The holidays are fast approaching and if you need to buy gifts for your kids as quickly as possible (which is a really big deal), Amazon has a sale for you. Right now, some of Amazon’s Fire Kids tablets are on sale, including our top kids tablet pick: the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet. Its price is currently down from $190 to $110 — a 42 percent discount.
The Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet is available in Mint, Nebula, and Happy Days colors. It has a 10.1-inch screen with a 1080p full display and 13 hours of battery life. It’s for kids ages six to 12 and comes with a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+, which offers books, games, apps, and more.
The Amazon Fire 10 Kids tablet also has a similar sale, down from $190 to $110. Then there’s the Fire 7 Kids tablet, which is the most discounted right now. You can buy the 16GB model for half price – $55, down from $110 – or the 32GB model for 54 percent off – $60, down from $130. Unlike the other two, this model is aimed at kids ages three to seven, but has many of the same features as its counterparts.
Well, it’s finally happened. After years of waiting and requests, Amazon has launched the $280 Kindle Colorsoft, its first ereader with a color display. The company’s ereaders have dominated the space since the original Kindle came out 17 years ago, but in this case, it seems Amazon is falling behind.
Color E Ink displays are nothing new: we’ve tested and reviewed several color ereaders and E Ink tablets from Kobo, Boox and reMarkable in recent years.
But what Amazon is really trying to do with Colorsoft is copy Apple: claiming that the color E Ink technology wasn’t good enough to put in the Kindle until now, Amazon is promising that Colorsoft gets this implementation right, thanks in part to custom tweaks made to the display.
And, not surprisingly, Amazon is willing to charge you a premium for it. So is all this as good as it’s being made out to be? As you might be thinking, the answer isn’t as simple as yes or no.
Amazon sent me a second Colorsoft review unit in late 2024, and in short, the new one didn’t have the yellow-band problem and the display appeared warmer overall.
An Amazon spokesperson told me that a combination of “software and display adjustments” were applied to fix the yellow-band problem, and that these are the only differences between my original review unit’s display and the new one.
The difference in warmth between the Kobo Libra Color’s screen and the Kindle Colorsoft’s screen was reduced dramatically on my second review unit. This is a good thing for the Colorsoft because its screen now looks more like real, physical book pages. I’ve adjusted our list of pros and cons to reflect my experience with the new review unit, and what remains is our original review.
There have been several reports of Kindle Colorsoft owners seeing a yellow bar at the bottom of their ereader’s display. My review unit was not affected while I tested the Colorsoft, but upon checking on the morning of November 4, 2024, it appeared for me as well. When contacted for comment, a spokesperson told Engadget: “Some customers have reported a yellow bar at the bottom of the display.
We take the quality of our products seriously – customers who see this can contact our customer service team for a replacement or refund, and we are making appropriate adjustments to ensure that new devices do not experience this issue going forward. In the meantime, we have removed our score and recommended labeling until we are able to obtain Colorsoft’s replacement and test it long enough to ensure this issue is fully resolved.
Screen technology and comparison
Let’s get the technical details straight first. The Kindle Colorsoft’s seven-inch screen is based on E Ink Kaleido 3 technology, but a representative from the Kindle team told me they developed a custom display stack for this device.
That means they’ve made a lot of changes to the technology to get things like higher-contrast pigments and overall better speed. ColorSoft’s custom oxide backplane uses 24 driving volts to move pigments around more quickly and that helps those pigments appear with better contrast.
Nitride LEDs enhance color and brightness, and a custom coating between the display’s layers helps focus light through each pigment so there’s less color mixing. Some of the same technologies help make page-turning faster and reduce excessive refreshing on the screen when you go from one color page to the next, or pinch-and-zoom on an image.