The Tolino Shine Color is the first time Tolino has embraced a color e-paper screen. It was released in late 2024 in Germany, and we finally received our review unit. The big selling points are the color screen, Dark Mode, and support for many e-book formats.
The Tolino Shine Color features a six-inch E INK Kaleido 3 color e-paper screen with FastGLR and Dark Mode. The black-and-white resolution is 1448×1072 with 300 PPI, and the color resolution is 150. The color screen is capable of displaying 4096 different colors. The e-reader only comes in one color: black. It has a ComfortLight PRO adjustable brightness and color temperature for blue light reduction. There are no physical page-turn buttons, and users must interact with swipes, taps, and gestures with the capacitive touchscreen display.
Underneath the hood is a MediaTek processor MT8113T – dual-core ARM A53 @ 2.0 GHz, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. It has WIFi to connect to the bookstore and Bluetooth 5.0 to use wireless headphones or earbuds to listen to audiobooks. This e-reader should be immune to coffee or tea spills, thanks to the IPX8 rating – for up to 60 minutes in 2 meters of water. It has USB-C to transfer data and charge it. It is powered by a 1500 mAh battery, has 112 x 160 x 9.2 mm dimensions, and weighs 174g.
The Shine Color supports a myriad of e-book formats. EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT, CBR, and CBZ are compatible with books from the Onleihe public libraries. With Tolino cloud synchronization, you never lose track of your reading and listening progress, regardless of your device. Customers can decide what e-book provider they want to do business with or deal with simultaneously. This includes Thalia, Hugendubel, Weltbild, buecher.de, ebook.de, Osiander, and Orell Füssli.
The Shine Color is now based on Linux instead of Android. The e-reader design is mainly based on the Rakuten Kobo Clara Colour. However, the software experience should be faster and more stable; this is more noticeable if you have an older Shine e-reader.