The best ereaders in 2024, from Kindle to Kobo

The paperwhite has had a big upgrade for only a modest price increase. The screen size has shot up from 6in to 6.8in, with the same 300ppi resolution as the (now discontinued) Kindle oasis. The design is elegant, with the screen flush to the frame (the basic Kindle display is recessed behind the frame). You can save £10 by opting for a version with ads: these only appear on the lock screen and you can get rid of them any time by paying the extra £10.

The front light has also been improved recently, to make it subtler and adjustable in terms of warmth as well as brightness. The paperwhite is waterproof – it’s able to withstand submersion in 2m of water for up to an hour.

The paperwhite is the best balance of advanced features and reasonable price of any Kindle, or any other ebook reader. Unlike other Kindles, this one uses a newer type of e-ink, which offers a faster page turn and smoother transitions.

We used to call this the basic Kindle. It’s still the cheapest but it’s far from basic now. In its latest manifestation, it has gained the front light feature of the other models and upgraded the screen to the same 300ppi as on the priciest Kindle. It’s also the lightest Kindle, thanks to its smaller display size (6in), making it the best for portability.

It lacks the flush-front look of other Kindles, meaning the screen sits further back, but that and the lack of waterproofing are the only design compromises. One other interesting nugget: it has more storage (16GB) compared with pricier Kindles. That’s more than enough, unless you’re going to use it for a lot of audiobooks.

Amazon has two Kindles designed for children: this one and the Kindle paperwhite kids (£159.99, Amazon.co.uk). The ereaders themselves are identical to the Kindle and paperwhite equivalents but they come with a protective cover and a two-year guarantee. Best of all, each one includes a year’s subscription to Kids+, which is designed for children aged 3-12 and offers access to more than 1,000 titles, plus more than 100 audiobooks. Titles include The Chronicles of Narnia, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Harry Potter. After the year is up, the subscription costs £4.99 a month. It’s designed to promote reading – there are no apps, games or videos here. Learning extras include a font called OpenDyslexic, which some readers prefer and WordWise tools to help with tricky words. Covers include Space Whale, Ocean Explorer and Unicorn Valley, so you can choose a design that best matches your child’s interests.

Another difference between books and ebooks is you can’t scribble notes in the margins of e-paper. Well, now you can. The large-screen scribe comes with a stylus, so you can create hand-written sticky notes that sit in the margins until you expand them. The scribe collects your notes together in one place, which is handy. However, not all books can be written on, at least, not yet.

The screen is designed to be slightly rougher, so it feels more like pen on paper, too. The supplied pen snaps magnetically to the side of the scribe, though some cases have stylus holders, which may be more secure. You can also upgrade to a better pen with a button that switches the stylus to work as an eraser, too.

For reading, the big display means you can squeeze more words into a page, resulting in fewer page turns (or you can opt for bigger text). Graphic novels look especially good on this size screen, though they’re still monochrome, of course. This also has the longest battery life of any Kindle: Amazon says it’s months rather than weeks, which seems about right from our testing. The light sensors can adjust screen brightness automatically, too.

This is arguably the first mainstream ereader with a colour screen. The shades are subtle and muted, like pastels rather than full-throated colours, but they make a big difference, especially in graphic novels or cookery books, for instance.

The display is the same size as the entry-level Kindle (6in), so while it’s not expansive, it helps keep the Clara colour light and pocketable. Like the Kindle paperwhite, it is waterproof, though it lacks that ereader’s slick flush-front design. Kobo’s ereaders are easy to use and come with a feature called OverDrive, which enables you to borrow ebooks from selected libraries.

The Kobo Libra colour has an attractive 7in display and, unlike the smaller Kobo Clara colour, the Libra supports input from a stylus, so you can make annotations in colour – though the stylus is sold separately. It has handwriting recognition to digitise what you write, in what Kobo calls “advanced notebooks”.

It has useful physical page-turn buttons, which help prevent accidentally flipping back and forth if your hands are too near the touchscreen, and a curved edge that is a little more comfortable to hold. As with other colour ereaders, the resolution drops when you’re reading colour content, but matches the other ereaders here, with 300ppi resolution for black-and-white text. Books can be downloaded from the Kobo store but it also supports other formats in an accessible way or you can download books using Google Drive or Dropbox.

Although the screen is slightly bigger than the Amazon Kindle, the different screen ratio means this device slides into smaller pockets. It’s the shape and weight of a smartphone with an e-ink screen, though it only offers wifi connectivity. Along with a rear camera, it offers access to the Google Play Store, so you can run some mobile games, but this is an ereader primarily.

The great benefit is pocketability, as this lightweight device takes up hardly any space. The downside is the smaller screen requires more page turns. If you’re used to larger ereaders, the display may look small and cramped. As with other Boox devices, you can download Kobo and Kindle apps, for instance, and choose from their huge range of titles. Or download Spotify and play music. Performance is decent and there’s greater versatility than found in some other models here.

This new model from Kobo has an improved display panel that’s more responsive, though overall performance is on a par with other black-and-white screens here. It has adjustable brightness and an amber light option for night reading. It’s also made with some recycled materials and greater repairability: you’ll be able to get the battery replaced, for instance. Sideloading content is much easier than with the Kindle, thanks to a greater variety of file formats supported, though audio books come through the Kobo store. Like the Kindle, the screen is recessed rather than flush to the front, though this has the advantage that there’s no glass to diffuse or reflect the text.

Wireless charging is one of the extras in this special edition of the paperwhite: just plonk it on a pad (not supplied). It looks identical to the regular version, but it has much more storage, which is handy for audiobooks, for instance. It also has light sensors that automatically adjust the brightness of the display, according to the environment.

You can also change the colour of the light, to opt for something warmer and less blue at night, for instance, like the regular paperwhite, and both have brighter displays than the model that went before. While the signature edition is definitely more expensive than the standard one, at least there are no ads with this one.