The Best Ereaders, According to the Reviews

Buy the Kindle Paperwhite if your books are already on Amazon, and the Kobo Clara Colour if they are not. They average the same score, and the Kobo is twenty dollars cheaper with a colour screen.

The more useful finding is not in the scores at all. Every device on this page lists for more today than its maker announced it at, and not one of them has changed. The Kindles were announced in October 2024, the Kobos in April 2024, and the hardware you can buy this week is the hardware those reviews describe. Only the price moved.

The five, at a glance

	Review consensus	Price today	At launch	The catch
Kindle Paperwhite (2024)	8.7 — one outlet cooler	$199.99	$159.99	The outlier’s complaint was the price
Kobo Clara Colour	8.7 — close agreement	$179.99	$149.99	Small screen, soft colour
Kobo Libra Colour	8.3 — genuinely contested	$259.99	$219.99	Stylus costs extra
Kindle (2024)	8.0 — one outlet cooler	$149.99	$109.99	No warm light, not waterproof
Kindle Colorsoft	7.7 — genuinely contested	$319.99	$279.99	$140 more than the Kobo equivalent

Consensus averages three published star ratings per device, normalised to ten. Launch prices are the makers’ own announcements; today’s are read from Amazon and Kobo on 4 September 2026. The “best for” lines are ours, read off what those reviewers found — none of them ranked these five against each other.

What a discount is measured against

This is the part worth carrying into November. A percentage off is a percentage off today’s list price, and on ereaders that number has drifted upward while the devices stood still.

Twenty percent off the Kindle Paperwhite this winter gets you to $159.99 — precisely what Amazon charged for it on the day it launched. The banner will be honest and the saving will be real against the current price. It is simply not the same thing as a discount on a device that has held its price.

The base Kindle has moved furthest in proportion, up thirty-six percent, because the same forty dollars lands on the smallest starting price here. The Colorsoft has moved least in proportion for the mirror-image reason. If you want one number to carry into the sales, it is the launch price in the table above rather than the percentage on the banner.

Where the reviewers actually disagree

Two devices here split their reviewers by three points on a ten-point scale. That is a wide gap, and it is the most useful thing on the page — averaging it away would hide the argument rather than settle it.

The Kobo Libra Colour is TechRadar’s five out of five and PCMag’s three and a half. Read both and the argument is not about the machine. TechRadar is scoring the reading experience — seven inches, physical buttons, weeks of battery. PCMag is scoring the bill: $259.99 before a stylus that costs extra, for a colour layer no better than the Clara’s at eighty dollars less. Both are right, and which one applies to you depends entirely on whether you would use the buttons.

The Kindle Colorsoft splits the same way and adds a complication. Tom’s Guide has scored it twice — four and a half in October 2024, four in June 2026 — and this page uses the later one. That is worth knowing in general: a consensus average is a photograph, not a permanent record, and re-tests move it. Amazon now sells the Colorsoft in three configurations at three prices, so a discount on “the Colorsoft” needs reading twice before you trust it.

What to actually do

• Start with where your books already are. Kindle purchases do not move to a Kobo and Kobo purchases do not move to a Kindle. That constraint outranks every score on this page, which is why the two ecosystems are represented rather than ranked against each other.
• If you are buying colour, look at the Kobo first. It ties the best monochrome device here on averaged score and undercuts the colour Kindle by $140. Amazon’s advantage is the store, not the screen.
• Write the launch price down before the sales start. It is in the table above. A discount that lands above it is the old price with a sticker on it.
• Ignore the percentage; read the number. This is a category where list prices have risen quietly, which makes the percentage the least informative figure on the page.