Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro: Which colour tablet is best?

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The reMarkable Paper Pro came out in September and became the world's first e-paper tablet to use colour. Marketed as "the best writing and reading experience ever on a paper tablet," this device has over 20,000 colours built into its textured screen which can be used for writing, reading and organising.

Meanwhile, the Kindle Colorsoft was announced just last week and is likewise Amazon's first-ever foray into colour. Customers can now access Kindle's 15 million titles with a full palette, meaning travel guides, cookbooks, comics and graphic novels can be viewed as intended.

While the two devices don't necessarily match up in terms of function and specs, with one being a digital notebook and the other an e-reader, they both mark an important shift in the paper tablet market.

With that in mind, it seemed only right to compare them, to see which is more worth your time and, more importantly, your money.

Below, we'll be diving into the design, features, price and colour quality of these two tablets and delivering our verdict on which is better.

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Jump to:

What is the Kindle Colorsoft?
What is the reMarkable Paper Pro?
Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK price
Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK design
Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK features and specs
Our verdict on Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro

What is the Kindle Colorsoft?

The Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon's first e-reader to come with a full colour palette. Like the standard Kindle and the Kindle Paperwhite, the device has access to over 15 million titles, including novels, textbooks and magazines, except these can now be viewed in colour.

The Colorsoft has a seven-inch display with an auto-adjusting front light to cope with different light levels. Plus, compared to previous Kindles it boasts an extended 8-week battery life and improved page-turning speed.

Another feature of the Colorsoft is you can now highlight book passages in yellow, orange, blue, or pink, and will be able to search out passages by highlight colour.

What is the reMarkable Paper Pro?

The reMarkable Paper Pro is a digital notebook designed to have the look and feel of paper. The previous version was the reMarkable 2, and both of these tablets allow you to make notes, mark up documents and organise your work into easy folders.

The Paper Pro comes with a Marker (or the more expensive Marker Pro) which you can use to make hand-written notes and then convert into text. It can also pull in documents from Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox and allows you to share notes across mobile and desktop devices.

It has an 11.8-inch full colour display with an adjustable reading light and a textured glass screen that feels just like writing on paper. Last but not least, it has 64GB of storage and up to two weeks of battery life.

Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK price

Price is the first big point of difference between the two paper tablets. The Kindle Colorsoft starts at £269.99 and the reMarkable Paper Pro starts at £559.

This makes the Colorsoft the most expensive e-reader in the Kindle range, and second most expensive overall after the Kindle Scribe.

The reMarkable Paper Pro is also the most expensive in the reMarkable range costing £190 more than the reMarkable 2.

However, this £300 difference seems less shocking when you consider that the Colorsoft can only be used as an e-reader, while the Paper Pro is a more functional tablet that you can write and type on.

A better comparison would be between the Paper Pro and the Kindle Scribe which are much closer in features and specs. However, this still leaves the reMarkable tablet costing nearly £200 more than the Kindle Scribe, which is £379.

Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK design

Kindle Colorsoft (left) reMarkable Paper Pro (right) — Amazon/reMarkable

The Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro's biggest similarity is, of course, colour. The reMarkable Paper Pro has a true colour ink display that uses millions of E-Ink particles to render more than 20,000 colours, meanwhile the Kindle Scribe claims to contain "nature’s full palette" – which we can only assume means it has lots of colours too.

Both can show book, text book and paper covers as they would look in real life and allow you to use colour to highlight passages of text.

However, the reMarkable lets you pick up to nine colours for highlighting, writing and sketching which can be layered and blended together, while the Kindle only allows you to highlight in the standard yellow, orange, blue, or pink.

The Kindle Scribe is also much smaller, at seven inches to the reMarkable's 11.8, although again this is not the biggest concern as one is intended for handheld reading and the other for note-taking and work.

Both also feature an adjustable reading light to protect your eyes, and are slim, sturdy and waterproof.

Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro UK features and specs

As we've said, the purposes of the Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro are very different.

The Kindle Colorsoft is an e-reader with access to millions of titles from Amazon's library. You use it for entertainment and reading alone although you can also highlight pieces of text.

The reMarkable Paper Pro is a smart notebook used to convert handwritten notes to text, mark-up PDF's and sync up with documents on cloud-based platforms like Google Drive and One Drive. It can also be used to organise notes, and you can even share your reMarkable's screen on work meetings.

In terms of what we can compare, the Kindle Colorsoft has up to eight weeks of battery life compared to the reMarkable's two but only has 32GB to the reMarkable's 64GB. Both have an improved speed – for the Kindle it's page-turn speed and for the reMarkable it's writing latency – and can be charged quickly with a USB-C.

Our verdict on Kindle Colorsoft vs reMarkable Paper Pro: which is better?

Considering how different the functions of the Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro are, we're not going to compare the two too closely. Instead we're going to frame this around which one is worth paying the extra money for colour, and how much of a difference having colour actually makes.

For both, the answer is unequivocally the reMarkable Paper Pro.

While it's great the Kindle is now in colour, we reckon that most books you'd read on it would still be novels and long reads in black and white.

Yes, you can now peruse cook books and graphic novels in colour, but this seems like something you'd be more likely to buy physically.

A big benefit would be for students who don't want a million different text books lying around, and need to see graphs or images in colour. So if that's you then go for it, because you can also highlight passages for homework or revision.

But for us, it makes so much more sense that you'd need a smart notebook in colour. This way you can make your notes and reports stick out, annotate documents effectively and organise your work in a clear way.

Yes, the reMarkable Paper Pro is more expensive, but it can be used for work, school or personal projects, you can sync it up to other devices, and the use of colour is a really effective addition to make your life easier.

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