Best E-Reader for 2025: Ditch Those Paper Books for Good

The entry-level Kindle, which Amazon simply calls the Kindle, weighs only 158 grams and is equipped with a 6-inch E Ink display with a pixel density 300 pixels per inch. It's the smallest and lightest Kindle in the line. The specs are similar to the previous Kindle, but you now get slightly faster page turns, a higher contrast ratio and a front light that's 25% brighter at its max setting -- Amazon says the light is now as bright as the Paperwhite's. Ever since Amazon upgraded it with a sharper display and built-in light, it's sort of become a Paperwhite Mini. It's missing a few features like waterproofing, but it costs significantly less than the real Paperwhite. That said, at $110, this new model, which has 16GB of storage, costs $10 more than the previous-generation Kindle, so the price is creeping up a bit.

The Kindle Colorsoft is Amazon's first ever color Kindle, which brings book covers, graphic novels and comic books more to life than a monochrome E Ink display and allows you to highlight text in different color options. The Colorsoft uses the same oxide backplane with custom waveforms as the new Paperwhite (2024). Amazon says the custom display includes a new light-guide with nitride LEDs that, when combined with custom algorithms, enhances color and increases brightness. The E Ink display (it uses E Ink's Kaleido color filter) is 300 ppi for black and white and 150 ppi for color.

In all other respects the Kindle Colorsoft is similar to the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, though its battery life is rated for up to eight weeks instead of three months. In fact, the Colorsoft only comes in a Signature Edition with 32GB of storage. Priced at $280 (£270), it is fully waterproof and has wireless charging. 

By comparison, the Kobo Libra Colour, which also has a 7-inch screen, costs $220 and is compatible with Kobo's Stylus 2 (available separately for $70). While the Kobo costs less, I do think Amazon's color e-reader offers slightly more vibrant color, as well as slightly better overall performance.

Editors' note: Some are users reporting that there's an issue with yellow tinging at the bottom of the Kindle Colorsoft's display. Amazon says it's aware of the issue and has paused shipments of the Colorsoft as it works on a fix. We didn't experience this issue with our review unit. As soon as we get any information on a fix, we'll update this review.

A handful of competing stylus-equipped touchscreen E Ink e-readers that double as digital notepads are available from other companies, including Kobo and ReMarkable. The Kindle Scribe is the only front-lit, 10.2-inch e-reader with a high-resolution, 300 ppi E Ink display.

The Scribe's size and weight make it more of a burden to carry around, especially when you consider the smaller baseline Kindle can fit into a coat pocket. In all, the Scribe strikes a deft balance between a large-format e-reader and an E Ink note-taking tablet. Folks will probably have some quibbles about the Scribe's high price and the robustness of its markup and note-taking capabilities, although Amazon continues to improve its functionality and feature set with firmware upgrades.

Kobo makes a couple of color e-readers. The smaller Clara Colour has a 6-inch screen and costs $150, while the larger Libra Colour ($230) has a 7-inch screen and is compatible with Kobo's Stylus 2 (available separately for $70), which allows you to store handwritten notes on the device. The larger screen makes more sense for color, especially if you're viewing graphic novels or comic books (even a 7-inch screen is a little small for reading those types of content). You can also highlight text in different color options like you can with the Kindle Colorsoft.

The Libra Colour uses E Ink Kaleido 3 display technology (300 ppi black and white/150 ppi color) and like the Kindle Colorsoft, it comes with 32GB of storage and is fully waterproof. While I think the color is a tad more vibrant on the Kindle Colorsoft, the Libra Colour has physical page turn buttons, which some people really appreciate. The overall footprint of the Libra Colour is a little larger than the Kindle Colorsoft, but for those who haven't bought into Amazon's ecosystem and are looking for a color e-reader alternative, the Libra Colour is a good choice.

The Kobo Clara BW is the slightly upgraded version of the earlier Kobo Clara 2E, which was equipped with E Ink's previous-gen Carta 1200 display. Priced at an affordable $140, it's equipped with a 6-inch E Ink Carta 1300 touchscreen with a 1,448x1,072-pixel resolution (300 ppi), is powered by a 1GHz processor and comes with 16GB of storage. It's also fully waterproof with an IPX8 rating, which means it can be fully submerged in up to 2 meters of water for up to 60 minutes. With the waterproofing, this feels like an enhanced version of Amazon's entry-level Kindle, which is not fully waterproof, although the Paperwhite is.

I used Kobo's original jumbo e-reader, the 10.3-inch Elipsa, and now Kobo has a new, slightly upgraded version of that model called the Elipsa 2E. The previous model came with a cover and stylus as part of an Elipsa Pack (you can still buy it for $350), but now you get the new Stylus 2 and have to buy a cover separately.

The screen is pretty sharp and easy to read with an E Ink Carta 1200 touchscreen with a density of 227 ppi and a dark mode. The Scribe has a sharper 300 ppi screen.

You get Kobo's upgraded ComfortLight Pro with adjustable brightness and color temperature and a 2GHz (up from 1.8GHz) quad-core processor with 32GB of storage. Even with the slight speed boost, an E Ink device like this still feels relatively sluggish compared to an iPad (using an Apple Pencil). The performance is decent enough and battery life remains a big strong point for E Ink devices. Like other e-readers, the Elipsa's battery life is rated in weeks rather than hours. The Elipsa supports 15 file formats natively (EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ and CBR). 

It weighs in at 13.5 ounces, plus the cover (if you purchase it) adds additional weight, making this a pretty heavy e-reader. You can use the case to prop up the e-reader so you don't have to hold it while reading, taking notes or reviewing and marking up documents. Big e-readers aren't for everybody, but if you like to see a lot of words on a page or bump up the font size, this Kobo e-reader is an appealing option. They're also good for looking at PDF files.