For almost twenty years, I’ve been an Amazon Kindle evangelist. My journey into e-reading began the day the very first Kindle was released, with its quirky “Next Page” and “Prev Page” controls and the odd “fern pattern” keyboard. Since that initial purchase, I’ve owned a parade of Kindles: the Kindle 3, the Kindle Touch, multiple Paperwhites, the Kindle Scribe, and the new Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition. Each upgrade solidified my loyalty.

Our house once bulged with bookshelves, and I’d often pack an entire stack of hard copy books for vacations, unable to choose just one. But the allure of having my entire library at my fingertips eventually pulled me away from print books entirely. I even re-bought beloved hardbacks in ebook format. Since 2007, I’ve poured nearly $10,000 into Amazon’s ecosystem, acquiring over 1,000 ebooks and converting countless friends and family to the Kindle way of life.

I love how my reading progress remains (pretty much) perfectly synced on my Scribe, my Paperwhite, my Colorsoft, and the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. I depend on the frictionless syncing of my notes and highlights (via Readwise) with Obsidian, my preferred note-making app. In short: I love my Kindles.

But then, this year, Amazon made two greedy moves: blocking customers’ ability to download legitimately purchased books to their own computers … and limiting customers’ ability to side load (or import from a computer) books purchased elsewhere.

In addition to making it harder for customers to administer the content on their Kindles themselves, this change makes users more dependent on Amazon than ever. If you leave Amazon or lose access to your account, you’ll lose access to your Kindle books. And while Amazon has long been able to yank books off your Kindle without your permission, under this arrangement, you have no way to put those books back.

It was this creeping level of corporate control that finally pushed me to ask: Could I finally break up with Amazon?

Three Harsh 3rd-Party eReader Realities

From a distance, the world of third party e-readers looks like a paradise. So much choice! So many form factors! So much flexibility! Once I immersed myself in it, though, that world felt like going to a party and more like going to work.

First, if you’re used to Amazon’s ecosystem, you’re in for a shock. I hate to say it, but Kindle hardware, with its crisp screens, incredible battery life, and sturdy build, is best of class. And while Kindle software isn’t highly customizable, it’s remarkably stable; bugs and crashes are rare. The process of syncing reading progress, notes, and notebooks is mostly rock-solid.

None of these “givens” apply consistently to the Kindle’s competition. While some are elegantly designed, the hardware ranges from fragile to flimsy. Software is buggy. And while schemes exist for syncing reading progress, highlights, and notes across third party devices, for me, none of them has been as reliable and automatic as Kindle’s Whispersync service.

Second, if reading is your priority, you’re better off with devices made for e-reading than with tablets that can support e-reading. The market is flooded with e-ink tablets, from the reMarkable to various Android-based devices like those from BOOX or Viwoods. Many of these, like the reMarkable tablets, are optimized for handwritten notes, making the ebook reading experience clunky and limited. A stunning majority of these lack crucial features like frontlights, ruling out reading in low-light conditions.

Android tablets, while offering the flexibility to install various e-reader apps, demand endless tweaking of fonts and refresh modes to achieve a decent reading experience — a chore that reminded me of bygone days configuring early Windows operating systems. Worse, some features — like BOOX Google Drive sync — never worked. (After hours wasted on troubleshooting, I found this was a common complaint that, as of this writing, remains unaddressed by BOOX.)

Third, if you’re used to “just reading” on a Kindle, prepare to become a library administrator. Escaping Amazon means finding other sources for ebooks. Very few vendors sell ebooks you can read anytime, anywhere, on any device. Some sources (like ebooks.com) sell books readable only through web interfaces or proprietary apps. Books protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) might not open on your chosen e-reader unless you navigate the legal and technical hurdles of stripping DRM away. And with any sizeable ebook collection, you’ll need robust library management software like Calibre to shuttle books onto and off your device. Managing Calbre’s arcane settings and databases can easily turn library management into a second job.

Live and Learn

None of these hard-won insights, though, were obvious to me at first.

I tried the Kobo Libra Colour, initially returning it because its screen looked murky compared to my Kindle Paperwhite, a side effect of its layered color filter. I then explored reMarkable tablets, both black-and-white and color, appreciating their gorgeous design and excellent writing feel, but their complete lack of frontlights and clunky reading experience were immediate dealbreakers. (I’m a bit of a vampire, more likely to be reading in a dark bedroom than in bright sunlight.)

Next came the Android wave: a BOOX Page, a BOOX Go Color 7, and a Viwoods AiPaper. While these offered the promise of installing any app, they delivered a frustrating experience of constant configuration and frequent crashes. The Viwoods screen was impressive, but getting books onto the device and managing them remained a constant battle … and the device was useless in low light.

Out of sheer curiosity, I revisited the Kobo Libra Colour. Knowing what to expect from color e-ink this time, I appreciated its physical page-turn buttons, good frontlight, and comfortable feel. It was close. But Kobo’s fatal flaw for me was its syncing: it only syncs books purchased directly from Kobo. Sideloaded books don’t sync, so my reading progress in any books legally acquired through other vendors won’t synch with other Kobo devices (like the Elipsa 2E I’ve considered as a replacement for my Scribe) or the Kobo app on my phone. For me, that’s a dealbreaker. I want my reading progress to carry over, no matter where I bought a book.

(I should note here that both Kindles and Kobos can be “jailbroken,” introducing alternative reader software and third-party methods of syncing reading progress and notes. Some people assure me this is easy, but a little Googling around reveals a lot of folks asking for help with malfunctioning or bricked devices. And even when jailbreaks are successful, there’s a chance the parent company will push updates that will put the device right back in jail.)

The hard truth is this: as much as I resent Amazon right now, their hardware is still best in class. Their syncing is unbeatable. Their reading experience is frictionless. And “Send to Kindle” still works well enough that I can buy books elsewhere and read them on my Kindle devices.

The Saddest Realization of All

I am a very, very specific kind of e-reader user. I want an e-ink device with:

• long battery life,
• a front light for reading in a wide variety of lighting conditions
• the highest resolution, highest contrast screen on the market
• a low, balanced weight to maximize comfort over long reading sessions
• flexible, robust library management
• no ads
• a couple of choices in form factors (i.e., “small” vs. “large’).

As far as services go, I want:

• rock-solid syncing of reading progress across devices
• universal access to my entire library
• wireless summoning of any book in that library
• display of a book regardless of where I purchase it
• frictionless exporting of highlights and notes via Readwise to Obsidian
• confidence that my library will remain mine.

I don’t care about handwritten notes. I don’t want to run a lot of other apps. I’m not interested in tweaking settings for hours to get just the right look and feel. I don’t want a part-time job as an e-librarian, managing my collection in a database and porting books over to my e-reader over a cable.

Apparently, that’s too much to ask for — because what I want doesn’t exist. The Kindle Paperwhite and Scribe come closest … but even they don’t offer robust library management, zero ads, or confidence that my library will remain mine. (And DRM schemes prevent devices from any maker from displaying books regardless of source … but that’s another post for another time.)

I really wanted to find a great alternative to the Kindle. I didn’t want to keep supporting a company with customer-hostile policies. But for now, as someone who just wants the best possible reading experience, I have no better choice than to stick with Amazon’s Kindle hardware (and, as much as possible, purchase my books elsewhere).