Not Just Kindles
With prices starting below the $100 mark, it’s a great time to buy an ebook reader. But before you settle on a single device, you have some decisions to make. As you can see, Amazon’s Kindle line makes up the bulk of our top picks, and for many people will be the perfect choice. But it isn’t the only choice. Here’s what you should consider when shopping.
What Screen Type and How Big?
Basic ebook readers use monochrome, E Ink screens to display text. E Ink looks a lot like paper, and it’s easy on your eyes when reading for long periods. On the least expensive models, it’s not backlit, so you’ll need light to see the text, just as you would with a printed book. But most ebook readers now include edge lighting that lets you see in the dark. With each model, you can vary the intensity of the brightness from barely there to flashlight-bright. On the lowest settings, you can read in the dark while your partner sleeps peacefully next to you.
In all cases, E Ink is much easier to read in bright sunlight, while color touch screens on tablets tend to wash out, and their glossy displays can show distracting reflections.
The industry seems to have settled on 6 inches as the optimal display size for E Ink readers; this is what you’ll find on most of Amazon’s Kindles, for example. There are exceptions, though: Kobo’s Forma is significantly larger, at 8 inches, and Onyx makes E Ink tablets for reading full-sized documents. And if it’s clarity you’re after, you’re in luck: 300 pixels per inch seems to be the new standard among most recent ebook readers (aside from the base model Kindle).
Manufacturers are also improving the quality of these E Ink displays. A few years ago, page refreshes were sluggish, the entire screen flashed black with each page turn, and some early ebook readers had problems with text contrast, which made for difficult reading. That’s all history. The latest readers have crisp, clear text and employ caching schemes that almost never refresh the full page; most of the time, only the letters fade out and back in again. The page refreshes themselves are much faster than before.
Meanwhile, touch screens have come into vogue. On-screen keyboards make it easy to take notes or run searches within the text of your books. Also, maneuvering a massive online bookstore on a device with a touch screen is a lot easier.
If you need to read more than books, tablets with color screens offer a bevy of other benefits. Magazines and comic books look great on larger tablets. Even lower-cost tablets like the Fire 7 can browse the web, stream video from Netflix, Hulu or other sources, play music, and run apps.
The Onyx E Ink tablets combine restful E Ink screens with tablet apps, but they’re still black and white. A few color E Ink readers appeared in theory this year, such as the Onyx Poke 2 Color, but they’ve been in extremely limited supply and we haven’t been able to get them for review.
Will You Read on the Beach?
If you like to read in the bath, by the pool, or on the beach, you might want to consider buying a waterproof ebook reader. You have a few options. The Amazon Kindle Oasis, the latest Kindle Paperwhite, the Kobo Forma, and the Kobo Libra H2O are all rated to withstand submersion in water to some degree. The Kindle Oasis even has page turn buttons so you can easily flip between pages when your hands are wet.
What Kind of Wireless Connection Do You Need?
An always-on cellular radio lets you buy and download books from anywhere, over the air, for free (aside from the cost of the book itself, of course). Most devices offer Wi-Fi as the base level wireless connection—at a much lower cost—with 3G cellular data only available as part of a more-expensive model.
As long as you don’t mind waiting until you’re at home or near a hotspot to shop for new books, Wi-Fi should work for you. A select few may still prefer to pony up for 3G to buy a new book while, say, on a long train trip, or lounging at the beach.
Internal storage capacity is not much of a concern. Every ebook reader you can buy today can store more than 1,000 books, with some offering room for thousands more titles. And if you have more books than that, each of the major vendors offers cloud storage, letting you download books to your device whenever you need them, assuming you’re connected to Wi-Fi hotspot (or anywhere you have a cell signal, if you have a 3G-capable model).
How About the Books?
There’s no single universal ebook format; essentially, when you choose an ebook reader, you’re making a decision up front as to which ecosystem you’ll support.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo all use copy protection on most of their books, which prevents them from being read by other brands’ e-readers. It’s possible to remove the copy protection, but you may also remove features such as formatting and character summaries.
For public library lending, Kobo e-readers let you install the common library app Overdrive as their native store, which is very convenient. Amazon sends you through the library’s Web site to pick books that get pushed to your device; Onyx has you load a specific library app.
Amazon also has the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which lets you borrow a book a month from a selection of over one million titles, but only if you pay $99 a year for the Amazon Prime service. It also gives you unlimited access to Amazon’s Prime Reading library. FreeTime Unlimited Unlimited starts at $2.99 per month, and is great for children—you get a free year of it when you buy the Kindle Kids Edition.
Book selection, size, and pricing varies from store to store. The best way through this thicket of digital underbrush is to spend a little time browsing ebook stores before you commit to a device. You can access Amazon’s, Barnes & Noble’s, and Kobo’s ebook stores online to see which carries most of the books, magazines, and newspapers you want to read.
For more, see How to Get Free (or Cheap) New Ebooks and How to Put Free Ebooks on Your Amazon Kindle. And for an in-depth comparison of supported formats across various ebook readers, check out Wikipedia’s article comparing ebook formats.
What About Ebook Apps?
One saving grace is that many of the major ebook reader vendors have developed an entire ecosystem of apps around their chosen format. For example, you can start reading a book on your Kindle Paperwhite at home; then, while waiting in line at the grocery store, you can fire up your iPhone’s Kindle app and pick up exactly where you left off in the same book, but on your phone.
The size of the app ecosystem varies by format. The Apple iPad and iPhone both run iBooks, a flexible app that looks great but doesn’t have quite the same book selection as Amazon for digital books. Amazon also makes iPad apps, along with versions for iPhone, Android, and other devices; in addition, it has a Cloud Reader that works on the iPad with a direct link to the Kindle Store. Several vendors make PC and Mac apps.
In short, if you plan to read digital books on multiple gadgets, be sure to read our product reviews, and note each manufacturer’s list of supported devices.
How Much Should You Spend on an eReader?
This is one place where there’s nothing but good news: Prices for ebook readers have fallen considerably across the board. You’ve got plenty of good options for less than $200.
Onyx’s E Ink tablets cost considerably more than other ebook readers, but they’re also much more powerful, letting you run multiple reading apps, annotate PDFs and read large-format documents on big screens. We see these as primarily for academics, lawyers, people who read medical or scientific journals, and others who read for work or school as well as for fun.
With that in mind, these are our favorite dedicated ebook readers you can buy today. If you’re getting a Paperwhite, check out our 13 Paperwhite Tips Every Reader Needs to Know. And if you’d rather do your reading on a bigger or color screen, head over to our top tablet picks.
