In August 2019, Microsoft posted a new support page for the Edge Browser and announced the killing of EPUB support: "Microsoft Edge will no longer support e-books that use the .epub file extension. Visit the Microsoft Store to see our recommended .ePub apps." Frankly speaking, Edge was a terrific ebook reader for Windows. Now there is no way for us to read EPUB with Edge, thus it's high time to find an alternative EPUB reader for Windows. What are the best EPUB Readers for Windows? Here is the top list for you.
One important thing to be mentioned is that a lot of EPUB files (such as Kobo, Google Play, Nook ebooks) are protected by DRM. If you want to read such DRM-protected EPUB books with any reading EPUB readers, you have to remove the DRM from the EPUB files at first. In this place, Epubor Ultimate is the tool you need.
1. Epubor Reader
Epubor Reader, I think, is the most beautifully designed ebook reader with really powerful functions in a user-friendly interface. It supports multiple ebook formats, including EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, PRC, TXT, HTMLZ, etc. It offers you a fully customizable reading experience and enables you to view, organize and manage all your ebooks in all kind of formats in a single library. What an excellenent place to manage all your ebooks.
Pros:
1. Supports multiple ebook formats including EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, PRC, TXT, HTMLZ, etc.
2. Much beautifully designed and user-friendly interface.
3. Change font size and background colors.
4. Switch reading mode between horizontal and vertical scrolling.
Cons:
1. No native support for reading DRM-protected books.
2. Calibre
Calibre is a cross-platform free and open-source suite of ebook software, which is the top priority for you to read EPUB books on Windows. Besides EPUB ebook reading, Calibre supports editing, creating, and converting ebooks with a wide variety of other ebook formats. Also, Calibre makes it rather simple to transfer books between your desktop machine and any ereaders you own-either wirelessly or via a USB cable. Like other free epub readers, Calibre won’t let you read DRM-protected books natively, which might be the only real drawback here.
Pros:
1. A one-stop solution for all your ebook needs--ebook reading, library management, ebook metadata editing and ebook conversion.
2. E-books can be uploaded to the library via manual loading and wirelessly syncing from the cloud storage service.
Cons:
1. No native support for reading DRM-protected epub books.
2. Crowded interface.
3. Customization options for font type, night mode and background color are not available.
3. Adobe Digital Editions
Along with the desktop application, Adobe has worked closely with many E-Ink reader manufacturers so that Adobe Digital Editions is used as the default rendering engine for many EPUB files. ADE has all the regular features including highlighting, adding notes and bookmarking. A much great function that's really helpful is we can create custom bookshelves to manage our book collections neatly. The most important feature deserves to be mentioned is that ADE even supports DRM-protected EPUB and PDF books.
Pros:
1. Pleasant and easy interface.
2. Support DRM-protected books with ADE DRM that's used by some popular online ebook stores, like Kobo, Google Play, Sony.
Cons:
1. It frequently freezes and crashes.
2. Slow and choppy page scrolling.
4. Neat Reader
Neat Reader is a cross-platform EPUB reader that will save all your EPUB books in the cloud. It's available for free on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire. Still, it provides a wonderful online EPUB Reader, which means you don't need to download and install the desktop software. Just visit the site on the browser and you can read your epub book online. The free version can satisfy your basic needs for epub ebook reading. You can also get premium version which gives you cloud storage, sync and some other customizable features.
Pros:
1. Elegant and modern design.
2. It allows you to conveniently highlight, add notes and bookmark.
3. Premium version supports cloud service. It syncs books automatically and you can access them on the cloud from any device.
4. Premium version allows you to customize reading, including theme, page-turning mode, font-size, text-style adjustment.
Cons:
1. It's not free to get the premium version, which costs $19.99/year.
2. No support for DRM-protected books.
3. Only support ebooks in epub format.
5. Freda (Windows 8 & 10 App)
Freda is another free program for reading EPUB on Windows 8/10. Its uniqueness lies in that it offers all premium features for free, even including Text to Speech and auto-scroll and speed-reading, that are not supported by many other free EPUB readers for Windows. Freda can get books from online catalogs like Feedbooks, Smashwords and the Gutenberg Project, and can also download books from any website and from email attachments. Or if you have an existing book collection, you can import your books from OneDrive, Dropbox and Calibre.
Pros:
1. Supports Text to Speech, speed-reading and auto-scroll for free.
2. Offers many options for customizing text appearance and layout.
3. Provides access to online catalogs (Feedbooks, Smashwords,...) plus OneDrive, Dropbox and Calibre.
4. Lets you create and export bookmarks, highlighting and annotations.
Cons:
1. No support for reading DRM-protected books.
2. Contains ads.
3. Only available for Windows 8 and Windows 10.
Conclusion
These are the best 5 EPUB Readers for Windows I want to share with you today. All of them have their own pros and cons. But there is one powerful tool that can overcome the common weakness these EPUB readers have, that is the lack of support for reading DRM-protected books. The tool to be mentioned is Epubor Ultimate, which allows you to strip DRM from Kindle/Kobo/Google Play and more, and convert the ebook formats to EPUB/PDF/TXT/Mobi so that you can read your ebooks anywhere you want. Trust me Epubor Ultimate can meet all of your demands for decrypting ebooks.
Michelle loves technology & reading very much. She seeks the methods to enjoy eBooks and audiobooks more freely and wants to share everything new she has got with you.
“Crowded interface” ? I don’t understand why you say Calibre has a crowded interface. The only reason the pic you chose looks crowded is because you have both the ‘Tag Browser’ and ‘Book Details’ panes open (which you can toggle open/close with one click). Also you are seeing the books in list mode. Calibre has a book Cover Grid mode that again you can toggle with one click. If you wish it you can see only the covers too. No toolbars, etc. You can customize the toolbars to show only what you want to show. And so on…
“Customization options for font type, night mode and background color are not available” ? YES, they ARE available. You can change the font of not only the eReader app that comes with Calibre, but also of the interface itself.
With Calibre you can customize EVERYTHING. You can convert ebook formats if you wish. You can create you own ebooks. You can do tons of things or, if you are like me, not much at all. You can have multiple libraries if you wish to separate your ebooks into categories. Or you can use Virtual Libraries while keeping all your ebooks in one place (one library). And so on and so forth.
I'm sorry, but the cons you mention do not exist.
Additional aspects of these programs I wish you could have included are whether these programs
- have or can be added to a server
- import one's existing books into their own database structure.
so I would add that as a "Con" item, Calibre necessarily takes every book you want to add to it and duplicates it in it's own database. For me, this is a dealbreaker for Calibre, even though I think it's a good program.
I just want only the reader! He doesn't need to know anything else besides reading!