Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

I own a Kindle Paperwhite (last gen, relative to this new one) and a Kobo Clara BW (purchase in the last 6 months). IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience. The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. That tied with a few other privacy issues over the years led me to also get a Kobo.

The Kobo can run in a fully offline mode (called "side-load mode" or something like that) and I can transfer my ebooks directly via USB. I use the Kobo most of the time now since most of my reading lately has been independently published ebooks, but I still use the Kindle for books I purchase via Amazon directly.

With all that said, I personally think the Kindle Paperwhite is already the perfect size. It fits snuggly in my back pocket and strikes the perfect balance between screen size being large, but not too large to hold for my average male hands. I'd be a bit concerned about the size increase for my personal use case, but Amazon does a great job with the Kindle in general so I'd like to see some reviews.

As for the new Colorsoft, I'd really like to see some reviews. The color Kobos that came out earlier this year got some mixed reviews for colors, but I'm not sure if that's just the nature of color e-ink or not.

> you have [to] send [books] through [Amazon's] servers.

No, you can sideload books using USB mass storage. It's pretty easy. Kindle Paperwhite is still a great experience even without using the Amazon book ecosystem.

You are correct, you can sideload, but as soon as you open them in your Kindle, they get an Amazon-DRM; so you can't read the very same files on another e-reader. And - as soon as you go online with your Kindle - said DRM is checked and all non Amazon books deleted. At least, that was the case 10 years ago: I still own a Paperwhite 1st Gen which is now basically defunct.

I switched to a Poke 5P (Onyx) and was surprised at the tons of features. No ads, no DRM and reads basically all formats. Win.

I downloaded all my Amazon-bought books, so I can still read them on PC, but otherwise I'm done with their product.

What you wrote is completely untrue. I have myriad of books on my Kindle which are not on Amazon, and they are not deleted. Neither does anything weird happen to them.

So, I tested this. You are all partially correct - it's not the Kindle putting the DRM on the files, they already have them when you download them. That said, the DRM code IS matched to the serial number of your Kindle device, so my previous -admittedly not properly tested - assumptions still stand.

I then went to investigate, how all this is done and found this:

https://itstillworks.com/kindle-drm-17841.html

As for the side-loaded books - I still can't open them on any other device (did the DRM check work the same on Paperwhite 1st gen?). No idea why.

I get my books from different sources than Amazon. I can transfer these to my Kindle by e-mail or Calibre, without any issue. And they stay there on the Kindle and work fine. I also sync these books from my computer to other devices, Android and iOS, and they work fine also.

Use EPUB file format and your books will work on all devices, including Kindle.