e-reader An e-reader, also called an e reader or e device, is a Mobile computing, mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. Any device that can display text on ...

, also known as an e-book reader, is a portable electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

s and

periodicals Periodical literature (singularly called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) consists of Publication, published works that appear in new releases on a regular schedule (''issues'' or ''numbers'', often numerically divided into annu ...

. E-readers have a similar form factor to a tablet; usually use

electronic paper Electronic paper or intelligent paper, is a display device that reflects ambient light, mimicking the appearance of ordinary ink on paper – unlike conventional flat-panel displays which need additional energy to emit their own light. This may ...

resulting in better screen

readability Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. The concept exists in both natural language and programming languages though in different forms. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content ( ...

, especially in bright sunlight; and have longer battery life when compared to a tablet. An e-reader's battery will typically last for multiple weeks. In contrast to an e-reader, a tablet has a screen capable of higher refresh rates which make them more suitable for interaction such as playing a

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

or watching a

video clip Video clip may refer to: *Short videos, especially short-form content ** Video clip (online media), a short snippet of a video uploaded on the internet *A music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that ...

Types of electronic-paper displays

All electronic paper types offer lower power consumption and better sunlight contrast than LCDs.

E Ink E Ink (electronic ink) is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobs ...

displays don't produce any light by themselves, so some models offer a frontlight for reading in dark areas. *

E ink E Ink (electronic ink) is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobs ...

: E Ink Corporation's 1st-generation technology, also known as E Ink Vizplex. Although "eInk" may be used to talk about all electronic paper displays, "eInk" and "E Ink" are

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

ed by E Ink, which provides the majority of the electronic paper displays used in devices. * E Ink Pearl: E Ink's 2nd-generation technology, which has higher contrast and a greater number of different levels of gray than their earlier technology. A further revision of Pearl is Mobius, which uses flexible plastic in the display. * E Ink Triton: E Ink's 3rd-generation technology that featured the ability to show color in the display. * E Ink Carta: E Ink's 4th-generation technology, which has higher contrast and a greater number of different levels of gray than their earlier technology; the displays have a

pixel density Pixels per inch (ppi) and pixels per centimetre (ppcm or pixels/cm) are measurements of the pixel density of an electronic image device, such as a computer monitor or television display, or image digitizing device such as a camera or image scan ...

between 212 and 300 ppi. * E Ink Kaleido: E Ink's colour e-paper display supporting up to 4096 colours, used in various e-readers such as BOOX Go Color 7 and Kobo Libra Colour * SiPix: A former competitor to E Ink, which had displays with almost instantaneous page turns. It was acquired by E Ink in December 2012. * LG Flex: Electronic paper that allows a flexible screen; is still in development. With these displays, the user is able to bend the e-reader without damaging it and can fold it up to put in a pocket. Electronic-paper readers come in various sizes. Many small e-readers have display diagonal sizes around , while some of the large commercially available readers have display sizes around A5 () or A4 size ().

Commercially available devices sold by maker or designer

Notes: * Library DRM compatible – Can be used to borrow e-books from public libraries, e.g. the

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes stylized as ''ePUB''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smart ...

and/or

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

formats with digital-rights-management (DRM) are supported. * "microSDHC" is the most popular format for external memory cards. Devices which support a different card have that format listed. * Listed are only products for which either the product itself or its company is notable, as shown by having a Wikipedia article (without notability notice).

Electronic-paper displays

Private label hardware

Some common hardware is resold in different national markets under various brand names. Below is the list of identical hardware: * manufacturer device name→ screen model, compatible screen models (first is better) → rebranded devices
Boeye C60
→ ED060SCE(LF), ED060SC7(LF) �
Gmini MagicBook Z6
Digma E605, DigmaE625
Boeye G6
→ ? → Amazon Kindle 2
Boeye G10
→ ED097OC4(LF) �
Amazon Kindle DX
* Hanlin V3 → ED060SC8, ED060SC9, ED060SC4(LF), LB060S02-RD01, LB060S01-RD02 → BeBook : BeBook, Koobe, Astak EZ Reader, Lbook V3, Papyre 6.1 (E1/E2) (Spain) * Hanlin V60 → ED060SC8, ED060SC9, ED060SC4(LF), LB060S02-RD01, LB060S01-RD02 or ED060SC7(LF), ED060SCE(LF) → LBook V60 (white or black)
Papyre 613 (v1 or v2)
E-Reader Onda Biblet TB600KT con WiFi e 3G, Koobe Be Free * ? → 6" → Netronix EB001, Astak Mentor EZ Reader, Cybook Gen3 (200 MHz version) * ? → 6" → Netronix EB600, Cool-er, eClicto, Elonex eBook, eSlick, Astaka Mentor EZ Reader, Cybook Gen3 (400 MHz version) * ? → 6" → Condor eGriver touch,

Medion Medion AG is a German consumer electronics company and a subsidiary of Chinese multinational technology company Lenovo. The company operates in Europe, Turkey, Asia-Pacific, the United States and Australia. The company's main products are comp ...

OYO, Prestigio PER5062B, Icarus Sense, Pandigital Novel 6" Personal eReader, Qisda QD060B00 * ? → 6" → TrekStor eBook Reader 3.0, Prestigio Nobile PER3172B * ? → ED060SC7(LF) → Papyre 601, Wexler E6003, Prology Latitude I-601, Ritmix RBK-600, Assistant AE-601, DNS Airbook EYT601, Texet TB-146 * ? → ED060SCE(LF) → Qumo Libro Basic, Woxter Paperlight 300 * ? → 6" SiPix Touchscreen display, 800x600px, 167ppi, 16 levels of grayscale → bq Movistar, bq Avant, egriver Touch (India), postitivo Alfa (Brazil), e-vrit (Israel), Papyre 6.2 (Spain).

Discontinued models

File format support

''See Comparison of e-book formats for details on the file formats.'' The most notable formats are: * .epub is a free and open e-book standard used by most e-readers. * .azw is Amazon's first proprietary e-book file format used in Kindles.

This list is missing many of the 1st and 2nd generation e-reader devices from the 1990s to 2005. This list could be expanded by adding Unicode support information for e-readers.

Other mobile text viewers

* All modern (

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, Android,

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

) smartphones, tablets and other generic computing devices have e-book reading software. * Some portable multimedia players and older phones include a text viewer, e.g. several Cowon players, including the Cowon D2 and the iAUDIO U3 and

Mobipocket Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems. The Mobipock ...

Reader for

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

OS.

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

based devices and smartphones are also usable for reading books. Palm OS supports PalmDoc, iSilo, Mobipocket reader, PDF, HTML conversion, text format, Handstory, TealDoc among many other software titles, and word processing.

References

External links

E-Reader Matrix
on MobileRead Wiki {{Ebooks Electronic paper technology

e-readers An e-reader, also called an e reader or e device, is a Mobile computing, mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and Periodical literature, periodicals. Any device that can display text on ...