Illuminated screen, huge library, light holidays… in 2022, e-readers offer excellent reading comfort and very practical features for literature enthusiasts. Here are the best models of the moment to read ebooks, according to your budget and your needs.
The eReader buying guide in a nutshell
- Kobo Clara HD (€139.99): the safe bet that will suit everyone;
- Kindle Oasis (€249.99): despite its high price, the best option for avid readers;
- Kindle 2019 (€79.99): the low-cost e-reader that delivers despite everything.
E-readers give superpowers. That of continuing his novel when it is time to turn off the lights. To take your entire library on vacation. To buy a book at midnight when the bookstores are closed. Even if you choose to buy most of your books in hard copy, it’s a safe bet that you will also use your eReader very often. Better to choose it carefully.
Good news, the sector has made great progress. After years of trial and error, mediocre screens, and unresponsive devices, manufacturers have managed to find a formula that really works. This is particularly the case for the market heavyweights (Amazon with its Kindles, Kobo with its eponymous products) which have refined their formulas and built very balanced product lines.
Kobo Clara HD : the reader with the best value for money
The Kobo Clara HD is a model that really deserves a look. It does not have all the refinements of high-end e-readers, but it offers a solid technical sheet. Thanks to this and its contained price of 140 euros, it remains, in our eyes, the product with the best value for money currently on the market..
The reader is equipped with a 6” screen with a high resolution of 300 pixels per inch. With its ComfortLight PRO technology, it even offers to automatically adapt the lighting temperature, so as not to tire your eyes unnecessarily. The Kobo Clara HD also offers a range of several weeks, according to the manufacturer, and a comfortable storage space (8 GB of memory or approximately 6,000 eBooks, specifies Kobo).
Main downside: it is not waterproof unlike its direct competitor, the Kindle Paperwhite 2021. In this price range, however, we continue to prefer the Kobo Clara HD, lighter and which accepts, it , the open ePub format that is the most common on ebook shelves.
Kindle Oasis 2019: the ultimate for reading
If you have the budget and like to read, go for it with your eyes closed. The Kindle Oasis from €249 is, in our opinion, the best reader on the market. Very thin, light, elegant, it is particularly practical to hold and use. Its original design, with a slightly protruding side edge, offers a perfect grip. And its buttons located on the side allowing you to move forward in your reading in a very fluid way whether you are right-handed or left-handed. It is, of course, also possible to do this by touching the touch screen.
In addition to a quality 7-inch screen with a high resolution of 300 ppi (pixels per inch), the Kindle Oasis offers a color temperature adjustment function (from ” White light ” at ” warm amber ”) to reduce blue light, and not strain your eyes in the dark. The Kindle Oasis is also very responsive, underline our colleagues from Frandroid: the book pages turn at lightning speed, without this unpleasant blur effect from which other models suffer. Our only regret: that Amazon has kept a micro-USB port here, depriving users of the possibility of charging the reader with the USB-C cable which now equips most smartphones and computers.
Kindle (2019): the very efficient reader at a low price
The 2019 Kindle is an extremely competitive Amazon e-reader. For 90 € (or even 80 €, if you accept advertisements at the bottom of the homepage and on the screen saver), it offers everything that a reader worthy of the name should offer:
- a comfortable storage space (8 GB);
- front lighting (for reading in the dark);
- satisfactory autonomy (about 4 weeks at the rate of 30 minutes of use per day with the Wi-Fi deactivated).
Its 6-inch screen is small, but that’s precisely what makes this model so convenient to carry around (it’s the size of a paperback). Of course, at this price, some concessions will have to be made. The resolution of the 10th generation Kindle 20219 is 167 ppi (pixels per inch), when most e-readers now offer a more detailed display at 300 dpi.
And if most recent devices display IPX8 certifications, this entry-level Kindle does not offer any water resistance. However, these limitations are not prohibitive and, for people with a limited budget (or fairly specific needs), the Kindle 2019 in this comparison is an excellent option.
How to choose the right reader?
If your budget is relatively flexible, start by assessing your needs. Do you only read a little while on vacation? A small entry-level 6-inch e-reader may well suffice in this case. On the other hand, if you love to read and have the means, do not hesitate to invest in a high-end reader. Even if you like paper books (we do), being able to read in the dark, and buy a work when you feel like it, will probably lead you to use your e-reader quite often. In terms of screen size, we recommend the 7-inch format. However, a 6” screen will be more suitable if you need to be able to slip the reader into a coat pocket – unless the model has huge borders.
Not too many questions to ask about storage: even the entry-level models now offer 8 GB of storage, which is more than comfortable for accommodating ebooks (that’s thousands of books). If you plan to take your device everywhere, check that it has an IPX8 certification and can therefore withstand the rain, or a fall into a filled bathtub. Last important point: make sure that the reader has built-in lighting (to be able to read in the dark). It has become a standard on e-readers, but it hasn’t always been. It will therefore be necessary to be particularly attentive to this point if the device is second-hand.
Where can I find free or low-cost ebooks?
Many sites help Internet users to find free ebooks. Project Gutenberg, for example, brings together a host of works that have passed into the public domain, and are therefore free. The site is very easy to use: just type the name of the author or author in the search bar on the home page to see if some of his works are available. These are generally offered in a ” epub with picture ” Where ” without picture as well as in a format accepted by Kindle readers (the MOBI format).
Online bookstores (Fnac, Cultura, Amazon, Decitre, etc.) of course also offer several shelves of free ebooks. Many municipal libraries finally offer digital book loan systems. Be careful, these are most often books in ePUB format, in which case it will not work with a Kindle. Amazon offers, at 9.99 euros per month, a Kindle subscription giving unlimited access to a catalog of books – one million titles including 35,000 in French. Finally, it should be noted that the Amazon Prime subscription which entitles you to priority deliveries also offers access to Prime Reading, a service allowing you to borrow ten books per month. The catalog of this second option, however, currently only has a few thousand titles.
What are the best Kindle e-readers?
The latest Amazon Kindle e-readers are all safe bets. The 2019 Kindle is the best entry-level e-reader on the market today. At the other end of the spectrum, the Kindle Oasis takes first place on the podium of high-end e-readers. Between the two, we find the Kindle Paperwhite from 2021 at 150 euros (or 140 euros with the display of advertisements on the screen saver), a model that is also very successful. In this price range, however, we prefer the Kobo Clara HD, which is lighter and accepts the ePub format. Kindles indeed have a big flaw, that of not accepting this open format used by most of Amazon’s competing bookstores (Fnac, Cultura, Decitre, etc.). Fortunately, the Amazon catalog is large. And there are technical tricks to bypass the lock put in place by Amazon to prevent the reading of ePUB formats.
What are the best Kobo eReaders?
The Kobo Clara HD model sold for 140 euros is, in our opinion, the reader that offers the best value for money currently on the market (see our opinion above). If you have the budget for a high-end e-reader, we recommend the excellent Kindle Oasis at 250 euros, which remains the most successful, both in form and in substance.
People with a limited budget also have an interest in turning to the Amazon range which contains the unbeatable Kindle 2019 at 90 euros (see 80 euros if you accept the display of advertisements when the screen is on standby). Note, however, that the various Kobo e-readers are very reliable quality models. And they have the notable advantage of accepting the ePUB format when the Kindles work with a proprietary format (AZW, AZW3) which forces users to obtain supplies from Amazon (or to resort to tricks to circumvent the locks preventing the reading of ePUB digital books).