Summer is here and living is easy, certainly if you have a new e-reader in your hands. Whether you are on vacation, a long road trip, flight, or just chilling at the beach or cabin, a new e-reader will pass the time. There are plenty of new devices that have some out this year. Some feature new colour e-paper technology ideal for reading comics, magazines, or Webtoons. The vast majority though, continue to use high resolution black and white displays with high PPI. Are you hunting for a new e-reader for the summer? Here is the best ones available.
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 11th Generation
The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 11th generation features a 6.8 inch E INK Carta 1200 touchscreen display with a resolution of 1236 x 1648 and 300 PPI. There is a front-lit display and warm lighting system with a total of 17 white and amber LED lights. There is a new system wide Dark Mode that can be pulled down from the drop down arrow above the search bar. It inverts the black and white e-paper display, so the background is black and the fonts are white. You can use the white and warm lighting to customize the brightness of the screen.
The screen is flush with the bezel, protected by a layer of glass. I have found that glass reflects overhead light when reading indoors, such as a lamp. If you are reading outdoors, direct sunlight will also put glare on the screen. To be fair, the vast majority of e-readers have glass that protects the e-paper display.
Underneath the hood is a MT8113 SOC 1 GHZ processor, 512MB of RAM and 8GB or 16GB of internal storage. You will be able to connect it up to your MAC or PC via USB-C to charge it or to transfer digital content. Amazon has decided to not provide cellular options for this generation, so there is no LTE/4G variants for purchase. It is also rated IPX 8 for submersion in fresh water, this is ideal if at the beach or by the pool.
Kobo Clara 2e
The Kobo Clara 2e is one of the most environmentally friendly e-reader in the world. The overall body is made of 85% recycled plastic, in addition to being 10% ocean. plastic. In keeping with this theme, it is waterproof, so you will be able to use it while lounging by the pool or reading in the bathtub. It is rated iPX8, so it should be good for up to 60 minutes completely submerged in fresh water. If you spill things on it, like coffee or tea, simply run it under the tap to give it a good cleaning.
Obviously, the main draw is reading digital content, such as books, graphic novels and manga. It has a sunken screen and bezel design, which makes the text look razer sharp. This is because you are consuming media on exposed e-paper and there is nothing between your eyes and the E INK screen. Many e-readers on the market have a flush screen and bezel design, with a layer of glass. Glass tends to reflect overhead light or sunlight. You can use the Clara 2e day, or night and get a solid reading experience.
Do you like audiobooks? It is the fastest growing segment in digital publishing for the past five years. In the first eight months of 2022, digital audiobook sales were up 3.8% and generated $400.6 million in revenue in the US. The Clara 2e now has Bluetooth, unlocking a new audiobook section in the Kobo Store. Users can access the Bluetooth pairing system in the settings menu and use wireless headphones or earbuds to listen. Audiobooks are still pretty expensive; however, it is a nice feature to be able to use your ebook reader to listen.
Pocketbook InkPad Color 2
The Pocketbook InkPad Color 2 features a 7.8-inch E INK Kaleido Plus colour e-paper display with a black and white resolution of 1404×1872 with 300 PPI and a colour resolution of 468×624 with 100 PPI. It can display over 4096 different colour combinations. The screen is flush with the bezel and protected by a layer of glass. All buttons are on the bottom of the device, making the bezels slim and easy to hold. The colour scheme on the front is black and silver on the sides and back platting. There is warm and cool lighting, which can be blended, perfect for reading at night. This device is available now from the Good e-Reader Store for $319.99.
The colour scheme is black all over, and the back platting is perforated, but it is susceptible to the oil on your fingers. Small back platting can be removed to fit the InkPad 2 Color case with pogo pins. This cover is not out yet but acts as a sleep cover case, putting the e-reader to sleep. The page turn buttons are at the bottom, underneath the e-paper display. There is also a home button and a settings button.
PocketBook InkPad Color 2 is reliably protected against water damage according to IPX8 standards. The device withstands immersion in fresh water to a depth of 2 meters for up to 60 minutes without any harmful consequences. This makes the e-reader perfect for reading in the bathtub, beach or near the pool.
Underneath the hood is a quad-core 1.8GHZ processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. This model has no expandable storage, which should be enough for thousands of books, manga and PDF files. It has a G-Sensor to automatically flip the orientation, USB-C to charge and transfer data and WIFI to access the internet and bookstore. It is powered by a 2900 mAh battery, which should last a month.
This Pocketbook model is great for people with e-book or audiobook collections. It supports ACSM, AZW, AZW3, CBR, CBZ, CHM, DJVU, DOC, DOCX, EPUB, FB2, FB2.ZIP, HTM, HTML, MOBI, PDF, PRC, RTF, and TXT. You can buy EPUB and PDF files from other bookstores such as Kobo, Google, and Barnes and Noble since they sell ebooks in EPUB and PDF. You can download these books to your computer and use Adobe Digital Editions to load them on your InkPad Color 2. If you are a fan of audiobooks, it supports M4A, M4B, OGG, OGG.ZIP, MP3, and MP3.ZIP. There is a text-to-speech engine with support for 25 languages and 11 preinstalled dictionaries.
Onyx Boox Page
The Onyx Boox Page is a great ebook reader with manual page-turn buttons and has the latest generation E INK Carta 1200 e-paper, which increases overall performance by 25% across the board. This 7-inch e-reader has Google Android 11 and full access to the Google Play Store. It is available to purchase from the Good e-Reader Store for $249.99 and comes with a free case.
The Onyx Boox Page features a 7-inch E INK Carta 1200 display panel with a resolution of 1680×1264 with 300 PPI. The screen is flush with the bezel and protected by an AG glass flat cover lens. The colour scheme is piano black, with two manual page turn buttons on the right side. The back platting is plastic but has a neat design featuring little perforated book covers everywhere. The front-lit display and colour temperature system for reading day or night. The light produces both cool and warm lighting or a mixture of both.
Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm 2.0Ghz Octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. There is a speaker to listen to audiobooks, music or podcasts; there is also Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless earbuds or headphones. You can connect to the internet or browse the web, thanks to the WiFi (802.11b/g/n/ac) 2.4G + 5G chip. USB-C allows you to transfer content to your device or for charging. A microphone is available for voice communication apps, and a g-sensor will rotate it from portrait to landscape. It is powered by a 2300 mAh battery, and its dimensions are 156 X 137 X 6.0mm, weighing 195g.
It is running Google Android 11 and has full access to the Google Play Store. This is not an e-note but an e-reader; it replaces the Onyx Boox Leaf 2 but has better hardware specs. The Neoreader book reading app is excellent for people who have an extensive book collection, and it supports pdf, djvu, azw, azw3, doc, docm, docx, epub, fb2, fbz, html, mobi, odt, prc, rtf, sxw, trc, txt, chm, and ppt. If you don’t have a collection of books, you can download your favourite e-reading or manga app from Google Play and always keep them updated.
Meebook M6
Meebook has been making e-readers for a couple of years; the company’s founders are former executives and the product designers behind Boyue. The Meebook M6 is your typical six-inch e-reader with 300 PPI and full access to the Google Play Store. The industrial design of the M6 is well thought out, and the back is made of aluminum. The colour scheme is this lovely royal purple along the edges and back platting. However, they use black along the front bezel to contrast the e-paper display. It is available for $159 from the Good e-Reader Store.
One of the significant advantages of the M6 is the reading experience. The stock reading app supports a wide array of formats, such as PDF, EPUB, TXT, HTML, RTF, FB2, FB2.zip, DOC, DOCX, PRC, MOBI, CHM, PDB, DOC, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF, DjVu, MP3, WAV, CBR, CBZ. The nice things about CBR and CBZ are these are the most popular formats for manga that is downloaded from the internet. They are containers full of images. However, most vendors sell their manga in EPUB since you have better control over the e-reading experience, such as setting different fonts and the sizes of the fonts.
Meebook has figured out a way to bypass the standard 16 levels of grayscale and uses 256 system-wide. When reading ebooks or manga, the text is sharper than a Kindle or Kobo e-reader, there are no anti-aliasing issues, and the fonts are tremendous. Boyue and iReader are the only two right now that use grayscale like this, there is even a toggle that you can switch between 16 and 256 levels, but the company recommends always leaving it on.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
