Print is Dead

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E-readers: from the Sony Reader and Kindle to phones

Dedicated reading devices took decades to get right, and then had to compete with the phone in everyone's pocket. A short history, and a practical guide to choosing.

Last reviewed October 2026

Before the Kindle

The idea of a portable electronic book is older than the web. Science fiction imagined it, and engineers built prototypes throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Early commercial attempts included dedicated readers such as the Rocket eBook and the SoftBook, which went on sale in the late 1990s. They used backlit LCD screens, held a handful of books, were expensive, and depended on a small catalogue that publishers were reluctant to supply. They did not last.

The technology that made dedicated e-readers practical was electronic paper. The version that came to dominate, developed by the company E Ink, uses tiny capsules containing charged black and white particles. An electric field moves the particles to the front or the back of each capsule, forming text and images. The result is reflective rather than backlit: it is read by ambient light, like paper, and looks crisp in sunshine. It also needs power only to change the page, not to hold an image, so a device can run for weeks on one charge.

Sony launched one of the first e-ink readers, the Librie, in Japan in 2004, and brought the Sony Reader to the United States in 2006. The hardware was good. The problem, as with the earlier devices, was getting books onto it: buying and transferring titles meant using a computer and Sony's own store, and the catalogue was limited.

The Kindle and the store problem

Amazon released its first Kindle on 19 November 2007, priced at $399. Its screen was e-ink, like the Sony's. What was different was the shop. The Kindle had a built-in wireless connection, with no monthly fee, that let the reader browse Amazon's store and download a book in about a minute, without a computer. Amazon launched it with a much larger catalogue than earlier devices had offered and priced many new releases and bestsellers at $9.99. The first stock sold out within hours.

The lesson the industry took from the Kindle was that an e-reader is not really a gadget. It is a shop with a screen attached. The device that wins is the one connected to the store readers trust and the catalogue they want, which is why the serious competitors that followed also built or partnered with a bookstore: Barnes & Noble with the Nook from 2009, and Kobo, which went on to partner with booksellers in several countries.

That model also explains the main drawback of e-readers, which is lock-in. A book bought for one ecosystem generally cannot be read on a competitor's device, because of the digital rights management attached to it. Choosing a device often means choosing a store for years.

Tablets and phones

In 2010 Apple launched the iPad, with its own book store. Tablets offered colour, touch and video, which suited illustrated books, magazines and comics, but their backlit screens are harder to read in bright light and tire some readers' eyes over long sessions. For a while it seemed tablets might replace dedicated e-readers altogether.

That did not happen, but something else did: the smartphone became the reading device that most people already carry. Phone screens grew larger and sharper, reading apps from every major store became available on them, and many readers now read in short sessions on the phone and longer ones on another device, with the app keeping their place in sync.

Dedicated e-ink readers survived by doing a narrow job very well. They are light, distraction-free, easy on the eyes in daylight, waterproof in many current models, and they last a long time between charges. Most now have a built-in front light that shines across the screen rather than into the reader's eyes, and many let the reader warm the light's colour at night. Colour e-ink screens have also arrived, though their colours are muted compared with a tablet.

What e-ink does well and badly

Good atLess good at
Long reading sessions of textPictures, photographs and colour
Reading in sunlightFast page flipping and scrolling
Battery life measured in weeksComplex layouts and large PDFs on small screens
Freedom from notifications and appsAnything that needs video or animation
Adjustable type size and fontMoving books between rival stores

The weaknesses mostly follow from the physics. Moving particles takes longer than switching a pixel, so e-ink screens refresh slowly and can leave faint "ghosts" of the previous page. That is fine for turning pages in a novel and frustrating for anything interactive.

How to choose a reading device

Start with your books, not the hardware

Ask where you will buy or borrow most of your books. If you already have a large library in one store, the device that reads that store's books is the obvious choice. If you borrow from a public library, check which devices and apps your library's lending service supports; our article on library e-books explains how that works. If you mostly read public-domain or DRM-free books, any device that reads EPUB will do.

Then think about what you read

Check the practical details

Screen size and weight matter more than resolution once a screen is sharp enough. Physical page buttons are a matter of taste. Waterproofing matters if you read in the bath or at the beach. Accessibility features vary: some devices offer text-to-speech or audiobook playback through Bluetooth headphones, others do not. If you need a book read aloud, check before buying, and see our article on audiobooks for the alternatives.

Is reading on a device as good as reading on paper?

That depends on what you read and why. Researchers have compared comprehension on paper and on screens many times, with results that are more specific than headlines suggest. We summarise that research in reading on screens versus paper. Most of it was done with computers and tablets rather than e-ink readers, which is worth keeping in mind.

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