How to Read Manga on the Kindle Colorsoft

Yes, and the Colorsoft is the first Kindle that shows colour pages in colour. Black-and-white manga works too, slightly softer than on a Paperwhite, because the colour filter sits in front of the same 300ppi panel.

The Kindle Colorsoft at a glance

What that screen means for manga

A printed manga volume has a page of roughly 5 by 7 inches. At 7 inches this screen shows that page at about 80% of its printed size. At 300ppi the lettering stays crisp, so the limit is how small the text gets, not how sharp it is.

The colour layer has a cost. It shows colour at a lower resolution than black and white, and it leaves the background a shade greyer than a monochrome screen. Most manga is black and white, so what colour buys you is covers, colour chapters, manhwa and webtoons. The trade-off is covered in How to Read Color Manga on an E-Reader.

This is why the device profile matters more than any other setting. A scan is drawn at print resolution, far larger than this screen. Left alone, the reader shrinks each page on the fly, slowly and without care for the lettering. A file converted for the Kindle Colorsoft already has every page at exactly 1272 x 1696, with the greyscale tuned for e-ink, so nothing is resized on the device.

Getting manga onto the Kindle Colorsoft

First, convert:

1. Open Manga for Kindle Colorsoft and drop in your files. CBZ and CBR are the usual inputs; ZIP, RAR, 7Z, PDF and EPUB also work.
2. Check that the device is set to Kindle Colorsoft. That is the exact name in the picker.
3. Leave manga mode on for right-to-left titles. Turn it off for webtoons and Western comics.
4. Look at the preview, then convert and download.

Then, transfer:

• Choose EPUB and send it with Send to Kindle: the website, the desktop app or the Kindle email address all work.
• For USB, choose MOBI. On current firmware this Kindle connects over MTP, not as a plain drive: Windows shows it in File Explorer, and a Mac needs an MTP transfer app before the documents folder is visible.
• The email route stops at about 50MB per file. USB and the apps handle more, which matters at this resolution. More in Send to Kindle file size limit.

Can it open a CBZ without converting? No. A Kindle does not open CBZ or CBR files, whichever way they arrive. They have to be converted first.

How many volumes fit

A volume converted for this screen comes to roughly 100 to 195MB, depending on page count (the upper end is for colour volumes). That figure is scaled from our own conversions by pixel count, so treat it as a guide. With 16GB or 32GB, that works out to about 80 volumes on the device at once.

Settings worth changing

• Keep colour on when converting a colour volume. The usual greyscale step throws the colour away, and it cannot be put back afterwards.
• Use the Vivid colour style in the display settings for manhwa and colour chapters. Standard looks washed out on saturated art.
• For pure black-and-white series, convert in greyscale as usual. The files come out smaller and the page looks cleaner.
• For double-page spreads, splitting is the better default: each half fills the screen, right half first for manga. Rotating keeps the art whole but makes it small.

Is the Kindle Colorsoft good for manga?

Buy it for webtoons, manhwa and colour editions. For mostly monochrome manga the Paperwhite is sharper and cheaper.

For the wider picture, including where to get manga legally and how the other models compare, see Manga on Kindle.

Frequently asked questions