Goodbye Kindle? Full-colour e-book readers launch next month

If the current crop of e-book readers seem a little dull to you, maybe one with a colour screen might pique your interest?

Until now e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle have been resolutely monochrome. While that’s great for reading books, it doesn’t look particularly appealing to potential buyers. A company called Paradigm Shift looks set to change that next month with the launch of two devices with full colour screens.

While Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader has a colour navigation bar, Paradigm Shift is going full colour for the whole screen. That means illustrations should look a lot nicer and documents like PDFs will be displayed in their full glory.

According to Electronista, the two devices, one with a 5-inch screen and one at 7 inches, will feature a built-in MP3 player, photo viewer and 1GB of built-in storage, plus an SD card expansion slot. Additionally, the 7 inch model will run Windows CE and feature a full touch screen, wi-fi, IM support via E-Buddy and support for playing YouTube videos. That sounds like it’s creeping towards tablet computer territory to us – albeit a tablet of the rather underpowered variety.

Avalailable in a range of colours, the 5-inch model will reportedly be priced at $150 US, with the 7-incher costing $50 extra.

Paradigm Shift is hardly a well-known company so it’s difficult to believe that they can come out of nowhere to crush the Kindle. That full-colour screen should help woo potential buyers but with rumours that Apple’s so-called iSlate will actually be an e-book reader they’re not likely to be the only full-colour kid on the block for long.

Paradigm Shift’s two devices will be launched at CES in Las Vegas, which runs 7 – 10 January.