Comparing Our Favorite E-Readers
Honorable Mentions
Below, you’ll find a few more e-readers we like but don’t necessarily love as much as our top picks.
Boox Go 7 ($250) and Boox Color Go 7 ($290): Boox is known for its wide range of e-paper tablets, including the Palma 2 recommended above. If you’re looking for something a little larger with a similar Android-based experience, the Go 7 and Go Color 7 are a solid choice. There are page-turner buttons, and it’s a nice square shape that’s easy to hold and use. The Go 7 is black-and-white, but you can get a color screen for $40 more with the Go Color 7. I don’t use color features a ton, so it’s worth saving money if you won’t either, but it’s great that the price difference isn’t steep.
Boox Palma 2 for $316: This is a fun little pocket sized device, and it has a nice upgrade from the older model with fingerprint recognition, a faster CPU, and a newer version of Android. WIRED Review Adrienne So loves using it with the Kindle app, but she wishes it cost less. It’s currently unavailable, and I’m waiting to see if it comes back in stock or is replaced with a new version this year.
Kindle Colorsoft Signature for $280 and Kindle Colorsoft ($250): The Kindle Colorsoft Signature is Amazon’s first Kindle with a color screen. It has a screen with an oxide backplane, which Amazon says delivers better contrast and image quality along with custom-formulated coatings and nitride LEDs for brightness and color accuracy. But the screen is capped at 150 ppi for color images, versus 300 ppi for black-and-white, and the experience of reading is still a little fuzzier when compared to the latest Paperwhite. It takes noticeably longer to process color images, too. It’s missing features that are by now standard on other color e-readers, like page-turn buttons and stylus support. It’s not a bad Kindle, and color does enrich the whole e-reading experience, but we suggest waiting for a discount during an Amazon sale event. Kindle has since launched a cheaper option, the Kindle Colorsoft ($250) that has less storage (only 16 GB, versus 32 GB) and no auto-adjusting light or wireless charging.
Kindle Scribe (2nd Gen, 2024) for $400: The second-generation Kindle Scribe is a great option if you want an e-reader that doubles as a digital notebook, but also want to remain within the Kindle ecosystem. It has a 10.2-inch (300 ppi) paper-like display with features like adjustable warm light and an auto-adjusting front light. The included Premium Pen also has a soft-tipped eraser (mimicking that of a No.2 pencil). With Active Canvas and expandable margins, you can also mark up ebooks and write notes in the side panel. Amazon has announced three more Kindle Scribes are coming out this winter, including color options, so we’ll be testing those once they’re available.
Kindle Scribe (3rd Gen, 2025) for $500: The latest Kindle Scribe arrived in December 2025 with a color version, a new exterior design that does away with the single thicker side, and equal bezels and frames across all sizes. It has a new home page design that makes it easy to access your latest books and notebooks, and a quick-notes page you can also hop into. It also has a new set of AI features that can summarize things for you and even send your notes to an Alexa+-powered speaker so you can ask questions about them, but overall, these features aren’t necessary and just drive up the price. The older Kindle Scribe (2nd Gen) is still my preferred option if you want a Kindle e-reader that doubles as a digital notebook.
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Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for $630: Amazon brought the color screen to the Kindle Scribe late last year, with a redesigned exterior to match the new third-gen Kindle Scribe. The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft works exactly how you’d expect, with a range of colors and tools you can use on the notebooks and while reading your books as well. There are also several AI features, which is part of what makes it so pricey. I think it’s too expensive for not being able to transform into an e-paper laptop like the ReMarkable Paper Pro, but if you really wanted to stick with Kindle and have a colorful digital notebook and e-reader in one device, this is the one to get.
Nook GlowLight 4 Plus for $200: The 4 Plus is the only waterproof Nook in the lineup, and it has the biggest screen at 7.8 inches, along with 32 GB of storage. It also has physical page-turn buttons and a headphone jack for listening to audiobooks (but you can also connect wireless earbuds via Bluetooth). But it was often slower than my Kindle and tended to freeze. While the large library has cheap and even free ebooks, it’s not as good a selection as Kindle Unlimited. The process of getting a book from the library on a Nook is also beyond frustrating. You’ll need to download either Adobe Digital Editions or Android File Transfer before connecting the device to your computer physically and then transferring the files.
Nook 9-inch Lenovo Tablet for $150: If you mainly read cookbooks or other color-intensive materials, and you want a dedicated reader, you might want to consider this affordable tablet from Nook and Lenovo, which has the Nook app built in. As with the tablets mentioned above, you lose the E Ink screen and the distraction-free nature of an e-reader. You can at least turn off notifications while in certain apps, which I recommend doing for the Nook app. It ships with an old version of Android, and it’s not built for heavy work like video or photo editing.
FAQs
Ebooks can be cheap, but as with regular books, the cost can add up if you’re a big reader. You should take advantage of your library card and check out ebooks instantly from the comfort of your home. We have a detailed guide that explains how to get free library books, but the short version is that most libraries distribute books via OverDrive. You can access these books a few ways, through Kindle or directly from OverDrive with a Kobo, or you can download the Libby app. These ebooks are automatically removed from your device and returned to the library when they’re due.
Each e-reader’s own book service varies in quality. Our favorite is Kindle Unlimited for $12 a month, which includes millions of titles, including audiobooks and magazines. Amazon’s Prime Reading also offers a handful of free books every month, which is good to know if you already have a Prime account. You can even lend books to friends and family for a short while (or have them share a book with you). We have a roundup of the Best Ebook Subscription Services here.
What File Formats Do E-Readers Support?
The most widely used format is ePub, which works natively with all the e-readers in this guide except for Kindle—technically. You can still upload ePub files to your Kindle, but you’ll have use the “Send to Kindle” feature (through Amazon, your email, or the Kindle app) to convert it to Amazon’s proprietary format called AZW. (Newer Kindles support AZW3 and KFX, specifically). Other formats that will work with these e-readers include PDF, TXT, HTML, DOC, and DOCX.
Can I Install Apps on an E-Reader?
The Kindle, Kobo, and Nook use proprietary operating systems that don’t allow you to install third-party apps. The Boox, on the other hand, runs Android (mainly Android 11 and newer). So, that means you can use it to download any apps available in the Google Play Store or side-load apps from your computer.
Do You Need an E-Reader? What About a Phone or Tablet?
You don’t have to buy a separate device to read ebooks. Smartphones and tablets are perfect for this purpose. You can use Amazon’s Kindle app to read ebooks (iOS, Android), and even download OverDrive’s Libby app (iOS, Android) for library book access anywhere as well. However, the E Ink screens found in e-readers are just nicer to look at. I also like that these devices are one-trick ponies; there are no notifications to be distracted by or social media feeds to doomscroll through.
If you’d still rather have one smart device you can read on and use for other purposes, take a look at our Best Tablets and Best iPads guides for recommendations.
What About a Digital Notebook?
We’ve tried a few E Ink tablets meant for taking “handwritten” notes that can be organized and searched digitally. E-readers with that capability still prioritize reading. If the Kobo Libra Colour isn’t big enough for your note-taking needs, you might prefer these. Right now, our favorite E Ink tablet is the $629 ReMarkable Paper Pro which lets you take notes with a responsive stylus on a color E Ink screen. However, it’s not meant for reading—you can read PDFs on it, but the experience of getting books on it is far from seamless compared to Kobos and Kindles.
How Does WIRED Test E-Readers?
The most important thing we do when testing e-readers is read on them! We spend hours reading books acquired in a variety of formats, from books purchased directly from each brand’s store, downloaded from local libraries via OverDrive/Libby, or PDFs acquired for free from God knows where.
In the process, we evaluate battery life, brightness, lag, screen responsiveness, and text sharpness. We check for extra tools like annotation, and whether or not the tablet accommodates accessories like a stylus. We also note if the tablet has other features, like waterproofing or access to great exclusive subscription services.
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