If you’re from India and you’ve been thinking of buying e-readers or e-ink tablets and monitors, then you know how frustrating and expensive it is to do so, especially for e-ink devices with Android operating systems. This is because India has put restrictions on imports from China – the origin of most e-ink products – so stores like AliExpress and Onyx Boox won’t ship to India. You actually can’t even access the aliExpress site from India; you can only do it if you use a VPN.
But while it is difficult to buy e-ink in India, it is not impossible. and in this article, I will show you the best options to go about it. So first off, the first place to check are the main online stores like Amazon India and Flikpart. You can usually get Kindles and Kobo eReaders from them while others like Remarkable, and Boox are usually available for a short period of time and at a high price.
The next best thing is foreign amazon stores such as Amazon US, UK, Japan etc. Amazon UK was what I used recently to buy the TCL NXTPaper 40 and it was a smooth experience with fast delivery (11 days in my case). Make sure the address you give them and the one on your address proof document is the same word for word. Everything including shipping charges and import duties are calculated at checkout. The tax in my case was around 45%.
The next on the list is a popular gaming store called mx2games.com which has e-ink tablets from brands like PocketBook, Kobo and, Onyx Boox and the pricing is reasonable considering the situation. I’ve scoured the web for reviews of this store and I’ve only seen positive ones. I’ve also contacted their support through WhatsApp and the response was fast and helpful. The price displayed on the site is inclusive of taxes and usually the maximum you have to pay. In some cases, it is cheaper to buy from here than from the previous stores I’ve mentioned.
eBay is another good choice; You can try their US, Canada or Spain stores, amongst others. You can find some good deals for e-ink phones there. Since the products won’t be coming from China you won’t face any problems with customs. But, shipping and import fees can be quite high. You can ask your seller to help you out by reducing the ‘price’ of the product- if you know what I mean 😉
Desertcart has a lot of e-ink products from most of the big brands. But when I tried purchasing from them a few months ago, my money was immediately returned and I got an email from them saying that they won’t ship products that have batteries. So I guess you can only buy e-ink monitors from them.
I’ve also noticed used android eReaders and Hisense e-ink phones on OLX and FaceBook Marketplace. So you can try out those sites, but make sure that the seller is near you so that you can see and test the product first before buying it. I don’t recommend purchasing anything from these two places before vefrifying the legitimacy of the device listed first.
Then there are others like Ubuy and DHgate which you can use as your last resort since the reviews I’ve seen for these sites are mixed. Also, the pricing is quite high. For example (at the time of this article) Hisense A7cc is 72000 while A9 is 92,000- which is just ridiculous.