>>486895
They have backlights now, and have had them for about a decade. The division these days is between what color of backlight. Originally, they were this greeny-blue color, then they started bringing in more amber and reddish hues. Blue is bad in the dark, red is better. Eyestrain is the thing, but most phones these days offer very reasonable autostepping brightness and color temp adjustment, while reader apps have contrast modes that help with legibility. Either way, you're still looking at something for hours on end. So long as you blink often enough, that's not going to damage your eyes.
>>486785
Aight. This got me riled up, so I'll give your question the benefit of the doubt.
Outside of print, there are three modes of digital e-reader:
1. e-ink. These are the cast majority of e-readers on the market, and are the only types currently being marketed.
2. LCD. These are basically branded Android tablets that usually contain some sort of limited app store, or require you to sample from their exclusive ebook and content libraries. Little walled gardens. These are represented by your Amazon Fires, Barnes and Noble Nooks, and Kobo Arcs.
3. e-reader apps that live on your phone or tablet (or laptop).
Fair to say, it's only worth discussing e-ink readers. LCD readers were part of mid twenty-teens tablet landrush, and most got swept away by more generalized, dedicated tablets (the iPad). There's no practical reason to buy a Fire or similar tablet, unless you were interested in an ad-subsidized budget tablet.
So, e-ink:
Pro:
+ Long battery life. e-ink displays only draw power when updating. Usage cycles are generally 1-2 weeks between charges.
+ Matte, looks like paper. Readable in bright sunlight.
Con:
- Long refresh rates. Fastest e-ink screens can do a fullscreen refresh in a half second. This gets much slower in the cold.
- Comparably low pixel density.
- Generally greyscale only. Color e-ink displays do exist, but you'll need to live in Europe to find one easily (PocketBook). Onyx BOOX also has a color e-ink reader, but it's $400USD.
- Limited lifespan. It's estimated that you should get about a million refreshes from any e-ink display. So, a million pages. If you use a browser or anything that might refresh faster than you'd normally read a page, then the 10-year expected lifespan starts to get shorter very quickly.
If you need color, then your options are very limited. All will be using the Kaleido e-ink panel:
https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/here-are-all-of-the-color-e-readers-released-in-the-past-12-months
Of the selection, the two that stand out are the Onyx BOOX Nova3 Color and the Pocketbook Inkpad Color. Both have the same display, while the BOOX is much better specced with an 8-core 1.8Ghz CPU (vs. a dual core 2Ghz CPU on the Pocketbook) and 3 GB of RAM vs. the Pocketbook's 1GB. Since both are about $400USD, I'd try to source the BOOX, but be willing to settle on a Pocketbook. Be aware, when in color mode, resolution on both of these devices will be 1/3 of normal -- a screen resolution of 468x624 when in color (normally 1404x1872 in grey).
If $400 is too much to spend, fall back to a phone or tablet. You can buy a current gen baseline iPad for $330USD. If that's still too much, a Lenovo Tab M10 is in the $200USD range, while the M8 are closer to $100USD. If you absolutely must have a e-ink display, but can afford not to get color, then the Kobo Nia is $130USD. Kobo readers have a gradual price creep between models, but I'd settle on the Libra H20 being the functional minimum (at $180) due to the significantly better display, but mainly the face buttons. Changing pages on a e-ink touch panel is a fucking slog. The Libra 2 is functionally the same as a Libra H20, but it's got 32GB of storage (and a full gig of RAM as opposed to the H20's 512MB). Either way, they're all ripoffs since they no longer offer SD card expansion.