While some users find that the Kindle 2 fonts are just fine as they are, there are many users who are seeking a solution or workaround to make the text more easily readable. The lightness is particularly noticeable with the smaller Kindle 2 fonts. (Kindle 2 readers display content in your choice of six font sizes.)

What is causing this lightened text?

It seems that the higher resolution of the Kindle 2 (which has 16 shades of greyscale as compared to the original Kindle’s 4 shades) causes the font-smoothing in the displayed text to lighten pixels. Normally this results in a cleaner-looking font, with fewer “zaggies” in the curved lines of letters.

With smaller fonts, though, the font-smoothing lightens pixels to the point that the displayed text fades away on the e-ink display, simply because there are fewer dark pixels to make the text stand out. (See this excellent description of the technical reasons for the lightened text displays.)

If you’re somewhat daring, you can hack your Kindle to install bolder font types. This thread has more on the steps to do this. The image above shows a before-and-after image of the standard Kindle text and the same text in darkened font.

As with all hacks, proceed at your own risk. A hack can void your Kindle’s warranty, and our general advice is to sit tight – and use a larger font if the text lightness is bothering you. It seems likely that Amazon will address the font issue with a firmware update… but it’s anyone’s guess as to when that might happen.

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