Amazon announced a complete refresh to its family of Kindles recently giving us a new basic Kindle, a new Kindle Paperwhite and a new Kindle Scribe – but also introducing colour for the first time in the Kindle Colorsoft.

The Kindle Paperwhite is Amazon’s most popular e-reader. In fact, when I was talking to Kindle at the launch of the new devices, Amazon told me it was the fastest-selling and best-selling Kindle. But the Colorsoft takes Kindle in a new direction, introducing colour while keeping many of the benefits that Kindle already offered, like long battery life.

With Black Friday approaching and thoughts turning to Christmas gifting, you might be wondering which Kindle model you should buy. Do you opt for the tried and tested Paperwhite, or should you dive into colour? I’ve used Kindles extensively since they first launched and I’ve compared the new Paperwhite and the Colorsoft to help you choose.

The Kindle Paperwhite is cheaper, with longer battery life and a higher contrast display than the Colorsoft. The Colorsoft is more expensive, but gives you colour illustrations and highlighting. Page turning through colour content is slower.

The Colorsoft adds a dash of colour to the screen saver, Kindle Store and your Library, but unless you’re reading books that need colour, the Paperwhite is the more sensible choice. Of course, there are alternatives too including the Kobo Libra Colour 7-inch available at Currys.

The Kindle Paperwhite starts at £159.99, but this for the version that has adverts. If you want no adverts (these appear on the standby screen) then you can pay £169.99 for no adverts.

The Kindle Colorsoft costs £269.99 and there’s only one version – so it’s £110 more expensive than the cheapest Paperwhite.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re looking at the same device here, as the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Colorsoft are the same size and shape. There’s almost nothing to tell them apart, except that the Colorsoft only comes in black, while the Paperwhite comes in Jade and Raspberry colours too.

There is a metallic shimmer to the Amazon logo on the rear of the Colorsoft, but you’ll only spot that if you’re looking closely. Otherwise, these two devices are practically identical in look and feel, size and weight – the Colorsoft is a couple of grammes heavier at 219g.

Both the Paperwhite and the Colorsoft have an IPX8 rating, meaning they are water resistant, so it doesn’t matter if they get splashed at the pool on holiday, but neither have buttons for page turns.

It’s the display where these two devices are different. The Kindle Colorsoft has a colour display as the name suggests, while the Paperwhite remain a black and white device. That doesn’t mean Colorsoft can’t do black and white – if you’re reading a book that’s just straight text, these two devices will look similar, but not exactly the same.

The screen on the Colorsoft is different, custom designed by Amazon to allow it to display colours in place of the greyscale that you’ll get on the Paperwhite. But both also offer illumination, where the front of the screen lights up so you can read in the dark and both offer adjustable warmth to that light, so you can adjust it to your preference.

In terms of detail, both can display 300ppi (pixels per inch) when showing black and white content, but on the Colorsoft that drops to 150ppi when showing colour. That means that the colour content isn’t as sharp as the black and white content. This doesn’t actually impact on text, as colour text is rare, it just means that pictures aren’t as crisp and detailed.

There is a difference in the speed of page turning too: the new Paperwhite is the fastest to turn pages of any Kindle, while the Colorsoft takes a little longer when there’s colour to be refreshed. Looking at the two devices side-by-side, I felt that the Paperwhite looked more contrasty too.

Colour is the big difference between these devices and whether colour adds to the experience is really what you should focus on when making your decision – and that comes down to the type of book that you read. If you read fiction, it’s likely you’ll only encounter colour when looking at the cover. If you read non-fiction, there could be illustrations or photos included in the book that benefit from colour, where you’ll get a real advantage.

If you want to read comics or graphic novels, obviously, the Colorsoft has a huge advantage.

The introduction of colour also has a negative impact on the battery life of the Kindle Colorsoft. The official battery life is given as 8 weeks – that’s reading for 30 minutes a day with the brightness at level 13. The Kindle Paperwhite is a much better performer, offering 12 weeks under the same conditions.

If you want to read through your holidays without thinking about charging, then the Kindle Paperwhite is going to be the better option.

The full name of the Colorsoft is the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition. That’s because it’s based on the top-tier Kindle option, the Signature Edition.

The Signature Edition brings with it double the storage (32GB instead of 16GB), it has a sensor to allow for automatic brightness adjustment and it also supports wireless charging (with a very nice bedside charger available from Amazon). That means that the Colorsoft comes with all these features and that’s part of what you’re paying for.

The standard Kindle Paperwhite doesn’t have these features, but if you opt for the more expensive Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition you will get them all. That model costs £189.99, compared to the £159.99 for the standard model.

So in terms of these features, if you want them you can pay a little more to get them, but if you’re after the best value for money, the standard Paperwhite is where you’ll want to turn.