13-05-2025
The Best Ebook Reader Definitely Isn't A Kindle
When most people decide they need a new ebook reader, they decide they need a new Kindle. Amazon dominates ebook publishing and it dominates ebook reader sales too. But there are several reasons why the best ebook reader isn't a Kindle.
I've been testing the Boox Palma 2 over the past week and it's opened my eyes to the alternatives. Many people opt for a Kindle out of sheer convenience – me included – but only when you start exploring other devices do you realize just how restrictive and feature-light Kindle devices are.
Here, then are the reasons to look beyond the Kindle and opt for an Android-based the next time you're in the market for an ebook reader.
When you buy a Kindle, the only place you can really buy ebooks from is Amazon. You can't buy an ebook from, say, Google or the Kobo store and read it on your device. At least, not without tiresome workarounds.
With an Android-based device such as the Boox Palma 2, you can play the field. When you're buying a book, you can shop around the various stores and go with the one that's cheapest. You don't have to rely on one supplier.
Amazon, of course, is fiercely price competitive, but you can still buy from there too. The Kindle app is on the Play Store and there are few significant trade-offs from using the app instead of reading natively on a Kindle device. Which brings us to…
My big fear of switching to a non-Kindle device was the reading experience would suffer. The Kindle, for all its limitations, delivers a pretty great experience.
However, the Kindle app for Android has almost all of the key features. You can hold down on a word and look it up in a dictionary; you can quickly highlight passages by selecting lines of text; you can still take advantage of features such as X-Ray on supported titles.
Even advanced features, such as the option to play the audiobook of the title you're reading and follow along on the page are available. The app still highlights the line being read and turns the page automatically.
The only slight downside is that you can't buy books directly from the Kindle app because Amazon doesn't want to hand a slice of book revenue to Google. You have to order from the web browser instead.
This may be more of a U.K./Europe thing than in the U.S., but having a non-Amazon ebook reader means you can now "borrow" ebooks from libraries.
Here in West Sussex in the U.K., my local library offers support for the Libby app. This allows me to loan up to 10 ebooks from the library for up to 21 days, without any fees.
Oddly, the ebooks work in a similar way to physical copies. The library only has so many copies of each available for loan, and if someone else has that title out, you have to wait your turn. But you can put your name down for a book and have it delivered when it's been returned by people in front of you in the queue.
If you're not bothered about reading the latest bestsellers, it's a great way to read for free.
Reading long articles on a phone/tablet/laptop's LCD screen is tiring. It's far preferable to read anything of length on an E Ink/epaper display that doesn't induce eye strain.
The Kindle does have a web browser, but it's tucked away, unloved and underpowered. With an Android-based ebook reader, you can load on your favorite web browser, have access to all your bookmarks, and pick up where you left off on screen.
My preferred browser, Vivaldi, has a built-in feature called Reading List where I can save long articles I want to read later. The desktop browser is synced with the mobile version on the Boox Palma 2, so when I have time to sit and read that article later, I can just pick it up from the ebook reader.
The Pocket app is another good solution for this if you don't use Vivaldi.
The Kindle did experiment with newspapers and magazines for a while, before abandoning the idea. However, with an Android-based reader, there are several ways to tuck into a newspaper.
Titles such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times will have dedicated apps, as will magazines such as The Economist and Forbes.
There are also reading apps such as PressReader and Readly, which offer Spotify-like all-you-can-eat access to hundreds of different magazines and newspapers, which you can enjoy at leisure on your ebook reader. These apps have reader modes, so that you don't have to scan across pages, but can just read the text of articles.
If your ebook reader is an Android device, it's almost certainly going to be a lot more versatile than a Kindle.
If you like to listen to music while you read, you can install Spotify or your streaming service of choice and play that in the background. If you want to listen to the radio, there's an app (or 700) for that.
The Boox Palma 2 has a camera, which isn't great at taking photos, but is reasonably handy for scanning documents – a built-in app uses optical character recognition to turn that into editable text.
You'd have to be something of a sadist to play anything but the most basic, Wordle-type games on an epaper screen, and although the Boox Palma 2 does let you watch videos, I wouldn't recommend it, even at the highest screen refresh rate.
The Kindles are (by and large) great devices and I've used them almost daily for well over a decade. But now I can't see myself going back.
The Android-based devices – which are available from several manufacturers, including Onyx Boox, Bigme and Meebook – offer so much more for your money, that my days of automatically recommending a Kindle as the best ebook reader are over.
