Any ebook reader will let you cram a Beauty and the Beast-sized library’s worth of books in your pocket, but so will your phone. An ebook reader offers a more book-like reading experience, with fewer distractions and less eye strain, and many include extra features, like adjustable frontlighting. Some really are pocketable. Others are waterproof or offer physical page-turning buttons, while a few even let you take notes.
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Amazon Prime ‘free’ games for October include BioShock Remastered, Doom Eternal and A Plague Tale: Innocence
Amazon has revealed the extensive list of PC games that Prime members can snap up at no extra cost in October. It’s a very solid line up with a little something for everyone, including big hitters, killer indies and, since it’s spooky season, a cauldron full of horror games.
BioShock Remastered, Doom Eternal (one of our favorite games of 2020) and are among the most immediately recognizable names on the list. , the terrific and the icky are all perhaps worth checking out if you haven’t already done so. Nineties kids may be interested in playing , which is based on the classic animated series.
A dozen of the games are available now, including BioShock and Doom Eternal. It’s worth noting that you’ll only be able to claim the latter in regions where the Microsoft Store is available. Here’s the full list of what you can claim and when, along with the launcher you can play each game on:
Available now
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Hive Jump 2: Survivors (GOG)
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Scarf (Amazon Games App)
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Tomb Raider: Legend (GOG)
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The Eternal Cylinder (Epic Games Store)
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Spirit of the North (Epic Games Store)
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No Straight Roads (Epic Games Store)
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BioShock Remastered (GOG)
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Doom Eternal (Microsoft Store)
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DreadOut 2 (Amazon Games App)
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Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Ecto Edition (Epic Games Store)
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Priest Simulator: Vampire Show (Epic Games Store)
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The Gap (Amazon Games App)
October 17
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Mystery Box: Hidden Secrets (Legacy Games Code)
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Vlad Circus: Descend Into Madness (Amazon Games App)
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Through the Darkest of Times (Amazon Games App)
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Killing Floor 2 (Epic Games Store)
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Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol (Amazon Games App)
October 24
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Pumpkin Jack (GOG)
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The Gunk (GOG)
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Stasis: Bone Totem (Epic Games Store)
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Gargoyles Remastered (Amazon Games App)
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Monster Train (GOG)
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Morbid: The Seven Acolytes (Epic Games Store)
October 31
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A Plague Tale: Innocence (GOG)
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Death’s Door (Epic Games Store)
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Haunted Hotel: Personal Nightmare Collector’s Edition (Amazon Games App)
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Scorn (GOG)
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Coromon (GOG)
As ever, Amazon has refreshed the lineup of games that Prime members can stream on Luna at no extra cost. Fortnite and Trackmania are still in the mix, of course. Ubisoft’s arena shooter, XDefiant, is on the list along with another notable name in Alien: Isolation. Amid Evil, Valfaris, Perish, Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine, Tormented Souls, Dusk, Mortal Shell, Doomblade and Monster Harvest are the other games Prime members can stream (almost) for free in October.
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Another breach of a huge financial institution has leaked the personal information of thousands of customers to the public. reported that an unidentified hacker obtained 77,009 customers’ personal data from the asset management firm Fidelity Investments.
posted yesterday revealed that the unidentified third party obtained the information in mid-August using two phony customer accounts. It’s not yet known how these accounts were used to access customer data. Fidelity said in a letter to its customers that it discovered the breach on August 19. The letter also said that the unidentified party did not access customers’ Fidelity accounts but after Fidelity completed its review, it confirmed that customers’ personal data had been breached.
filed a second data breach notice yesterday revealing another “data security incident” of Fidelity Investments’ customer data. The notice says the unauthorized third party obtained access to “an internal database that houses images of documents pertaining to Fidelity customers” by submitting fake requests for access also on August 19. The second data breach did not provide unwanted access to any customer accounts or funds and the leaked information only “related to a small subset of Fidelity’s customers.”
If you believe your data has been obtained by unwanted parties or is part of a data leak, the Federal Trade Commission recommends putting a freeze and fraud alerts on your credit reports and personal bank and credit card accounts. You can also report any identity theft incidents at or by calling 1-877-438-4338.
David Hawley, Global Product Line Manager, HP Networking, talks about the technology and thanks the IT pros who chose HP as the 2015 Innovation Leader for Embedded Blade Server Networking.
IT Brand Pulse presented the 2015 Innovation Leader awards in twelve product categories: Bare Metal Switches, Bare Metal Switch OS, Embedded Blade Server Networking, Enterprise Ethernet NICs, Ethernet Core Switches, Ethernet Network Monitoring, Ethernet Top of Rack Switches, FCoE Switches, Layer 4-7 NFV Services Platform, SDN Monitoring, SDN Platform and SDN Enabled Switches.
Global IT professionals responded to the non-sponsored IT Brand Pulse surveys in 2015 with the Innovation Leader awards being handed out at Ethernet Technology Summit in Santa Clara, CA.
Honorees included Cisco, Cumulus Networks, Dell, HP, Intel, Microsoft, SolarWinds and VMware. Cumulus Networks and VMware were also both chosen for special recognition by the IT pros for Contributions to Innovation over the past five years (2010-2015) in Bare Metal Switches and Enterprise NFV, respectively.
IT Brand Pulse awards are the symbols for brand leadership and are selected through surveys that are independent research. These surveys–covering a wide range of products including networking, servers, and storage–measure the perceptions of IT professionals in large enterprise, medium enterprise and HPC environments. For different product categories each month, the surveys ask these respondents to choose overall market leaders, as well as leaders for price, performance, reliability, service & support, and innovation.
“The IT Brand Pulse awards reflect the judgment of major customers and key IT personnel at important data centers. They are the only awards based on the experience of those who actually buy and use the products,” said Lance Leventhal, Program Chairperson, Ethernet Technology Summit. “Regular surveys assure that the responses are recent and up-to-date. Receiving an IT Brand Pulse award shows that a company is doing the job where it really counts — in the field!”
Here is a partial select list of IT professionals who vote for the winners in our surveys: Aetna – American Airlines – AT&T – Bank of America – Blue Cross/Blue Shield – Boeing – Caterpillar – Citigroup – County of Los Angeles – Delta Airlines – Duke University – EPA – ExxonMobil – Fermilab – Ford Motor Company – General Electric – General Dynamics – General Motors – Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab – JP Morgan – Lockheed Martin – Kaiser Permanente – Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) – Lowe’s -Mattel Inc. – Morgan Stanley – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – NEC – Northrop Grumman – Omnicom – PepsiCo – Porsche Cars NA – Raytheon – REI – Shell – Verizon – Social Security Administration – Stanford University – Staples – Target – The University of Chicago – ThomsonReuters – T-Mobile – Transamerica – New York Life – UBS – UCLA – United Airlines – NASA – University of Michigan Medical School – Yale University – Universal Parks and Resort – Walmart – Xerox…and many more. .
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Large language models (LLMs) with very long context windows have been making headlines lately. The ability to cram hundreds of thousands or even millions of tokens into a single prompt unlocks many possibilities for developers.
But how well do these long-context LLMs really understand and utilize the vast amounts of information they receive?
Researchers at Google DeepMind have introduced Michelangelo, a new benchmark designed to evaluate the long-context reasoning capabilities of LLMs. Their findings, published in a new research paper, show that while current frontier models have progressed in retrieving information from large in-context data, they still struggle with tasks that require reasoning over the data structure.
The need for better long-context benchmarks
The emergence of LLMs with extremely long context windows, ranging from 128,000 to over 1 million tokens, has prompted researchers to develop new benchmarks to evaluate their capabilities. However, most of the focus has been on retrieval tasks, such as the popular “needle-in-a-haystack” evaluation, where the model is tasked with finding a specific piece of information within a large context.
“Over time, models have grown considerably more capable in long context performance,” Kiran Vodrahalli, research scientist at Google DeepMind, told VentureBeat. “For instance, the popular needle-in-a-haystack evaluation for retrieval has now been well saturated up to extremely long context lengths. Thus, it has become important to determine whether the harder tasks models are capable of solving in short context regimes are also solvable at long ranges.”
Retrieval tasks don’t necessarily reflect a model’s capacity for reasoning over the entire context. A model might be able to find a specific fact without understanding the relationships between different parts of the text. Meanwhile, existing benchmarks that evaluate a model’s ability to reason over long contexts have limitations.
“It is easy to develop long reasoning evaluations which are solvable with a combination of only using retrieval and information stored in model weights, thus ‘short-circuiting’ the test of the model’s ability to use the long-context,” Vodrahalli said.
Michelangelo
To address the limitations of current benchmarks, the researchers introduced Michelangelo, a “minimal, synthetic, and unleaked long-context reasoning evaluation for large language models.”
Michelangelo is based on the analogy of a sculptor chiseling away irrelevant pieces of marble to reveal the underlying structure. The benchmark focuses on evaluating the model’s ability to understand the relationships and structure of the information within its context window, rather than simply retrieving isolated facts.
The benchmark consists of three core tasks:
Latent list: The model must process a long sequence of operations performed on a Python list, filter out irrelevant or redundant statements, and determine the final state of the list. “Latent List measures the ability of a model to track a latent data structure’s properties over the course of a stream of code instructions,” the researchers write.
Multi-round co-reference resolution (MRCR): The model must produce parts of a long conversation between a user and an LLM. This requires the model to understand the structure of the conversation and resolve references to previous turns, even when the conversation contains confusing or distracting elements. “MRCR measures the model’s ability to understanding ordering in natural text, to distinguish between similar drafts of writing, and to reproduce a specified piece of previous context subject to adversarially difficult queries,” the researchers write.
“I don’t know” (IDK): The model is given a long story and asked to answer multiple-choice questions about it. For some questions, the context does not contain the answer, and the model must be able to recognize the limits of its knowledge and respond with “I don’t know.” “IDK measures the model’s ability to understand whether it knows what it doesn’t know based on the presented context,” the researchers write.
Latent Structure Queries
The tasks in Michelangelo are based on a novel framework called Latent Structure Queries (LSQ). LSQ provides a general approach for designing long-context reasoning evaluations that can be extended to arbitrary lengths. It can also test the model’s understanding of implicit information as opposed to retrieving simple facts. LSQ relies on synthesizing test data to avoid the pitfalls of test data leaking into the training corpus.
“By requiring the model to extract information from structures rather than values from keys (sculptures from marble rather than needles from haystacks), we can more deeply test language model context understanding beyond retrieval,” the researchers write.
LSQ has three key differences from other approaches to evaluating long-context LLMs. First, it has been explicitly designed to avoid short-circuiting flaws in evaluations that go beyond retrieval tasks. Second, it specifies a methodology for increasing task complexity and context length independently. And finally, it is general enough to capture a large range of reasoning tasks. The three tests used in Michelangelo cover code interpretation and reasoning over loosely written text.
“The goal is that long-context beyond-reasoning evaluations implemented by following LSQ will lead to fewer scenarios where a proposed evaluation reduces to solving a retrieval task,” Vodrahalli said.
Evaluating frontier models on Michelangelo
The researchers evaluated ten frontier LLMs on Michelangelo, including different variants of Gemini, GPT-4 and 4o, and Claude. They tested the models on contexts up to 1 million tokens. Gemini models performed best on MRCR, GPT models excelled on Latent List, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved the highest scores on IDK.
However, all models exhibited a significant drop in performance as the complexity of the reasoning tasks increased, suggesting that even with very long context windows, current LLMs still have room to improve in their ability to reason over large amounts of information.
“Frontier models have room to improve on all of the beyond-retrieval reasoning primitives (Latent List, MRCR, IDK) that we investigate in Michelangelo,” Vodrahalli said. “Different frontier models have different strengths and weaknesses – each class performs well on different context ranges and on different tasks. What does seem to be universal across models is the initial drop in performance on long reasoning tasks.”
The Michelangelo evaluations capture basic primitives necessary for long-context reasoning and the findings can have important implications for enterprise applications. For example, in real-world applications where the model can’t rely on its pretraining knowledge and must perform multi-hop reasoning over many disparate locations in very long contexts, Vodrahalli expects performance to drop as the context length grows.
“This is particularly true if the documents have a lot of information that is irrelevant to the task at hand, making it hard for a model to easily immediately distinguish which information is relevant or not,” Vodrahalli said. “It is also likely that models will continue to perform well on tasks where all of the relevant information to answer a question is located in one general spot in the document.”
The researchers will continue to add more evaluations to Michelangelo and hope to make them directly available so that other researchers can test their models on them.
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The 6U Wall Mount Server Rack WM6406
can be either wall-mounted or self standing.
It is great to organize your CCTV XVR, DVR, NVR or other network equipment.
it comes with a welded frame and removable side panels.
This cabinet comes standard with a lockable glass door and cable entries from the top and bottom
Product details:
6U Wall Mount Server Rack WM6606
Standard 19” Server Rack
Color: Black
H*W*D: 600*450*350mm
Material: Steel
Reinforced Tempered Front Glass
1 Internal Trays included
2 Keys included
Reinforced with hardened steel plate
2 Removable Side Panels With Key Locks
Top Open Brackets For Cable And Wire Access
Air Vents On Both Front And Side Door
Loading Capacity: 60KG
Protection: IP20
More details about this product, here:
Shopee Link: https://shopee.sg/product/467426708/13652000592/
Lazada Link: https://www.lazada.sg/products/i2076299912.html
With our growing company, we are officially available at Lazada or Shopee App! You may access this via mobile by downloading Lazada or Shopee app on Playstore (Android) or Appstore (Apple).
Visit our Lazada store: https://www.lazada.sg/shop/suntech-security/
Or our Shopee store: https://shopee.sg/suntechsecurity
Get in touch with us by calling:
+65 88680558
Or you can email us at:
suntech201705@gmail.com
Contact us in our Social Media Accounts:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/techcomengineering
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyI1frQ4_PXHggprsORr-Ng
Or visit our website for more info:
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When Swsh launched last year, the social app was initially designed as a poll game (similar to the Most Likely To game), where users can answer five daily questions with their friends.
However, the company has completely switched gears, joining a very crowded market — photo album-sharing platforms. These types of apps have existed for a little over a decade, with newer rivals including Dispo, Lapse, Sunshine, and others. But Swsh believes it can stand out by offering Gen Z-focused features.
The first feature that sticks out is the ability to filter out alcoholic beverages and Solo cups, making it a useful tool for young users (especially high school and college students) wanting to maintain a squeaky-clean image on their social media accounts. Another feature is the ability to hide certain photos. For example, if someone appears visibly intoxicated at a party or has their eyes closed, they can request to hide the photo.
Additionally, the app’s AI facial recognition tool allows users to search for photos of themselves in a sea of images. Users have to opt in to the function, and hosts can also restrict access so users can only see photos of themselves.
The app recently introduced an automatic tagging feature, allowing for easy searching. So, if a user can’t remember the name of someone who was at an event and wants to reconnect, they can simply look through the tagged names to find them. Users have individual profiles and can also create collaborative groups with all their friends.
It’s a strategic decision for Swsh to focus on targeting Gen Z, the demographic that has grown up sharing their lives online. The app also aims to tailor itself to college fraternities and sororities, assisting presidents in managing numerous events and the large volume of photos taken during these events.
In fact, the brains behind Swsh are Gen Zers themselves — Alexandra Debow (CEO), Nathan Ahn (CTO), and Weilyn Chong (COO) — so they understand the target audience well.
“We would always be asked after parties, ‘Hey, can you send the photos of me? And also, who was that cute guy?’” Debow told TechCrunch. “After every social engagement, there’s always a transaction … ‘Send me the photos.’ That is an exchange that happens. It’s this social contract thing.”
“I realized there was this strong [need] to create the best-shared photo album,” she added.
Next, Swsh plans to launch customized albums so users can add different themes for special celebrations, holidays, and concerts. There will also be “Recaps,” a collection of photos at the top of the page for users to reminisce on past events. These features will roll out later this fall.
Swsh relaunched its app in February and still has a long way to go before meeting the same level of popularity as its competitors. According to Sensor Tower estimates, the app only has around 3,093 installs. Swsh says the number of users is growing 47% month to month.
Despite the slow growth, a notable group of investors have backed the app, indicating a belief that Swsh has a promising future and can perform well among younger users.
The most recent round provided the company with $700,000 in new capital, which was led by BoxGroup with participation from Alexandra Burbey (Sound Ventures investor), Amy Moussavi (former Apple employee), David Rosenberg, Krish Jayaram (ex-director of product at Snap), and Sergei Sorokin (former VP of product at Discord), among others.
The company has raised $2.4 million to date.
I’ve been using ebook readers for nearly a decade, and I’ve gone hands-on with dozens, from the Kindle Paperwhite to lesser-known rivals like the Pocketbook Era. Whether you want something your kid can throw against the wall or a waterproof, warm-glow Kindle that won’t ruin your spa ambiance, these are the best ebook readers for everyone.
The best Kindle
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$150
Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite has a 6.8-inch E Ink display with adjustable color temperature for nighttime reading. It also boasts a fast processor, monthslong battery life, IPX8 waterproofing, and a USB-C port. Read our review.
Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.9 x .32 inches / Weight: 205 grams / Screen area and resolution: 6.8-inch screen, 300ppi resolution / Storage: 16GB / Other features: IPX8 waterproofing, Bluetooth audio support
If you mostly buy ebooks from Amazon, you’ll want a Kindle, and the 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite is the best choice for most people. Starting at $149.99, it’s cheaper than the Kobo Libra Colour — my top non-Amazon ebook reader, which I’ll dive into later — for many of the same features. Those include a large 300pi display and an adjustable warm white frontlight, which make for a clear and enjoyable reading experience. The latter also conveniently improves sleep by cutting down on blue light that interrupts melatonin production.
That warm white frontlighting is an advantage over the cool white of the $99.99 base-model Kindle, and unlike the base Kindle, the Paperwhite has IPX8 water resistance. The $189.99 Signature Edition Paperwhite also has an auto-adjusting frontlight and no lockscreen ads. It also has wireless charging, which is a rare feature to find in an e-reader.
Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, and it dominates the US ebook market, so Kindle owners have access to advantages owners of other ebook readers don’t. Much of Amazon’s hardware strategy depends on offering cut-rate discounts to pull you into its content ecosystem. If you have Prime and buy a lot of Kindle ebooks, the Paperwhite is the best choice because Amazon makes it incredibly easy to buy and read its stuff. Its ebooks and audiobooks are often on sale, and Prime members get more free content through Prime Reading. Rivals like Kobo offer sales, too, but it’s hard for them to offer discounts as steep as Amazon does.
There are downsides, though. The Paperwhite has lockscreen ads unless you pay $20 extra to get rid of them. It’s also too big to hold comfortably with one hand. Perhaps the Kindle Paperwhite’s biggest flaw, though — which it shares with all Kindles aside from Fire tablets — is that it’s not easy to read books purchased outside of Amazon’s store. Kindle ebook formats are proprietary and only work on Kindle. Unlike Kobo and other ebook readers, Kindles don’t support EPUB files, an open file format used by pretty much everyone except Amazon. So, for example, if you often shop from Kobo’s bookstore (or Barnes & Noble or Google Play Books or many other ebook stores), you can’t easily read those books on a Kindle without using a workaround. There are ways to convert and transfer file formats so you can read on the Kindle and vice versa, but it’ll take a couple of extra steps.
However, if you don’t buy your books elsewhere or you don’t mind shopping from Amazon, you’ll be more than happy with the Kindle Paperwhite.
The best non-Amazon ebook reader
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$220
The Kobo Libra Colour is a color e-reader with physical page-turning buttons and a 7-inch E Ink display. It also boasts IPX8 waterproofing and compatibility with the Kobo Stylus 2.
Dimensions: 5.69 x 6.34 x 0.33 inches / Weight: 199.5 grams / Screen area and resolution: 7-inch screen, 300ppi (black-and-white), 150ppi (color) / Storage: 32GB / Other features: Physical page-turning buttons, waterproofing, Kobo Stylus 2 support, Bluetooth audio support
The Kobo Libra Colour is an excellent alternative to Amazon’s ebook readers, especially for readers outside the US or anyone who doesn’t want to tap into Amazon’s ecosystem. Kobo’s latest slate offers many of the standout features found on the 11th-gen Kindle Paperwhite — including waterproofing, USB-C support, and a 300ppi display — along with a few perks that make it more helpful and enjoyable to use.
The color display is the most obvious. The Libra Colour uses E Ink’s latest Kaledio color screen technology, which provides soothing, pastel-like hues that still pop in direct sunlight. It’s not as sharp as reading in monochrome — the resolution drops to 150ppi when viewing content in color — but it’s a nice touch that makes viewing a wider range of content more pleasant. Book covers and comics, while still muted, have an added layer of depth, even if the colors are nowhere near as vivid as that of a traditional LED tablet.
Additionally, the Libra Colour works with the Kobo Stylus 2 (sold separately), which means you can highlight text with various colors or take notes using Kobo’s integrated notebooks. You can also take advantage of some of the more advanced capabilities found in the Kobo Elipsa 2E, allowing you to solve math equations, convert handwriting into typed text, and insert diagrams. This lets the Libra Colour function as a mini notebook of sorts, though I wouldn’t use it as a primary note-taking device since the seven-inch display can feel cramped to write on.
The color display is only part of the appeal, though. The Libra Colour also lacks lockscreen ads — unlike the base Paperwhite — and packs physical page-turning buttons, which feel more intuitive to use than tapping either side of the display. The speedy e-reader also supports more file formats, including EPUB files, and makes it much easier to borrow books from the Overdrive library system. Native support for Pocket, meanwhile, means you can read your articles offline if you’re someone who uses the long-standing bookmarking app.
However, at $219.99, the Libra Colour costs $70 more than the entry-level Paperwhite — and that’s without Kobo’s $69.99 stylus, which is required for performing certain tasks. That gap widens further when the Paperwhite is on sale, which it regularly is. There’s also the fact that the Kobo can’t easily tap into Amazon’s vast library of ebooks, which can be frustrating if you’ve amassed a collection of Kindle titles over the years. It can be done, but you have to convert file formats using third-party apps, which is tricky and can take time.
But if those things don’t matter or apply to you, the Kobo Libra Colour will give you the best digital reading experience of all the e-readers on our list. It’s my personal favorite, if nothing else.
The best cheap ebook reader
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$100
Amazon’s new entry-level Kindle is essentially the budget-friendly six-inch version of the Kindle Paperwhite. It lacks waterproofing but otherwise is similar, with the same sharp display and USB-C support.
Dimensions: 6.2 x 4.3 x 0.32 inches / Weight: 158 grams / Screen area and resolution: 6-inch screen, 300ppi resolution / Storage: 16GB / Other features: USB-C support, Bluetooth audio support
The base-model Kindle ($99.99 with ads) is the best cheap ebook reader. Its 300ppi resolution makes text clearer and easier to read than the lower-resolution screens on other ebook readers in its price range. Plus, it even has USB-C for relatively fast charging.
Reading on its six-inch screen feels a little more cramped than it does on the larger displays of the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Libra Colour. However, the flip side is that its small size makes it pocketable, light, and easy for small hands to hold. Combined with its relatively affordable price, the Kindle is also the best ebook reader for kids — especially in the kids version Amazon sells for $20 more. It shares the same exact specs but is ad-free with parental controls, a two-year extended replacement guarantee, and a case. It also comes with one year of Amazon Kids Plus, which grants kids access to thousands of kids books and audiobooks for free. After that, though, you’ll have to pay $79 per year.
The base Kindle doesn’t have extra conveniences like the physical page-turning buttons found on Barnes & Noble’s entry-level e-reader, the Nook GlowLight 4e. However, you do get something more important: snappier responses. On most of the other entry-level ebook readers I tested, including the GlowLight 4e, I had to wait a few seconds after tapping the screen for the page to turn. The Kindle, in comparison, offered no perceptive lag.
There are other tradeoffs. There’s no water resistance, unlike the Paperwhite, and battery life is good, but it’ll last you three weeks tops — not months, like the Paperwhite. And because it’s an Amazon ebook reader, you’re also locked into the Amazon ecosystem and have to pay extra to get rid of ads. But if you can do without all of that, the Kindle delivers the essentials for under $100.
That being said, it’s worth noting that Amazon may announce a refreshed Kindle any day now. According to rumors, the updated model will continue to offer the same six-inch, 300ppi screen but with brighter backlighting and improved contrast levels. It will also supposedly offer a new dark mode and faster page turns; however, there’s no word on whether we’ll see more significant improvements.
The best ebook reader for taking notes
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$400
The Kobo Elipsa 2E is an ad-free 10.3-inch e-reader you can write on with the included stylus. It offers a whole host of useful features, like the ability to convert handwriting to typed text and a great selection of pen types.
Dimensions: 7.6 x 8.94 x 0.30 inches / Weight: 390 grams / Screen area and resolution: 10.3-inches, 227ppi resolution / Storage: 32GB / Other features: Handwriting to text conversion, magnetic stylus, Bluetooth audio support
Of all the large ebook readers I tested, the Kobo Elipsa 2E stood out the most because of its excellent note-taking abilities. You can directly write on pages, and the notes will not disappear, which makes for a more intuitive note-taking experience than the Kindle Scribe, which only supports on-page notes on select Kindle titles. Otherwise, you’re limited to making annotations on cards that are like disappearing sticky notes.
You can also sync your notes with Dropbox or view them online, and Kobo can even convert handwriting to typed text. Amazon rolled out a similar capability for the Kindle Scribe, but it can only convert handwriting to typed text when you export notebooks and not as accurately. By contrast, Kobo lets you convert your handwriting not just while exporting but also from within a notebook itself.
1/2
The Elipsa 2E also offers other helpful note-taking tools. Like the Kobo Libra Colour, it’s capable, for example, of solving math equations for you. You can also insert diagrams and drawings, and it’ll automatically snap them into something that looks cleaner and nicer. There’s also a great selection of pen types and ink shades.
True, the Kindle Scribe starts at $60 less, but the Kobo Elipsa 2E comes with twice the storage. You can step up to the 32GB Kindle Scribe if you want the same storage capacity, but that puts it at essentially the same price as the Kobo. I recommend just forking out the money on the Elipsa 2E instead.
1/2
Note-taking capabilities aside, the Kobo Elipsa 2E is also a good e-reader, but it comes with the same strengths and weaknesses as other Kobo e-readers. There’s support for a wide range of file formats, but you can’t easily read Kindle books without converting them first. Its 227ppi display is also slightly less sharp than the 300ppi screen found on the Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Libra Colour. However, the 10.3-inch screen does balance things out a bit and makes text easier to read, so it’s not really a noticeable drawback.
Other ebook readers that didn’t make the cut
There are some other ebook readers I tested that I didn’t feature above but are still worth highlighting. Here are the most notable:
If you’re looking for a non-Amazon alternative that’s more affordable than the Kobo Libra Colour, the new Kobo Clara Colour — the successor to the Kobo Clara 2E — is worth a look. At $149.99, the ad-free e-reader costs more than the Kobo Clara 2E (which you can still buy), but I think it’s worth the extra $10. It continues to offer the same six-inch display and IPX8 waterproof design, but the e-reader now offers color. Plus, it’s noticeably faster — something I was happy to see, considering the occasional lag on the Clara 2E sometimes got on my nerves. You don’t get the Clara Colour’s physical buttons or stylus support, but that’s a fair tradeoff at this price point.
The $379 Onyx Boox Go 10.3 is another ad-free ebook reader you can use to take notes. It’s excellent as a note-taking device, and it offers an impressively wide range of writing tools and more prebuilt notebook templates than Kobo’s Elipsa 2E. Jotting down notes using the built-in notebook felt more akin to writing on paper as well, and its slim design makes the device feel more like a traditional notebook. Like all Boox devices, it also provides quick access to the Google Play Store, so you can download multiple reading apps — including both Kindle and Kobo apps. The slate’s crisp 300ppi display is sharper than that of the Kobo Elipsa 2E, too, which is a plus.
However, in comparison to the easy-to-use Elipsa 2E, the Go 10.3 lacks a front light and comes with a steeper learning curve. Notes you take on a Kindle or Kobo device won’t transfer over (and vice versa), and you can’t annotate books in either app using the Boox. I also felt like access to Google Play can be a double-edged sword as it grants easy access to distracting apps, including games, streaming services, and TikTok. It’s too slow to use the latter, but it’s fast and comfortable enough that I found myself playing around with the Word Search app far too often. For me personally, I need my e-reader to be devoid of such distractions — it’s one of the biggest things that distinguishes it from a tablet, after all. But if you’ve got more self-control than I do, the Go 10.3 could be worth a look.
In 2023, Barnes and Noble released the new Nook Glowlight 4 Plus. If you own a lot of digital books from Barnes and Noble, this could be a good Kindle alternative. Otherwise, I’d still recommend the Kobo Libra Colour to everybody else. The $199.99 Nook Glowlight 4 Plus is a good e-reader with a lot to offer, including a lovely 300ppi screen, waterproofing, physical page-turning buttons, and even a headphone jack. However, it’s just not as snappy, which makes setting it up, buying books from the device itself, and navigating the interface a slow ordeal. It didn’t help that the screen sometimes froze, too, which meant I had to restart the device while in the middle of a book.
Kindle Oasis
Finally, I didn’t mention the Kindle Oasis, which has physical page-turning buttons, a larger screen, and was considered a high-end device when it launched in 2019. Amazon no longer lists the aging e-reader in its official Kindle lineup, however, and it lacks some features even the base model offers, including USB-C. That makes it less appealing at $249.99 — that is, assuming you can even find it in stock. If you’re willing to pay that much for a high-end reader, I’d take a look at the Kobo Libra Colour instead.
What I’m currently testing
I’ve just gotten my hands on the following e-readers from Boox: the Go Color 7 and pint-sized Palma. I’ve yet to test them, though my colleague David Pierce is a big fan of the $280 Boox Palma after spending some time with it. The smartphone-sized, 6.1-inch ebook reader runs on Android and, like the Boox Go 10.3, comes with the Google Play Store. That means you can download a wide selection of apps, from Amazon’s own Kindle app to various note-taking apps. That said, it’s too slow (and small) to really use apps that could be distracting, like TikTok or Instagram, so you probably don’t need to worry about losing focus or distractions in the same you would with a tablet or a more capable device. I’m curious to see how it holds up against other e-readers I’ve used, even if I haven’t tested many small-screen models.
Update, October 10th: Updated pricing and availability, and removed a note about Amazon’s October Prime Day event.
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