The Best E-Readers for Every Kind of Book Lover

By Tim Barribeau

Whether you read a book a month or plow through three in a week, an ebook reader is a handy companion. The devices can store thousands of books, including library loans. Their battery life is measured in weeks, not days. They’re as easy to read in bright sunlight as they are in bed at 2 a.m. And since most models are now water resistant, they’ll survive a trip to the beach too.

Choosing the best ebook reader isn’t really a matter of weighing the features, because most of them are pretty decent. The more pressing question is Amazon or Kobo? They’re essentially the only players left in the game if you want decent bookstore integration and a significant level of technical support. (Barnes & Noble’s Nook is miles behind in functionality.)

Our top choice, the Amazon Kindle Kids (yes, even for adult readers), is the ideal combination of price, ecosystem, size and ease of use. But if Amazon’s not for you, we have recommendations for Kobo and other platforms too.

If you’d like to read how we vetted and tested these e-readers, scroll down for all the details.

Best overall e-reader

buy side top pick

Amazon

Kindle Kids (2022)

$120 at Amazon

The Kindle Kids has the best blend of features and price, no matter your age. It’s comfortable to read on, offers powerful accessibility features and has a stellar warranty.

Pros

• Easy to use, easy to read

• Enormous ecosystem of books

• No ads

• Built-in screen reader

• Comes with a free case

• 16GB of storage

Cons 

• No light temperature adjustment

• No physical page-turn buttons

• Not water resistant

It might seem surprising to choose a children’s device from Amazon’s broad Kindle e-reader lineup, but if you want to read within the Amazon ecosystem, the Kindle Kids offers a bevy of useful features at a reasonable price. It has a 6-inch screen that’s bright, sharp and easy to read on, and it uses USB-C for charging, which is more future proof than the older Micro-USB that’s still found on a couple of models we looked at.

The reason to choose the kids’ edition over the adult version is that while it costs about $20 more than the basic Kindle, it gives you way more than $20 worth of extras. For one thing, to turn off ads on the standard Kindle’s lock screen, you pay an extra $20, wiping out the savings already. The kids’ Kindle has no ads out of the box and a better warranty than the standard model: a two years “worry-free” guarantee compared with the adult version’s one-year “limited” warranty.

The big draw of any Kindle is access to what is arguably the largest existing ebook platform in the world. Plus, Amazon has recently widened support for the common .epub file format, so you can add books bought on other platforms to a Kindle. You can also subscribe to the Kindle Unlimited program, which gives you all the books you can read for a flat fee.

To check out ebooks from libraries to read on the Kindle, you use the Libby app on your smartphone. The app can accept multiple library cards from multiple libraries, an advantage over devices sold by main competitor Kobo. The checkout process is slightly clumsy, though—from the phone app you “send” the book to your Kindle, whereas with Kobo, the process all happens on the device itself.

Of the two platforms, Amazon has substantially better accessibility tools. You can easily resize the text, a feature Brea Grant, of the “Reading Glasses” podcast, says helps her prevent headaches while reading. There’s also a built-in screen reader, which allows you to navigate the Kindle via gestures and audio cues as well as have the book read aloud to you. In our testing, it had a tendency to be finicky, and we found the controls were poorly explained for certain key features (like starting and stopping reading a book). Still, the capability represents a significant advantage over Kobo devices, which lack screen reading altogether.

The downsides of the Kindle Kids are fairly minor. There are no physical page-turn buttons, so you’re reliant on tapping and swiping. Some people prefer the tactile feel of interacting with buttons. The 6-inch screen can feel small compared to larger models; if you prefer a bigger screen and the Kindle ecosystem, check out the Kindle Paperwhite Kids. And there are some people who have feelings about Amazon and may be reluctant to throw their lot in with them.

With all of the Amazon and Kobo devices we tested, you can bounce easily back and forth between multiple devices and the corresponding smartphone/tablet app. So if you’re reading a book on your e-reader in bed, you can pick up where you left off on your phone during your morning commute.

Best larger-screen Kindle

Amazon

Kindle Paperwhite Kids

$160 at Amazon

If you prefer an e-reader with a larger screen, find waterproofing necessary or like an adjustable color temperature, the Kindle Paperwhite Kids is an excellent choice.

The Kindle Paperwhite Kids offers all the benefits of the Kindle Kids, but in a slightly nicer package. If you like a reader with a bigger screen, we have no hesitation in recommending it. Even though the display is only 0.8-inches larger measured diagonally, it looks much bigger without the reader’s overall footprint feeling oppressively large. The screen is also flush with the bezels, rather than slightly recessed. 

Additional benefits of the Kindle Paperwhite Kids include IPX8 waterproofing to survive immersion in up to a meter of water, and the ability to switch between cooler and warmer light sources, which some experts believe affect sleep quality (more on that below). But you only get 8GB of storage unless you pay $10 to double it, compared to the Kindle Kids’ default 16GB.

Best e-reader if you prefer the Kobo platform

Rakuten

Kobo Libra 2

$190 at Kobo Books

The Libra 2 provides the most useful size and array of features within the lineup of Kobo devices. It has handy physical buttons for moving through pages and more storage than almost any other e-reader we tested.

Pros

• Comfortable to hold

• Has physical buttons in addition to the touch screen

• No ads

• Water resistant

• 32GB of storage

Cons 

• No screen reader

• Cover sold separately

Currently, the most significant alternative to Amazon is Kobo. The brand is owned by the megacorporation Rakuten and has a partnership with Walmart. The two brands have similarly sized ebook catalogs—which is to say countless millions. Amazon tends to offer more exclusives, (though Kobo has them too) and more authors self-publish on Amazon due to its ubiquity as a platform. Generally, if you can think of a book, both companies will have it.

For most people, the sweet spot among the Kobo models is the 7-inch Kobo Libra 2. It’s comfortable to hold and easy to hit the touch-screen zones for swiping through pages. It also has physical page-turn buttons along one side, an advantage over the Kindle for people who prefer the physical feeling of a click. The device also has a slight lip along the edges that, combined with a subtle texture on the back, make it a little more grippy and thus more comfortable to hold during extended reading sessions or by those with limited grip strength or fine motor skills. However, that’s where its accessibility advantage ends. Unlike with the Kindle, while the Kobo can play audiobooks, there is no screen reader capability. 

The Kobo reader handles library integration using the OverDrive app (the predecessor to Libby), which allows you to check out books directly on the device. That makes for a smoother experience to borrow and return books, but at the cost of not being able to use multiple library cards. 

With 32GB of built-in storage, the Libra 2’s got space to spare. Like the Kindle Kids Edition, it charges with USB-C, has no ads, is water resistant and uses yellow backlights for late-night browsing.

So let’s talk for a minute about warm vs. cool—or yellow vs. blue—lights. Experts maintain that light color is important in regulating our sleep cycle—blue light is one of the ways our bodies understand that it’s daytime, because sunlight is actually fairly blue. By shifting the color of the lights on your reader from a cool blue to a warm yellow/orange at night, the theory is that you can help prevent your body from thinking it’s still the middle of the day. 

Most of the current generation of ebook readers advertise some manner of adjustable lighting for the screen. Kobo claims its adjustable lighting “lets you read well into the night, without affecting your sleep.” Amazon is more measured, calling its light shift “easy on the eyes.” The experts we spoke to pointed out that having any light shining in your face at night is likely to be disruptive to sleep, but if you’re a devoted in-bed reader, a warmer (yellower) light is the way to go.

Best e-reader if you’re big on taking notes

Onyx

Boox Note Air2 Plus

$480 at Amazon

The enormous screen, good note-taking experience and full Android integration make this a great tool for scribblers, annotaters and underliners—but it has a steep learning curve.

Pros

• Big screen

• Included stylus and case

• Gives you access to the Kindle, Kobo and Libby platforms

• Great PDF reading and annotating experience

• Tons of customization

Cons 

• Difficult to learn to use

• High price

Recently, there has been a proliferation of e-ink devices based around a 10-inch screen. They’re aimed at readers who like to take notes in the margins, brainstorm on the page and annotate documents. Of the ones we examined, the Onyx Boox Note Air2 Plus is the most compelling, though it’s still flawed.

The Air2 Plus does a lot of things well. It’s got an enormous screen and comes with a stylus for writing and drawing (a cover is included too). Marking up books, PDFs or other documents with the stylus is a gratifyingly responsive process: It’s easy to make notes, circle key facts and highlight lines of text. The Air2 Plus can also run optical character recognition on PDFs to make them searchable. It has some nice quality-of-life features, like the ability to read each page in chunks, which is great for working your way through comics or particularly dense text. There is a built-in screen reader for text and books, with quite a few options for how it reads text—a unique feature in this category of larger devices.

You get 64GB of built-in storage, which matters more with this device than with smaller ones, because chances are you’re going to be loading large PDFs or other image-heavy formats like comics, which take up a lot more space.

The Air2 Plus is built on Android, which gives you access to extra functionality. As with a smartphone, you can install the Kindle, Kobo and Libby apps on the Air2 Plus and use them to read any books on those platforms—a flexibility you won’t see elsewhere. It’s also deeply customizable, with more options than any other device we tested. Just for starters, you can choose what appears as your home page when you start it up, organize your book titles in more ways than on other devices and install art apps to use the tablet for drawing.

Unfortunately, with that customizability comes a steep learning curve. Features are often laid out unintuitively, and both the interface and manuals are difficult to follow. Also, at $480, it’s far pricier than our top two picks. Keep in mind that Onyx is a company with a relatively small footprint in the U.S., which, if you have tech issues or a nonfunctional device, may not feel as reassuring as purchasing a product from Kobo or Amazon.

Other e-readers you should know about

We skipped the 6-inch Kobo Nia due to aging designs and low resolution screen.

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is very similar to the standard Paperwhites. For a $30 premium over the kids’ version (or the no-ads adults version), it gets you the advantage of Qi wireless charging (although it’s hard to align the device properly), 32GB of storage (which isn’t really needed most of the time) and auto-adjusting lights (which are marginally useful at best because it’s so easy to adjust the backlight manually). We think the Paperwhite Kids has more features that are real-world useful, but the Paperwhite SE is a good choice if those extras are important to you.

Conversely, the Kindle Oasis is one of the few devices we tested that we actively disliked. It has a relatively high $250 price tag thanks to its metal chassis, but despite that, it lags behind in every way that matters. Most notably, it’s uncomfortable to hold—it’s heavier than anything else of a similar size and packs much of its mass into a large rectangular bulge that runs along its right rear side, making it awkward to hold. And since it’s metal, it gets slippery—good thing it’s water resistant, because it’s easy to imagine it falling into the bath. Plus, for a premium device, it has the decidedly un-premium factors of only 8GB of storage and the soon-to-be-archaic Micro-USB charging.

The Kobo Sage is the 8-inch companion to the Kobo Libra 2 and is very similar in most ways that matter. Its screen is 1 inch larger, it adds support for Kobo’s stylus for handwriting/annotation and it costs around $80 more. But while reading with both, we found the smaller Libra 2 was more comfortable; on the larger device we often found it difficult to reach the correct area of the screen to swipe to the next page. It may suit you better if you have large hands, but we found the smaller option more appealing.

Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is the company’s first large-screen, stylus-enabled reader, but it has serious limitations. You can’t highlight or mark up ebooks directly on the page; rather, you have to rely on digital sticky notes. It doesn’t support drawing or writing on PDFs that have been loaded directly from a computer. Instead, they must be sent through the company’s Send to Kindle service. The notebook app only has writing and highlighting modes without any support for different “ink” styles or line weights. And there’s no optical character recognition support, meaning your handwritten notes can’t be converted to text. Many of these issues can be fixed through software updates, and we hope they are, but in the meantime, the Scribe isn’t worth it unless you simply want a huge Kindle. 

The Kobo Elipsa is Kobo’s 10-inch note taker, and unfortunately it feels like a small ebook reader scaled up rather than something designed for this size natively. The stylus is heavy and requires a case to stay in place, unlike the magnetic attachments of the other large e-ink devices. 

The reMarkable 2 is a stunning, 10-inch note taking device that’s great to write on, but it let us down by lacking some important features. It completely lacks accessibility tools, has only 8GB of storage (which is an issue here with large PDFs, and even more so without the advantage of cloud storage), and has no lighting. At all. That may be great for battery life, but it’s a huge issue if you’re working under anything other than bright light. Plus, the pricing structure is baroque: At $300 for the base model, it seems on the affordable end, but that’s without a stylus, which is crucial for using the device to take notes. The stylus is $80 for the basic version, or $130 for one where you can use the back end to erase. Case prices start at $80. But most notably, many features are locked behind an $8/month subscription—including important ones like handwriting conversion and compatibility with cloud services. 

How we picked

Trust us

I’ve been writing product reviews for decades, with bylines in Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, PopPhoto and others. I’m also a lifelong voracious reader (I just passed my 50th book for the year as I filed this draft in July) and have been using ebook readers since I picked up a HanLin V3 circa 2009. For this review, I interviewed Brea Grant of the book-culture podcast “Reading Glasses” and Rajkumar Dasgupta, M.D. and Renske Lok, Ph.D., both sleep specialists, about the effects of blue lights and gadgets on your sleep cycle.

We tested

What makes a good e-reader is less about hardware specs and more about ecosystems and user interfaces. Pretty much every e-ink-based ebook reader on the market packs a somewhat similar set of benefits: weekslong battery life, enough storage for thousands of ebooks, audiobook compatibility, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and a connection to a major digital storefront. So then, what matters when it comes to choosing a good one?

• Comfort:

  If you’re going nose deep into a thriller for hours at a time, you want a device that’s going to be comfortable to hold as you shift your grip and reading position. This also means not having a reader that’s so big as to be clunky, or so small as to be difficult to read the screen.

• User interface and experience:

  How easy are they to navigate? Is it difficult to load up new books? Does it integrate well with external services like library networks?

• Accessibility:

  What does the device have in the way of accessibility options?

• Extras and bonuses:

  Can you use a stylus with it? Will it intelligently adapt to local lighting conditions? What sort of charging system does it use? Is it waterproof?

To test these devices, we bounced between novels and read across multiple platforms, going from ebook reader to app to desktop (where available). We downloaded public domain titles and borrowed library books. We tried reading in direct sunlight (which we don’t recommend) and in pitch dark (which we also don’t recommend) and in various lighting conditions in between. And for the 10-inch e-ink devices, we loaded them up with large PDFs to see how they would handle hefty documents and facilitate annotation.

Our expert sources

• Brea Grant of the book culture podcast “

  Reading Glasses

  ”

• Renske Lok, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at Zeitzer Circadian Research Lab at Stanford University

• Rajkumar Dasgupta, M.D., assistant professor of Clinical Medicine at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

—Additional reporting by Nick Guy