The five best E Ink gadgets that aren't an Amazon Kindle

Amazon's Kindle may have popularised E Ink devices, with their monochrome displays and long battery life, but there is a wonderful world of other gadgets out there that use the paper-like screen technology - and I've long been infatuated with them.

I got my first Kindle in 2012 and although I still buy physical books, my love of E Ink hasn't wavered. I'm lucky enough in my current role to be able to check out and test some of the latest and E Ink innovations, from phones to notebooks and beyond.

Here are my five favourite E Ink gadgets that aren't anything to do with the Kindle.

My main criticism of all five is the distinct lack of colour options - black or white across the board! It's high time the E Ink industry embraced some colour for its device designs.

£149.99

Buy from Amazon

It's still owned by a corporation (Japan's Rakuten) but an alternative to the Amazon Kindle is the Kobo. The latest Kobo Clara Colour offers a colour screen, compact size and terrific battery life for less than Amazon's black and white Paperwhite model.

In fact, along with the Kobo Libra Colour, the Clara beat the Kindle Colorsoft to market in 2024 with their colour E Ink screens. Both are still better value than Amazon's offering - the Clara Colour is a huge £90 less than the cheapest Colorsoft, and has a more portable, lightweight design.

Another string to the Kobo bow is its suppoer for OverDrive, the service connected to the popular Libby app that lets you borrow e-books from your local library. It all works natively on the device - you just need a library card to sign in. That's something Kindles can't do in the UK.

Read my full review of the Kobo Clara Colour.

£149

Buy from Amazon

E-readers don't have to be linked to a giant tech company's e-book store. If you have a collection of e-books on your PC downloaded from free legal resources such as the Gutenberg Project, you can transfer them to the Pocketbook Verse Pro Color, an alternative reader that's open to any file format, unlike Kindle and Kobo which only work with e-books from their respective stores.

But buying a device like this means diving into a world of tinkering. Although Pocketbook has just launched a UK e-book store, the range isn't great and prices are much higher than Kindle or Kobo.

Instead, this is an e-reader to buy if you want to be free of monopolistic constraints, with support for 25 different file and document types including PDF and Microsoft Word's DOCX. It's also great for comic books thanks to its vivid colour screen, and like Kobo, it also supports the Libby app, so it's a good choice if you want to borrow e-books rather than buy them.

$69

Buy from Xteink

For an extremely portable e-reader option, you could try the Xteink X4. When I opened the parcel, I couldn't quite believe how tiny it was, with a diddy 4.3-inch screen and just 5.9mm thickness.

It's far smaller than a smartphone and can display all your compatible e-book collection in the most compact form I've ever seen. A drawback is the software, which is confusing and unintuitive, and took me days to get used to. Set up is also a pain - the X4 comes with a 16GB microSD card and a USB-C dongle to plug it into your computer so you can click and drag e-books onto the card.

There's no frontlight or touchscreen, with controls all done via buttons. It even comes with a MagSafe ring if you want to carry it attached to the back of your phone to encourage you to read on the train instead of doomscroll.

But the X4 has a passionate Reddit community, with great love for its diminutive design and options for custom software tinkering. It has quirks and bugs, but for just $69, you might forgive its flaws.