You need an e-reader, and here’s why

I’ve always loved reading books. Lately, though, it’s dawned on me that I’m not the book reader I once was. I’m not just talking about ones printed on paper. Even e-books have been getting less of my attention—despite the fact that I’m consuming more words than ever.
You may already have guessed why. The books in my life face addictive competition from social networks, online articles, and other bite-size pieces of content that I flit back and forth between as fast as I can. As rewarding as books are, summoning up enough of an attention span to consume one from start to finish has become a struggle. That includes all the ones sitting in the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad.
Part of the problem is that those devices aren’t optimized for serious reading. The iPhone’s screen is too dinky, and my iPad Pro is a bit on the hefty side to hold like a book for long. And backlit LCD and OLED displays aren’t easy on the eyes the way that paper is.
Research shows that the best form of reading involves printed books. I don’t dispute that, but I’m not ready to give up the convenience of digital reading entirely; even one hardcover book is not easy to travel with. So I decided to spend time with a dedicated e-reader that offers the ability to read e-books (and has very few other features) on a monochrome e-ink screen that feels more like digital paper than a glowing LCD or OLED ever will.
Though I loved Amazon’s original Kindle when it came out in 2007 (here’s my review), I’ve found that the software on newer Kindles is more intrusive and less book-like, departing from Jeff Bezos’ original vision that the gadget should “disappear in your hands.” Indeed, thanks to the zeal with which Amazon tries to get you to buy new e-books, using a Kindle can feel like you’re reading at a bookstore. Also, Kindles are terrible for reading scanned PDFs like the public-domain books I download from the Internet Archive.
That’s why the e-reader I chose this time was a Kobo, made by a division of the Japanese company Rakuten. Though similar to Kindles in many ways, Kobos offer a more sedate experience, with the e-commerce features of their bookstore tucked out of the way until you need them. They also do an okay job with scanned PDFs, and some models offer handy built-in support for Dropbox, which is where I store my PDFs.
The model I bought, the $240 Kobo Sage, has an 8-inch screen—significantly more real estate for words than a classic Kindle, in an e-reader that’s half the weight of my 11-inch iPad Pro. Once I figured out how to move some books out of my sizable Kindle library onto the Kobo using a third-party e-book-wrangling app called Calibre, I was up, running, and reading.
Thanks to the Kobo Sage, I’ve read more books from start to finish in the past few weeks than I had in the previous year. Reading on a laptop or tablet immediately before bedtime doesn’t feel like I’m winding down for the night; dipping into an e-book on the Kobo does. And using the Kobo on an airplane reminds me of the blessed days before in-flight Wi-Fi came along and made getting distracted in the air just as easy as everywhere else.
Soon after I started using the Kobo Sage, I got the opportunity to review a new Kobo model, the $400 Kobo Elipsa 2E. It’s about as direct a competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Scribe as you can get, with a jumbo-sized 10.3-inch display and a bundled stylus that makes note-taking a core part of the experience.
The Kobo Stylus 2 also works with the Kobo Sage, but it’s a $70 option for that model, not standard equipment. Strangely enough, however, the pricey Elipsa 2E lacks the Sage’s physical buttons for turning an e-book’s pages. As far as I’m concerned, those buttons—which let you flip around without moving a finger to swipe the screen—are a perk that every e-reader should offer over reading on a smartphone or tablet.
Both the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Elipsa 2E play in the same space as the reMarkable 2 tablet, and compared to the Scribe, the Elipsa has some advantages. You can jot notes directly on e-books (rather than on the Scribe’s virtual sticky notes) and turn your handwritten notebooks into editable text—a feature that even worked with my illegible scrawls.
But speaking of how bad my handwriting is, I’m unqualified to judge any device that caters to people who like to write text with a pen—digital or otherwise. There are those who say that taking handwritten notes is good for your brain, which sounds like a cruel joke, since I’ve always found it painful and don’t like to look at the results.
Basically, Christopher Sholes, the man who made handwriting optional by inventing the QWERTY keyboard in the 1870s, is a god to me. But I’m sold on the benefits of dedicated e-readers for reading, and the Kobo Sage and Kobo Elipsa 2E are fine choices with some distinct advantages. It’s easy to default to getting a Kindle, just because Amazon defined the category and owns it in terms of mindshare. But with e-readers—as with so many other things you might reflexively buy from Amazon—it pays to shop around.






More on Twitter rivals



Last week, I wrote about my experience using six Twitter alternatives. As the Twitter experience continues to degrade, things are moving fast. I carped about Mastodon’s refusal to offer full-text searching and an equivalent to quote tweets; now those features are on the way, reports my colleague Chris Morris. Meanwhile, Bluesky, which had been in quiet beta-test mode since February, suddenly captured the imagination of a bunch of high-profile Twitter users last week, giving it a shot at being Elon Musk’s worst nightmare. Chris also wrote about the extreme measures some people are willing to take to get on the still-closed service. Please don’t pay $300 for a Bluesky invite—but I do recommend checking it out when you can.







This story is from Fast Company’s new Plugged In newsletter, a weekly roundup of tech insights, news, and trends from global technology editor Harry McCracken, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning. Sign up for it here.