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The best ereaders can pack an entire bookcase into a device that fits in your pocket. You might also prefer reading on one of these devices than reading on a phone or tablet thanks to the E Ink screen and paper-like display that’s easier on your eyes than an LCD or OLED screen. Plus, the text displays so crisply on ereaders, it almost makes printed pages look fuzzy by comparison. You can even get ereaders with speakers, color screens, stylus support and more. We’ve spent the past few years testing models and new releases from all the major brands — Kobo, Kindle, Boox and others — to help you pick the best ereader for you.
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The best ebook readers for 2025
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Best ereader overall Kobo Clara Colour Screen size: 6” | Display type: Black/white and color E Ink | Resolution: 300 dpi black & white, 150 dpi color | Capacity: 16GB| Battery life: Up to 42 days (30 min. daily, 30% brightness, Wi-Fi/BT off) | Waterproof rating: IPX8 (submergible to 6 feet for 60 minutes) | Warm light: Yes | Lock screen ads: No | Text formats: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR Read our full Kobo Clara Colour review Our previous pick for this category, the Kobo Clara 2E was an excellent ereader with a crisp display, a warm glow and responsive, intuitive touch controls all housed in a waterproof design that felt premium. When Rakuten announced the Clara would be updated, I worried we’d see Kobo device with superfluous revamping to justify an inflated price. Thankfully, that’s not the case. The Kobo Clara Colour not only adds color and a faster processor, it’s just $10 more than the previous generation. As the name suggests, this ereader adds color to the page, lending a little vibrance to book covers, tables and graphs, and even the panels of graphic novels. The technology comes from E Ink, in the form of the Kaleido 3 module that incorporates a color filter layer on top of the standard black and white microcapsule layer. That results in two different resolutions on one screen: 150 dpi for color and 300 dpi for text. Full-color pages remind me of comic book art from the ‘60s, muted but saturated. Color makes book covers more enticing and adds a little variety to headings, and tables in some non-fiction books. It’s certainly not a necessary feature, but it adds vibrance and it’s fun. There is a slight difference in clarity between the color and non-color version of the Clara. If you look closely, you can see a bit of noise on the white parts of the page. That's due to the added color filter layer. It's not distracting and only something I noticed when comparing the two generations side-by-side. but if absolute clarity is your primary goal, you may be better off with a non-color ereader. Probably the more useful upgrade here is the dual 2GHz processor, a bump from the Clara 2E’s 1GHz CPU. There’s a noticeable improvement in the speed of the page turns and navigating from the menu to the page and back again is nearly instantaneous. As with the 2E, the Colour rarely mistakes a swipe for a tap or a page turn gesture for a menu request. The adjustable warm front light is still here (it’s actually a little warmer on the Colour) and makes reading at night easy on the eyes. The operating system is the same, with intuitive access to the Kobo store, your personal books and titles from your local library via Overdrive. You can customize your reading experience with options for font, font size, line spacing, margins and so on. Kobos don’t have a way to save a group of display settings like the Kindle does, so I’d love to see that added with future OS upgrades. But for now, the customizations are just enough to get your book how you want it to look. The Colour is nearly identical in shape and size, and has the same premium feel as the 2E, though the plastic has a grainier finish. The bezels are noticeably less flush with the screen now, though that didn’t alter my reading enjoyment. Now that it costs $150, the Kobo Clara Colour is $40 more than the base model Kindle. But the waterproof build, warm front light, responsive controls and lack of ads (which cost $20 to get rid of on Amazon's device) make it worth it. And, in great news for the right to repair crowd, it’s even designed to be user-repaired once it falls outside of warranty through a partnership with iFixit. Rakuten still makes the Kobo Clara BW, which is nearly identical to our previous "best overall" pick. It doesn't suffer from the slight clarity loss that the color overlay presents, but it also still has the older processor. Of course, if you already own a mountain of Kindle books, you may want to stick with Amazon's system. In that case, the best Kindle is Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite. It costs $160 and was recently updated with a more powerful processor and new E Ink tech that makes it exceptionally speedy while displaying high-contrast text. The warm light is great and the flush front screen feels premium. One more consideration, now that Amazon now has its own color model too, is the Colorsoft, but at $280, it’s significantly more expensive than the Clara Colour and even the Paperwhite Signature Edition. Pros Customizable settings
Even more responsive touch controls
Color is pleasant and text is crisp Cons Kobo's store not as vast as Kindle's. $150 at Rakuten Kobo
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Best budget ereader Amazon Kindle (2024) Screen size: 6” | Display type: Black/white E Ink | Resolution: 300dpi | Capacity: 16GB | Battery life: 6 weeks | Waterproof rating: None | Warm light: No | Lock screen ads: Yes | Text formats: Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion If you just want to read books, and have no need for the perks that the fancier ereaders bring (color, waterproof rating, warm light, etc), then the base model Kindle is for you. The six-inch, non-flush display is housed in a textured plastic that feels less premium than, say, the Paperwhite or even the two Kobos on our list, but still feels plenty durable. And it’s small enough to fit in a coat or back pocket making it very travel-friendly. It’s unfortunate that the 2024 model is $10 more than the 2022 model when not much has changed, but it's still the cheapest ereader from any of the major manufacturers. And if we know one thing about Amazon, it’s that the company loves a good sale, so you’ll likely find it on discount if you can hold out for Prime Day or Black Friday deals. The reader is a no-frills gateway to the best of what the Kindle ecosystem has to offer, including Kindle Exclusive titles, with books by established authors as well as newer, self-published writers; Kindle Unlimited offers the widest selection of any subscription-based reading service out there; and Audible Originals is made up of narrated titles and podcasts you can only hear through a Kindle device or Amazon-owned app. If you like to switch between audiobooks and ebooks, Kindle is the way to go. When you buy both iterations of a title, you not only get a discount, but the Whispersync feature lines up where you are in the e-printed version with the narration, too. Say you listen for an hour and then want to read – the synchronization lets you pick up on-screen where you left off audibly. (Though we should point out that you can’t listen and read simultaneously on the same device.) In tests, the feature was fairly accurate, getting me close enough on the page or in the audio to figure out my spot. Page turns are quicker on the new model but I’m disappointed that there’s still no way to adjust the zones and responses to touchscreen gestures, like there is on both Kobo and Boox devices. Kindles all have a very narrow strip on the left for going back a page and I’m constantly missing it and going forward instead. Though swipes generally work well. Probably the most noticeable missing feature is the 6-inch screen's lack of warm light. Compared to any ereader with that option, the screen on the standard Kindle appears harsh and bluish, but it’s still far easier on your eyes than a phone or tablet screen. There’s plenty of customization for the font, size and margins, too. You can even save your settings as a “theme,” something not offered by other devices. I created one with larger text and wider line spacing called “tired eyes.” Some people won’t be bothered by the lock screen ads that come standard on this Kindle (unless you pay $20 to remove them). They’re fairly innocuous, mostly promoting Kindle book deals or specific titles (it’s not like you’ll see promos for TVs or robotic pool cleaners). Personally, I like being able to set the sleep screen to the book cover of what I’m currently reading, but it’s easy to get over that if all you want is a more convenient way to consume books at the lowest price. Pros The most affordable ereader
Compact and durable build is highly portable
Grants access to Kindle’s vast ebook catalog plus library books
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