One of the best ways of spending a winter evening is with a great book. Right away we imagine super cozy pictures of a person being in a comfortable position on a sofa under a warm blanket with a book in hand. However, the number of people that imagine this picture in a completely different way is growing these days – more and more people all over the world choose to read ebooks right on their computers or laptops. We can’t deny it’s highly convenient –your library takes space only on your PC, you can have as many books as you wish at your disposal, and, not forgetting, trees are saved. There are multiple ebooks that can be found online for free or for a moderate fee, while in the real world, finding a certain book might be a tricky task. The majority of electronic books are stored in ePub format, so the only thing you need to enjoy reading ebooks on a PC is an easy-to-use ePub reader that will provide you with all the needed extended features. Don’t know which program to turn to? Here is our review of the best ePub readers for Windows that can help you read ebooks on your PC in comfort.
Icecream Ebook Reader
Icecream Ebook Reader is much more than just a program that opens ePub files (and other formats like Mobi, FB2, PDF). This smart and good-looking ebook reader offers a whole set of features and advanced settings to read an ebook on a PC. Adding ePub files or whole folders containing ebooks is easy – simply drag and drop them into the program’s window to add them to the Library. Ebooks added to the Library can be sorted by recently read or formats, and they can be added to Favorites or to custom created user categories. Properties like title, author or description can be easily edited as well. In order not to lose all the added electronic books, the reading progress and properties, the Library can be imported and exported. Adding bookmarks, book search, book layout customization, color preset profiles (Day, Night and Sepia), and customizable fonts are all available within this smart ebook reader. You can also continue reading the last book from the point you previously left off, make the font smaller or bigger, and read books in a single page, double page and full screen mode. The modern-looking interface is available in over 35 languages, which is very impressive. As you can see, Icecream Ebook Reader is a great ePub reader that matches all the expectations of ebook reader software for PC.
Calibre
Calibre is a widely known ePub reader that supports plenty of other formats as well. Adding books is possible by means of the drag and drop mechanism. The Library is neatly organized, you can sort the books by their authors, languages, formats, publishers, tags, and add them to a series, which is highly convenient. Adding bookmarks, increasing/decreasing the font size, reading books in full screen and searching within a book is also available. The nice feature of Calibre is that you can highlight and copy parts of the book and paste them to the clipboard. Calibre also offers the ability to convert ebooks to other output-supported formats. As for the interface and convenience in use, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Let’s just say the grey background of the interface makes you feel nostalgic for Windows 95, and the whole appearance of this ebook reader seems rather dull. To sum everything up, Calibre is a decent ePub reader with some extended options, but the interface is a bit moody.
FBReader
FBReader is a very compact ePub reader, thus it’s very basic in its appearance and its features. Books added to the Library are displayed as a drop-down list, which is definitely highly inconvenient. As for the other features, there is a text search available for readers to search within books along with text rotation. In general, these are all the additional options FBReader offers except for opening original ePub files. The interface of this ebook reader is grey and there are no other color options to choose from. As for the formats, this electronic book reader supports some others besides an ePub, like Mobi, FB2, PDF, DjVu and some others. We can’t say that this is an uber great ebook reader, but for those who don’t need anything else except for basic book reading this might be an option. In addition to that, FBReader is one of the fastest ePub readers available.
Free ePub Reader
Remember we were saying FBReader is a compact program? Well, Free ePub Reader beats its size compact-wise, for sure. It is the smallest of all ePub readers and it takes up only 3 MB. This program does exactly what it says – it reads ePub files. There is no ability to create a Library, add bookmarks, adjust the text size or anything else. To be honest, it would be better to have a program with a nice looking interface and more features but with a bigger size rather than a teeny tiny ePub reader that offers a weak set of features through a Windows 95-ish interface design. Still, if you’re looking for an easy-to-use and compact ePub reader, then this program will be a great one for you to read electronic books.
SumatraPDF
SumatraPDF is another good old ebook reader that has a pretty basic interface and features. There’s no option to create a Library as is; you can just open several books at the same time in separate tabs. The interface is highly minimalistic, all the settings and options are available through a single menu button, and bookmarks can be added by means of a hotkey. A book can be read in Single Page, Facing or Fullscreen modes. All in all, if you’re looking for something simple, like, really simple, you can go with SumatraPDF.
Cool Reader
Cool Reader is a portable open-source ePub reader with a neat interface. The program browses for electronic book files on your computer and adds them to the Library automatically, which is rather convenient. However, you need to make sure that in the files settings there is meta data of authors, titles, and series (we only managed to find some books by their filenames). The fonts and colors of the interface, the controls and the page margins are all customizable, and there’s a night mode on the interface with reversed colors for comfortable reading in the evening. Bookmarks and navigation through content is available as well as reading in full screen mode. Cool Reader is a pretty decent ePub reader with some customization settings and basic features. Its shortcoming is the inability to organize books manually.
ePub readers we didn’t include:
Amazon Kindle for PC – You can only import PDF files from your PC to your Library. If you have ePub files, you can’t simply drag and drop them to read by means of this desktop ebook reader. You can only read ePub files if you have them connected to your Amazon profile. Plus, until you register an account or log in to your current one, you’ll be constantly asked to do so.
Nook by Barnes & Nobles – This app only works on Windows 10, so if you’re an owner of a laptop or PC with earlier Windows versions, you won’t be able to get it.
As it turned out, there are not that many ePub readers that can offer you plenty of features and a nice, modern interface at the same time. Pick the right ebook reader that will help you manage and read ePub files on a PC easily.
Isn’t it a conflict of interest for a company that sells an e-book reader to write and post an article reviewing available e-book readers? Big surprise that Ice Cream Reader is represented as the best option available !
osofine, we provide the information and the screenshots not only for Icecream Ebook Reader but for all the reviewed software. You can visually see which programs are offering advanced features and comfort in use. If you would like to offer more or better ePub readers for Windows for this post, we will consider reviewing them.
Infinity Reader is my favorite app for reading books. You can find it in GooglePlay
It supports audio, video,scripts and all EPUB3 features. The reader comes with
a free book, which contains YouTube video and you can get many more free books.