please give it a try.
But for us, it makes much more sense to need a smart notebook in color. This allows you to make notes and reports stand out, annotate documents effectively, and organize your work in a clear way.
Sure, reMarkable Paper Pro is expensive, but you can use it for work, school, or personal projects, you can sync it with other devices, and the use of color is a very effective addition to make your life easier.
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