The 5 Best E Ink Tablets You Can Get Right Now, According To User Reviews – BGR

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An E Ink tablet gives you the best of both worlds: the satisfying feel of using pen and paper and the convenience of keeping all your notes in one place. E Ink tablets are best known for offering a distraction-free environment to jot down your notes while providing a paper-like reading and writing experience. Moreover, they minimize the chances of eye strain that comes with looking at regular displays for hours on end, making them a must have for any avid reader. So if you’re done buying physical notebooks and want something that can offer you an almost identical experience but with the added convenience of digital tools, an E Ink tablet is worth getting. 

But E Ink tablets aren’t cheap. You may have to fork out at least $300 to get one, so you certainly have to do your research well to avoid buying a model that doesn’t deliver on its promise or meet your specific needs. Although we’ve reviewed several models, such as the reMarkable Paper Pro Move, we set out to find the best E Ink tablet that online users swear by because user reviews can be a solid metric to base your purchasing decisions on. 

In our Kindle Scribe review, we loved this device, and unsurprisingly, it stands out as one of the best E Ink tablets based on user reviews — it boasts an excellent 4.4 out of 5 rating from over 3,000 reviews, with 85% of reviewers giving it at least 4 stars. The Kindle Scribe features a 10.2-inch display with 300 pixels per inch that should make text look crisp. However, the Scribe is meant for writing, and Amazon includes its Premium Pen for the job, which doesn’t need to be charged. 

The Scribe comes with a built-in notebook for taking notes with 18 preloaded note-taking templates (and you can download more) to make your work easier when writing. Furthermore, it includes two handy AI-powered features in the built-in notebook: text summary and handwriting to text conversion. The Scribe is also a capable reading device, and Amazon allows you to import your documents to it using the Send to Kindle feature. While reading, the Scribe gives you the ability to annotate documents, and you can even write notes in Kindle eBooks using Active Canvas. 

Many users praise its usefulness when it comes to both reading and writing. Users also say how easy it is to transfer documents to the device and organize notes. However, it’s not perfect. Some say you can’t export notes written in books, and others find it to be bulky. It also lacks built-in speakers for reading text aloud with Amazon’s Assistive Reader feature, forcing you to pair it with a Bluetooth speaker. You can buy the 10.2-inch Kindle Scribe from Amazon with either 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage for $399.99, $419.99, and $449.99, respectively.

The reMarkable 2 is a highly-rated E Ink device by users. As of this writing, the device has earned an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 from over 2,100 reviews, with over 70% of the users giving it a 5-star rating. Priced at $449, this E Ink tablet has a 10.3-inch black and white display and ships with a pen that has a built-in eraser for taking notes, so you don’t have to spend extra for that. What’s even cooler is that reMarkable includes nine spare tips for the pencil. 

For note-taking, reMarkable 2 has a built-in notebook with templates and makes writing easier with useful features like undo, erase, resize, move, and copy and paste. The tablet is built with organization in mind and offers folders and tags to make it easier to organize files and notebooks. Similar to the Kindle Scribe, you can write in PDFs and even convert your handwritten notebooks into typed text. For the latter, reMarkable supports 33 languages. In addition to writing notes with your hand, you can also type on a keyboard if you purchase reMarkable’s $199 Type Folio. 

The reMarkable 2 promises up to two weeks of battery life and charges via USB-C. There’s no app store here to download distracting apps, but you can import web articles or Microsoft Office documents to read or work with in the reMarkable 2. Multiple users say the reMarkable 2 is a great product, and one reviewer says it’s “one of the most life-changing products” that they have bought in a while. However, some say it’s pricey, and others point out that the pen tips must be changed often, which might be a challenge.

As the successor to the reMarkable 2, the Paper Pro delivers some additional niceties for more convenience. So if the reMarkable 2 doesn’t quite feel like the perfect E Ink tablet for you because of its black and white display, the Paper Pro should be better, as it uses a colored display. The display measures 11.8 inches and has a 2160 x 1620 resolution with a front light for night use. The Paper Pro is available on Amazon for $679.99 and includes reMarkable’s so-called Marker Plus pen (with a built-in eraser at the end of the stylus) with six spare tips. 

The company promises up to two weeks of battery life under normal use, which should be more than enough. Weighing slightly over a pound, the Paper Pro is lightweight and easy to carry around. You can write your notes using the stylus, a virtual keyboard, or a physical one (if you purchase the keyboard folio). The Paper Pro also supports the conversion of handwritten notes to text and document annotation. You can bring your files to the Paper Pro, although you can only do so via reMarkable’s app or website. 

For writing, you get the same handy tools available on the reMarkable 2, such as copy and paste, but since it has a color E Ink display, you can write in colors other than black. The Paper Pro has a 4.1 out of 5 rating from over 1,500 user reviews on Amazon. Users say it’s easy to use, lightweight, feels paper-like, makes organizing notes easier, has great battery life, and is a reliable notebook and a game changer. But some feel it’s expensive, and others find the display to be too dark.

Kobo’s Libra Colour E Ink tablet is the most affordable option on this list and has one of the highest average ratings of 4.4 out of 5 from close to 3,000 reviews on Amazon. It features a 7-inch colored display with 1264 x 1680 resolution. It also has the smallest display on the list, which is the perfect option if you feel the other options might be tedious for you to handle due to their 10- or 11-inch displays. The only catch with the Libra Colour is that the $229.99 reader doesn’t include a stylus pen out of the box – the Kobo Stylus 2 is sold separately for $70. 

The stylus has a built-in eraser, three pen styles, and supports writing, drawing, and highlighting text in different colors. As an e-reader, the Libra Colour has dedicated page-turn buttons next to the display. Using the Libra Colour, you can highlight and write notes in eBooks and create notes from scratch using the built-in notebook. The Libra Colour is IPX8 rated, meaning it can withstand up to 6.56 feet of water submersion for up to an hour without any damage. Kobo says this tablet can last up to 40 days on a single charge with 30 minutes of reading per day. 

The tablet comes in either black or white, and you get 32GB of storage as standard. Users love it for its long battery life, lightweight profile, user friendliness, customizable reading experience, and the fact that it doesn’t restrict you to a specific book vendor. Some downsides of the Libra Colour are that it’s slow to start, doesn’t support Kindle and Hoopla eBooks, and the software experience could be better.

The Kobo Elipsa 2E retains the best parts of what Kobo’s E Ink tablets are best known for, including excellent battery life, deep integration with OverDrive and Libby eBook library services, and a customizable reading experience. This one packs a bigger 10.3-inch touchscreen display with 1404 x 1872 resolution, although it’s black and white. Despite the relatively large screen, the Elipsa 2E only weighs 0.84 pounds, so it shouldn’t feel heavy in your hands. In fact, users do say it’s thin and light. And unlike the Libra Color, Kobo ships the reader with the Stylus 2 pen out of the box. 

However, the Kobo Elipsa 2E is slightly more expensive than the Libra Color at $399. The Elipsa 2E also comes with 32GB of storage to store your eBooks and promises up to several weeks of battery life per charge, depending on your usage patterns. You can also annotate eBooks by highlighting, underlining, and even writing in the margins. And if you need space to write your notes, it includes a built-in notebook that has search functionality, making it easy to find keywords or certain notes in your notebooks. 

Like some E Ink tablets, the Elipsa 2E also lets you convert your handwritten notes to typed text. The Kobo Elipsa 2E has earned a 4.0 out of 5 rating from over 450 reviews on Amazon. Users say it’s great for reading, responsive when writing, and has impressive battery life. However, multiple users have raised concerns about its writing functionality, with one saying it doesn’t allow you to adjust the brush size when writing.

The main criteria for choosing the best E Ink tablets were to find models that are highly rated with at least an average rating of 4.0 out of 5, and have more than 400 reviews. Of course, based on these two factors alone, our selection tends to favor older products that have been selling for a while and have earned more reviews. 

To do our research, we mainly focused on three of the major e-commerce sites, including Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. In addition to that, we also considered what users who reviewed each product said, including the overall user experience and why they thought a given product is worth buying. 

And since no product is perfect, we didn’t shy away from considering the negatives of any given tablet, especially from reviewers who rated each item low, as these reviews are great for pointing out any caveats you should keep in mind before buying a certain item. We’ve listed these products in no particular order.