The five best E Ink gadgets that aren’t an Amazon | Tech News

Amazon’s Kindle might have popularised E Ink gadgets, with their monochrome shows and long battery life, however there may be a fantastic world of different gadgets on the market that use the paper-like screen technology – and I’ve long been infatuated with them.

I acquired my first Kindle in 2012 and though I nonetheless buy bodily books, my love of E Ink hasn’t wavered. I’m fortunate enough in my present position to have the ability to take a look at and check some of the most recent and E Ink improvements, from telephones to notebooks and past.

Here are my five favorite E Ink gadgets that aren’t something to do with the Kindle.

My essential criticism of all five is the distinct lack of color choices – black or white throughout the board! It’s high time the E Ink industry embraced some color for its system designs.

£149.99

Buy from Amazon

It’s nonetheless owned by a company (Japan’s Rakuten) however an different to the Amazon Kindle is the Kobo. The newest Kobo Clara Colour presents a color screen, compact measurement and terrific battery life for much less than Amazon’s black and white Paperwhite model.

In reality, together with the Kobo Libra Colour, the Clara beat the Kindle Colorsoft to market in 2024 with their color E Ink screens. Both are nonetheless higher worth than Amazon’s offering – the Clara Colour is a big £90 much less than the most affordable Colorsoft, and has a more moveable, light-weight design.

Read my full review of the Kobo Clara Colour.

£149

Buy from Amazon

E-readers don’t need to be linked to a giant tech company’s e-book store. If you might have a assortment of e-books in your PC downloaded from free legal assets such because the Gutenberg Project, you possibly can switch them to the Pocketbook Verse Pro Color, an different reader that’s open to any file format, in contrast to Kindle and Kobo which solely work with e-books from their respective shops.

But shopping for a system like this implies diving into a world of tinkering. Although Pocketbook has simply launched a UK e-book store, the vary isn’t great and costs are a lot larger than Kindle or Kobo.

Instead, that is an e-reader to buy if you wish to be free of monopolistic constraints, with assist for 25 totally different file and doc varieties together with PDF and Microsoft Word’s DOCX. It’s additionally great for comedian books due to its vivid color screen.

$69

Buy from Xteink

For an extraordinarily moveable e-reader option, you possibly can strive the Xteink X4. When I opened the parcel, I couldn’t fairly imagine how tiny it was, with a diddy 4.3-inch screen and simply 5.9mm thickness.

It’s far smaller than a smartphone and might show all of your suitable e-book assortment in essentially the most compact kind I’ve ever seen. A downside is the software program, which is complicated and unintuitive, and took me days to get used to. Set up can also be a ache – the X4 comes with a 16GB microSD card and a USB-C dongle to plug it into your pc so you possibly can click on and drag e-books onto the cardboard.

There’s no frontlight or touchscreen, with controls all completed by way of buttons. It even comes with a MagSafe ring if you wish to carry it connected to the back of your cellphone to encourage you to learn on the practice as an alternative of doomscroll.

But the X4 has a passionate Reddit neighborhood, with great love for its diminutive design and choices for customized software program tinkering. It has quirks and bugs, however for simply $69, you would possibly forgive its flaws.

£299

Buy from Mudita

Fed up together with your cellphone? There’s an E Ink different, in case you can stay with its limitations.

The Mudita Kompakt is small and pebble-like, offering calls and texts in addition to easy apps comparable to calendar, music playback, an e-reader and notes. The solely internet-connected apps are climate and maps for a very stripped down expertise. The digital camera viewfinder appears odd on the monochrome screen, however snaps are full color while you obtain them to a PC.

You additionally get multi-day battery life, plus a bodily {hardware} swap on the aspect prompts ‘Offline+ Mode’ that kills all connectivity.

I loved utilizing the Kompakt, however similar to any minimalist cellphone such because the Light Phone 3, it requires a big adjustment so that you can be away from fashionable apps and providers. And it’s not simply a choice that impacts you – you’ll in all probability have to inform household and mates you gained’t be on WhatsApp.

Mudita does offer a desktop programme so that you can sideload Android apps onto the cellphone in order for you, nevertheless it’s very difficult, and type of defeats the purpose of a quieter system.

$299 plus $59 stylus

Buy from Supernote

If you want the concept of carrying all of your notes in a single system, the Supernote Nomad is a nice alternative. It has a 7.8-inch screen, which is the candy spot between moveable however massive enough to write down longhand onto. I’ve used it for a few months as my work notepad, and it has been a pleasure.

Compared to rivals reMarkable or the Amazon Kindle Scribe, this E Ink digital pad is suitable with a pen whose nib by no means wants changing. Battery life is days-long, and you may snap the back panel off to exchange parts if and after they fail later down the road – a sustainability alternative the firm must be praised for.

It lacks a frontlight, so notes at the hours of darkness are difficult, however I didn’t miss it an excessive amount of. The software program is a little fussy and onerous to navigate, leaving me feeling like I don’t know half of what the Nomad can really do.

But as a notetaking system it’s close to good, with a few further apps together with electronic mail and Google Calendar integration, plus OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox, and assist for the official Kindle app so you need to use it as an e-reader. I desire the Nomad to the Kindle Scribe for its utility, kind issue and repairability.