Which e-reader should you buy?
If you’ve never used an ebook reader before, you may not realize that their screens are dramatically different from computer, phone, and tablet screens. These are reflective screens—like ink on paper, you read them by light reflected off their surface, rather than light shining in from behind like those other screens. These screens have some huge advantages: They use very little power, and they’re extremely readable in bright light. But they’re relatively low resolution and can only display black, white, and shades of gray, so they’re inappropriate for much more than text on a page. If you’ve ever tried to read a book while sitting in the sun at the pool, you can see why this sort of display is a perfect match for this category.
At night, the inverse applies. An e-reader, turned down all the way, is much darker than an iPad’s backlight at the lowest setting. Which means it’s much less likely to disturb your partner while they are sleeping and you are reading.
Whether dark or light or in between, I prefer reading on these devices. They never push notifications at me, I’m never tempted to switch over to Twitter or email, and the static black-and-white calm of words on a page evokes the best things about reading a paper book or newspaper.
If you’re thinking of buying a e-reader, which model is the right one to choose? I’ve reviewed many of them, and here’s the verdict.
Compare for yourself
Amazon helpfully provides a page where you can compare Kindle models, and Kobo does the same for its e-readers. Every Kindle and Kobo features an E Ink screen, though they vary from six to eight inches diagonally. All e-readers these days offer 300 ppi displays, which means that the type on the pages is basically as sharp as ink on a page. Some offer color, which let you see color photos and read comics, but tend to be a little worse for reading plain text.
Because E Ink displays are reflective, this means that they rely on ambient light to make them readable. The first e-readers required that you turn on a light or clip on a separate book light in order to read in bad lighting. But these days, e-readers come with their own internal lighting that can compensate in dim or dark rooms.
E-readers charge via an included USB-C cable. They all offer battery life far beyond what you’ll get on a tablet or smartphone. But pretty much any e-reader will go at least a week without needing a charge, especially if you’re careful to put it in Airplane Mode when you’re not actively loading data.
While Kobo e-readers generally have one price, many Kindle models offer two different options that increase the price. For $20, you can get your Kindle without “Special Offers,” which is Amazon’s term for advertisements on the sleep screen and home screen of the devices. I think this is kind of gross, but if you’re looking for a bargain, you can save money. The good news is, if you buy a Kindle at the base price, you can still turn off Special Offers at any time by paying $20 to Amazon.
The right choice for most readers
The best e-reader choice today is probably the $140 ($160 without ads) Kindle Paperwhite. It’s a solid reader with a high-resolution screen and good backlighting. It’s good looking, with a flat front and grippy back that’s comfortable to hold. And if you enjoy reading poolside or in the bath, you’ll be happy to know that it’s waterproof.
Don’t get the budget Kindle
The cheapest Kindle, the $109 model, is a good choice if you just want the cheapest e-reader out there for an occasional read when you’re at the beach. But it’s not waterproof and the screen itself is recessed, so lint and crumbs can get in the cracks between it and the bezel. You’d be better off buying a used Paperwhite or Kobo.
A nice upgrade
If you’re looking for an upgrade, I recommend the $269 Kobo Sage, which features a big eight-inch screen and page-turn buttons. (And yes, if you’ve never bought a Kobo before, they’ve got their own store where you can buy books, and Kobos are well integrated with Overdrive e-books from your local public library.)
The sad truth about color
Amazon Kindle and Rakuten Kobo, the two major players in this category, recently released color versions of their e-readers. The bad news is, they’re not worth the money for most people.
There are some contexts where color really adds to the Kindle experience. Obviously, if you’ve got the e-reader’s home screen set to display book cover thumbnails, they’ll all pop out in color. (Congratulations, book publisher art departments, those tricks you use to draw people’s eyes at airport bookstores will work on e-readers now too!) I’ve seen a lot of coverage that praises how nice it is to see a color book cover when you turn off your e-reader, but when you turn off the device, its backlight turns off. Without the backlight, the color is barely visible except in very bright light. It’s not a reason to spend more money on a color screen.
Okay, you can highlight text in different colors, which is fun but probably of limited utility. If you read a book with color images, they’ll be in color, and that’s great—I would’ve loved that back when I read my daily newspaper via Kindle, but Amazon killed that feature a long time ago.
So what we’re left with, really, is comics. And Amazon has a huge advantage here, having purchased Comixology, which helped pioneer comic reading on smartphones with Guided View, which maps the sequential narrative of comic pages so you can read the page a panel at a time. This is vitally important on devices with smaller screens, because no iPhone—and none of these tiny e-readers—has a big enough screen to make an entire comic page legible when it’s fit into view. Guided View makes reading comics on the Kindle Colorsoft possible, if awkward.
But here’s the dealbreaker: Color E Ink screens add a light texture to the entire background of the display, which decreases the contrast when you’re reading plain text. If you’re buying an e-reader to read books, a few dollops of color might be novel—but it’s not worth the trade-off of making the overall reading experience worse. Save your money and buy a cheaper e-reader.
The bottom line
For most people, the Kindle Paperwhite is the right Kindle to buy. If you want to splurge, the Kobo Sage is bigger and has physical page-turn buttons. As for color e-readers, hold off for now unless you really, really, really want a color reader. If that’s the case, the Kindle Colorsoft is the best choice.
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.