The most effective ereaders for 2025

Display screen dimension: 6” | Show kind: Black/white and colour E Ink | Decision: 300 dpi black & white, 150 dpi colour | Capability: 16GB| Battery life: As much as 42 days (30 min. day by day, 30% brightness, Wi-Fi/BT off) | Waterproof ranking: IPX8 (submergible to six toes for 60 minutes) | Heat mild: Sure | Lock display adverts: No | Textual content codecs: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR

Learn our full Kobo Clara Color overview

Our earlier decide for this class, the Kobo Clara 2E was a wonderful ereader with a crisp show, a heat glow and responsive, intuitive contact controls all housed in a water-resistant design that felt premium. When Rakuten introduced the Clara can be up to date, I frightened we’d see Kobo system with superfluous revamping to justify an inflated value. Fortunately, that’s not the case. The Kobo Clara Color not solely provides colour and a sooner processor, it’s simply $10 greater than the earlier era.

Because the identify suggests, this ereader provides colour to the web page, lending a bit vibrance to guide covers, tables and graphs, and even the panels of graphic novels. The know-how comes from E Ink, within the type of the Kaleido 3 module that includes a colour filter layer on prime of the usual black and white microcapsule layer. That leads to two totally different resolutions on one display: 150 dpi for colour and 300 dpi for textual content.

Full-color pages remind me of comedian guide artwork from the ‘60s, muted however saturated. Shade makes guide covers extra attractive and provides a bit selection to headings, and tables in some non-fiction books. It’s definitely not a crucial characteristic, but it surely provides vibrance and it’s enjoyable. 

There’s a slight distinction in readability between the colour and non-color model of the Clara. If you happen to look carefully, you’ll be able to see a little bit of noise on the white elements of the web page. That is because of the added colour filter layer. It is not distracting and solely one thing I seen when evaluating the 2 generations side-by-side. but when absolute readability is your major purpose, chances are you’ll be higher off with a non-color ereader.

Most likely the extra helpful improve right here is the twin 2GHz processor, a bump from the Clara 2E’s 1GHz CPU. There’s a noticeable enchancment within the pace of the web page turns and navigating from the menu to the web page and again once more is sort of instantaneous. As with the 2E, the Color not often errors a swipe for a faucet or a web page flip gesture for a menu request.

The adjustable heat entrance mild continues to be right here (it’s really a bit hotter on the Color) and makes studying at evening straightforward on the eyes. The working system is identical, with intuitive entry to the Kobo retailer, your private books and titles out of your native library through Overdrive. You possibly can customise your studying expertise with choices for font, font dimension, line spacing, margins and so forth. Kobos don’t have a technique to save a bunch of show settings just like the Kindle does, so I’d like to see that added with future OS upgrades. However for now, the customizations are simply sufficient to get your guide the way you need it to look.

The Color is sort of similar in form and dimension, and has the identical premium really feel because the 2E, although the plastic has a grainier end. The bezels are noticeably much less flush with the display now, although that didn’t alter my studying enjoyment.

Now that it prices $150, the Kobo Clara Color is $40 greater than the bottom mannequin Kindle. However the waterproof construct, heat entrance mild, responsive controls and lack of adverts (which value $20 to eliminate on Amazon’s system) make it value it. And, in nice information for the proper to restore crowd, it’s even designed to be user-repaired as soon as it falls exterior of guarantee by a partnership with iFixit. 

Rakuten nonetheless makes the Kobo Clara BW, which is sort of similar to our earlier “finest general” decide. It does not undergo from the slight readability loss that the colour overlay presents, but it surely additionally nonetheless has the older processor.   

In fact, for those who already personal a mountain of Kindle books, chances are you’ll wish to keep on with Amazon’s system. In that case, one of the best Kindle is Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite. It prices $160 and was not too long ago up to date with a extra highly effective processor and new E Ink tech that makes it exceptionally speedy whereas displaying high-contrast textual content. The nice and cozy mild is nice and the flush entrance display feels premium. Yet one more consideration, now that Amazon now has its personal colour mannequin too, is the Colorsoft, however at $280, it’s considerably dearer than the Clara Color and even the Paperwhite Signature Version.

Display screen dimension: 6” | Show kind: Black/white E Ink | Decision: 300dpi | Capability: 16GB | Battery life: 6 weeks | Waterproof ranking: None | Heat mild: No | Lock display adverts: Sure | Textual content codecs: Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP by conversion

If you happen to simply wish to learn books, and don’t have any want for the perks that the fancier ereaders carry (colour, waterproof ranking, heat mild, and so forth), then the bottom mannequin Kindle is for you. The six-inch, non-flush show is housed in a textured plastic that feels much less premium than, say, the Paperwhite and even the 2 Kobos on our checklist, however nonetheless feels lots sturdy. And it’s sufficiently small to slot in a coat or again pocket making it very travel-friendly.

It’s unlucky that the 2024 mannequin is $10 greater than the 2022 mannequin when not a lot has modified, but it surely’s nonetheless the most cost effective ereader from any of the main producers. And if we all know one factor about Amazon, it’s that the corporate loves a great sale, so that you’ll probably discover it on low cost for those who can maintain out for Prime Day or Black Friday offers.

The reader is a no-frills gateway to one of the best of what the Kindle ecosystem has to supply, together with Kindle Unique titles, with books by established authors in addition to newer, self-published writers; Kindle Limitless presents the widest number of any subscription-based studying service on the market; and Audible Originals is made up of narrated titles and podcasts you’ll be able to solely hear by a Kindle system or Amazon-owned app.

If you happen to like to change between audiobooks and ebooks, Kindle is the way in which to go. If you purchase each iterations of a title, you not solely get a reduction, however the Whispersync characteristic strains up the place you might be within the e-printed model with the narration, too. Say you pay attention for an hour after which wish to learn – the synchronization allows you to decide up on-screen the place you left off audibly. (Although we must always level out that you could’t pay attention and skim concurrently on the identical system.) In checks, the characteristic was pretty correct, getting me shut sufficient on the web page or within the audio to determine my spot.

Web page turns are faster on the brand new mannequin however I’m disillusioned that there’s nonetheless no technique to regulate the zones and responses to touchscreen gestures, like there may be on each Kobo and Boox gadgets. Kindles all have a really slim strip on the left for going again a web page and I’m consistently lacking it and going ahead as an alternative. Although swipes usually work effectively.

Most likely probably the most noticeable lacking characteristic is the 6-inch display’s lack of heat mild. In comparison with any ereader with that choice, the display on the usual Kindle seems harsh and bluish, but it surely’s nonetheless far simpler in your eyes than a telephone or pill display. There’s loads of customization for the font, dimension and margins, too. You possibly can even save your settings as a “theme,” one thing not provided by different gadgets. I created one with bigger textual content and wider line spacing known as “drained eyes.”

Some individuals gained’t be bothered by the lock display adverts that come commonplace on this Kindle (until you pay $20 to take away them). They’re pretty innocuous, largely selling Kindle guide offers or particular titles (it’s not such as you’ll see promos for TVs or robotic pool cleaners). Personally, I like having the ability to set the sleep display to the guide cowl of what I’m at the moment studying, but it surely’s straightforward to recover from that if all you need is a extra handy technique to eat books on the lowest value.

Display screen dimension: 7” | Show kind: Black/white and colour E Ink | Decision: 300 dpi black & white, 150 dpi colour | Capability: 32GB | Battery life: Weeks | Waterproof ranking: IPX8 (submergible to six toes for 60 minutes) | Heat mild: Sure | Lock display adverts: No | Textual content codecs: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR

When Kobo got here out with the brand new Clara Color, it additionally debuted the new Libra Color, which is likely to be the extra thrilling of the 2 gadgets. Along with colour know-how from the E Ink Kaleido panel and an upgraded processor, the Libra now has stylus assist. It’s the one ereader on this checklist with that characteristic, making it loads like a small E Ink pill — however all of its new options really make it a greater ereader.

Once I wrote in regards to the earlier era ereader, the Libra 2, I used to be impressed by how comfy it was for studying. None of that has modified; the buttons and auto-rotating display adapt the system to simply about any studying place you selected and the skinny design, textured again and soft-touch plastic give it a premium really feel.

Kobo’s interface is sort of the identical right here as with different fashions, properly organized to allow you to simply discover your present reads or browse and search new titles from Kobo’s retailer or your native library within the Overdrive tab. The customizations for mild and textual content allow you to get the web page wanting simply the way you prefer it, however there aren’t so many choices that it feels such as you’re writing code.

The brand new options add to the expertise. In colour, guide covers all look extra attractive — although, in case your TBR checklist is already three toes lengthy, this gained’t not assist issues. The brand new processor makes waking from sleep, turning pages, navigating the menu and altering orientation zippy quick.

Then there’s the standing compatibility. Strive as they may, some new applied sciences don’t but beat their real-world counterparts. That’s largely how I really feel about styluses — I’m only a massive fan of pen on paper. However Kobo’s stylus makes it so enjoyable to spotlight textual content and scribble notes within the margins of a guide that I’m beginning to come round. Plus, it neatly and magnetically attaches to the aspect so it doesn’t get misplaced.

Urgent and holding the button on the aspect of the stylus highlights textual content whereas flipping it round erases. I by chance pressed the button a couple of occasions after I was making an attempt to put in writing, however I bought used to the position after a couple of minutes of utilizing it. You possibly can decide from 4 totally different highlighter colours and consider your written notes and spotlighted textual content within the notes part of any title — which I might see being fairly helpful for guide membership reads, college assignments or simply refreshing your self on a previous learn earlier than you dive into the sequel.

Writing within the margins or straight on the textual content labored on each guide I attempted. Although I ought to level out that for those who change the font dimension in a guide, your handwritten notes might be transformed to a sticky note-type field. Going again to the unique font restores your unique scribbles.

The Kobo Libra Color is $30 dearer than the Libra 2, however you get loads for $220. If it had been simply an ereader, the beautiful colours, responsive studying expertise, quick web page turns and simple highlights would make it well worth the value. However you additionally get options that make it extra than simply an ereader, like Dropbox and Google Drive integration, a beta net browser and free-writing and text-converting notebooks.

In fact, the stylus prices additional and also you gained’t get options like notebooks and writing within the margins with out it. Collectively, the set prices $290, which is a substantial $110 cheaper than the not too long ago up to date (and hottest) stylus-enabled ereader the Amazon Kindle Scribe. It is also cheaper than Kobo’s personal 10-inch mannequin, the Elipsa 2E. The Scribe has a, 10.2-inch display and the Elipsa 2E has a ten.3-inch display. That is a pleasant dimension for writing however, for me, is a bit massive for an ereader. The Libra Color alternatively has simply the fitting options on the proper dimension, plus some extras that stretch its usefulness.

Display screen dimension: 6” | Show kind: Black/white E Ink | Decision: 300dpi | Capability: 32GB | Battery life: 12 weeks | Waterproof ranking: IPX8 | Heat mild: Sure, auto adjustable | Lock display adverts: No| Textual content codecs: Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP by conversion

Learn our full Kindle Paperwhite Signature Version overview

Once I reviewed the brand new Kindle Paperwhite Signature Version, I used to be struck by the elevated studying expertise it supplied. It’s remarkably quick, the textual content is splendidly crisp and it has a premium design that feels nice to carry. Amazon was in a position to enhance web page flip and scrolling speeds for each the usual Paperwhite and the Signature Version by giving them new processors and utilizing an oxide thin-film transistor layer to allow sooner adjustments on the web page. The layer additionally permits for higher show readability than different transistor layers.

Each the usual and Signature fashions have heat entrance lights that forged a beautiful glow throughout a display that’s a bit bigger now at 7-inches (up from 6.8 final time). The battery life is longer, promising as much as 12 weeks (as an alternative of 10), which means you’ll not often have to cost your ereader. Regardless of that, the Paperwhite fashions are literally three millimeters thinner than the earlier era (and only a contact heavier).

With the Signature Version, you additionally get auto-adjusting entrance lights that dim or brighten as daylight fades otherwise you transfer from room to room. The storage capability goes up from 16GB to 32GB, so even for those who obtain an entire bunch of audiobooks, you aren’t prone to run out of area too shortly. And at last, you get a wi-fi charging choice for the periodic events when it’s time for a refill. All of these options are good to have, although not crucial — however for anybody who needs to learn ebooks in probably the most luxe manner potential, the Signature mannequin is the one to go for.

If you’d like an expertise that’s almost as deluxe, however don’t want the wi-fi charging, auto-adjusting lights and additional capability specs, the non-Signature Paperwhite continues to be noticeably extra premium than the usual Kindle, with a bigger display, ultra-crisp textual content and an opulent construct. Plus you continue to get entry to all of the perks that solely Kindles provide, like Goodreads integration, Kindle Unique titles, Kindle Limitless subscription books and Whispersync tech that strains up your audio and book reads so you’ll be able to swap between the 2 codecs. 

There’s additionally the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Childs, which is identical gadget, however comes with a canopy, an extended guarantee and a six-month subscription to Amazon Children+. 

Display screen dimension: 7” | Show kind: Black/white and colour E Ink | Decision: 300 dpi black & white, 150 dpi colour | Capability: 64GB | Battery life: Weeks | Waterproof ranking: splash-resistant | Heat mild: Sure | Lock display adverts: No | Textual content codecs: PDF, CAJ, DJVU, CBR, CBZ, EPUB, EPUB3, AZW3, MOBI, TXT, DOC, DOCX, FB2, CHM, RTF, HTML, ZIP, PRC, PPT, PPTX, PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF

Shade E Ink screens are the “new” factor in ereaders — although the tech has been commercially out there since round 2010. E Ink introduced its Kaleido 3 show in 2022, and with the fitting mixture of colour saturation and readability, it’s now interesting sufficient for basic consumption. Now Boox, Kobo and, ultimately, Amazon all have fashions with colour screens.

The Boox Go Shade 7 (out there from Amazon and Boox) is a pure option to supplant our earlier winner on this class, the Boox Web page. The Go Shade 7 not solely provides colour, it additionally comes with double the storage capability, an additional gig of RAM and ships with Android 12. The again is now textured as an alternative of slick, an improve my accident-prone fingers are grateful for, and the processor is quicker too, going from a 2.0Ghz octa core CPU to a 2.4Ghz chip. This all comes on the identical $250 checklist value because the Web page. The battery has the identical 2,300mAh capability, however ereader batteries final the order of some weeks, so an improve in that division wasn’t actually crucial.

Because the Go Shade 7 runs on a fork of Android 12, it acts extra like a pill than a standard ereader. Like all Boox gadgets, this method is finest suited to the tech-savvy. Not like a Kindle or Kobo, which come preconfigured with a retailer to purchase books, in addition to straightforward borrowing out of your native library system, Boox ereaders provide little hand-holding in setup and utilization. Whereas there’s a retailer, it’s made up of public area titles — most individuals will learn books by importing ePubs manually. Or, extra probably, you’ll learn on a third-party ereader app like Kobo, Kindle, Libby and others, which you’ll obtain from the built-in Google Play retailer.

Boox’s built-in ereader app, NeoReader, is properly featured with a great quantity of management over the look of the textual content. However it solely handles DRM-free ePub information from websites like Venture Gutenberg or publishers like Tor. If you wish to learn ePubs with digital rights administration, which make up the overwhelming majority of present ebooks, you’ll want to make use of a special app. Sarcastically, I’ve been utilizing the ereader app from PocketBook (a rival firm) to learn the DRM ePubs I buy from third events.

The Go Collection readers are impressively customizable, with programmable buttons and fine-tunable settings. Boox customers have created APK information to tweak and enhance the expertise additional. The system even has a microphone and audio system, and might run apps like Spotify. In brief, the Go Shade 7 can do excess of a typical ereader can, for those who’re prepared to experiment.

The expertise is enhanced with a tender, adjustable entrance mild with temperature management that makes for nice low-light studying and the flush, glare-free, display is lush and detailed. Like all colour ereaders, you do surrender a modicum of readability to accommodate the colour array, and the heat is noticeably extra yellow. I solely seen the distinction after I set comparable ereaders side-by-side and, actually, it’s the distinction between a tremendous duper crisp display and solely a brilliant crisp display.

The tender and muted colours have a saturated appear to be watercolors or previous comedian guide illustrations. Evaluating the identical guide cowl on the Kobo Clara Color and this, the Boox hues do look a contact grainier and fewer wealthy. However that’s a small sacrifice for those who want an ereader that may do excess of simply carry your books round.

Display screen dimension: 6.13” | Decision: 300 dpi | Capability: 128GB | Water-proof: Sure, splashes and spills | Heat mild: Sure | Lock display adverts: No | Textual content codecs: PDF, CAJ, DJVU, CBR, CBZ, EPUB, EPUB3, AZW3, MOBI, TXT, DOC, DOCX, FB2, CHM, RTF, HTML, ZIP, PRC, PPT, PPTX

Boox has the widest vary of codecs of any ereader firm I’ve examined — and the Boox Palma is probably the most enjoyable. It’s the identical dimension and form as a smartphone and, in loads of methods, it acts like one, too. The house display is a muted black-and-white model of what you would possibly discover on a regular Android telephone — you’ll be able to even add widgets. Like most Boox gadgets, it may possibly obtain and run apps from the Google Play Retailer and has audio system to play music and movies. The E Ink display (a Carta 1200) renders textual content crisply, however photographs, notably shifting ones, look grainier and rougher than they might on an actual telephone’s LCD or OLED display. That mentioned, the video high quality is one of the best I’ve seen on an E Ink display, due to a software program enchancment Boox calls Tremendous Refresh Expertise.

The newest era of the Palma provides an upgraded processor, a fingerprint unlock button and ships with Android 13, all of which ought to make it much more succesful. However make no mistake, it’s not going to interchange your telephone. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are the one connectivity and the 16MP digital camera is only for making doc scans you’ll be able to convert to PDFs. However the phone-like construct is comfortingly acquainted and the E Ink display is gorgeous to learn. At $280, it’s dearer than a regular ereader — and even some E Ink tablets — but it surely’s a extremely moveable technique to learn Kindle, Kobo, Google Books and different ePubs, whereas additionally dealing with easy video games and apps like a smartphone. If you happen to’re sick of the glow of your handset, the Boox Palma is a captivating different.