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.

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.

$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.

£299

Buy from Mudita

Fed up with your phone? There’s an E Ink alternative, if you can live with its limitations.

The Mudita Kompakt is small and pebble-like, offering calls and texts as well as simple apps such as calendar, music playback, an e-reader and notes. The only internet-connected apps are weather and maps for a very stripped down experience. The camera viewfinder looks odd on the monochrome screen, but snaps are full colour when you download them to a PC.

You also get multi-day battery life, plus a physical hardware switch on the side activates ‘Offline+ Mode’ that kills all connectivity.

I enjoyed using the Kompakt, but just like any minimalist phone such as the Light Phone 3, it requires a huge adjustment for you to be away from modern apps and services. And it’s not just a decision that affects you – you’ll probably have to tell family and friends you won’t be on WhatsApp.

Mudita does offer a desktop programme for you to sideload Android apps onto the phone if you want, but it’s very tricky, and kind of defeats the point of a quieter device.

$299 plus $59 stylus

Buy from Supernote

If you like the idea of carrying all your notes in one device, the Supernote Nomad is a fine choice. It has a 7.8-inch screen, which is the sweet spot between portable but large enough to write longhand onto. I’ve used it for a few months as my work notepad, and it has been a joy.

Compared to rivals reMarkable or the Amazon Kindle Scribe, this E Ink digital pad is compatible with a pen whose nib never needs replacing. Battery life is days-long, and you can snap the back panel off to replace components if and when they fail later down the line – a sustainability choice the firm should be praised for.

It lacks a frontlight, so notes in the dark are tricky, but I didn’t miss it too much. The software is a little fussy and hard to navigate, leaving me feeling like I don’t know half of what the Nomad can actually do.

But as a notetaking device it’s near perfect, with a few extra apps including email and Google Calendar integration, plus OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox, and support for the official Kindle app so you can use it as an e-reader. I prefer the Nomad to the Kindle Scribe for its utility, form factor and repairability.