PocketBook Verta and Verta Color: €169 E-Readers With Swappable Backs

Kindle has a colourful new rival. PocketBook announced the Verta and Verta Color on October 5, 2026 and is showing them at the Frankfurt Book Fair (October 7–11). Their party trick: interchangeable back panels, sold separately in several colours.

Two screens

• Verta: 6-inch E Ink Carta 1300 greyscale, 1072×1448, 300 ppi, in Obsidian Black
• Verta Color: 6-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 with 4,096 colours, in Dark Brown; colour content is shown at lower resolution (536×724, per TechRadar)

Shared features

• Back panels in five colours: black, white, red, brown and yellow (Gizmodo)
• SMARTlight with adjustable brightness and colour temperature, dark mode
• Bluetooth for audiobooks, text-to-speech
• IPX4 splash protection, physical page-turn buttons
• Up to two months of battery (1,500 mAh), 16GB storage, 1GB RAM, no microSD slot
• 25 formats, Adobe DRM and LCP DRM; built-in Libby (OverDrive) and Onleihe library lending; PocketBook Cloud sync

Price and availability

From November 2026: €169 for the Verta, €179 for the Verta Color (PocketBook). TechRadar lists £159 and £169 in the UK. PocketBook also launched the InkPad Eo 2, a 10.3-inch colour E Ink note-taker, at €439.

Rocks take

A colour e-reader under €200 with library lending built in is an easy pick for comics and kids’ books. Real-world contrast of the Kaleido 3 screen is what we will check first.