How to Read Faster on Kindle and E-Readers

Kindle and other e-readers are where a lot of serious reading now happens. They're portable, adjustable, and come with instant dictionary lookup and highlights that sync across devices. But their tools for reading faster are limited, and knowing what the device can and can't do is the first step to reading on it more efficiently.

New to speed reading? Start with our complete guide to speed reading, then come back for Kindle-specific settings.

What Kindle actually offers for reading speed

Margins and line spacing: Margin width sets line length. Narrower margins give longer lines, with fewer return sweeps to the start of the next line; wider margins give shorter lines that some people find easier to track. Line length mainly affects comfort — its effect on reading speed is small — so test both settings over a full session and keep whichever feels easier.

Font options: Kindle offers several fonts. For ordinary serif and sans-serif fonts at normal sizes, research suggests differences in reading speed are small. Dyslexia-friendly fonts (such as Kindle's OpenDyslexic option) help some readers with dyslexia but don't generally speed up typical reading.

Word Wise: Word Wise shows short definitions above harder words. It's useful for building vocabulary and for reading in a second language, but the extra text above the line can slow fluent readers down. Turn it on for books that stretch you, and off for everything else.

X-Ray: X-Ray gives background on characters, places and terms in a book. Skimming it before you start a long novel with a big cast is a quick way to build the background knowledge that makes reading smoother — familiar names and context take less effort to process.

Whispersync and Audible narration: On supported titles, you can listen to the audiobook while following the text, and speed the narration up. Some readers find this useful for re-reading familiar material. It's a form of guided reading — the narration sets your pace — rather than RSVP.

Kindle app vs Kindle e-ink devices

Where you read changes what's practical.

E-ink Kindles are comfortable for long sessions and easy to read in bright light. The trade-off is the page turn: e-ink screens redraw more slowly than phone or tablet screens, and faint traces of the previous page ("ghosting") can linger. The device's page-refresh setting clears ghosting with a brief flash on every turn — cleaner text, but a slightly more noticeable interruption. If page turns break your rhythm, a slightly smaller font fits more text per page and means fewer turns.

The Kindle app (iOS and Android) turns pages instantly, and also offers a continuous scrolling option that removes page turns altogether, which suits a steady forward pace. The downside of reading on a phone or tablet is distraction: notifications are one swipe away. If you use the app, turn on Do Not Disturb before a reading session.

Kindle settings for faster reading

These settings make reading on Kindle faster and more comfortable to sustain:

1. Font: any clear, familiar font. Bookerly, Kindle's default, is designed for screens. Avoid decorative fonts.
2. Font size: medium — large enough to avoid eye strain, small enough that you aren't turning pages every few seconds.
3. Line spacing: medium to large. More space between lines reduces visual crowding and makes it easier to land on the right line after a return sweep.
4. Margins: start with the default, then try one step narrower and one step wider. Line length mostly affects comfort, so keep whichever you can read longest without fatigue.
5. Dark mode: in low light, many people find light text on a dark background more comfortable. Use whichever mode feels better in your lighting; there's no strong evidence that either one is faster.
6. Reading progress: set the progress display to "Time left in chapter". It's estimated from your own reading pace, which makes it a handy pace check (see the routine below).

These are comfort and consistency changes, and the speed gains from them on their own are modest. Bigger changes in reading speed come from technique.

Technique adaptations for e-reading

Use the progress display as a pacing tool: Kindle can show your progress as a percentage, a location or a time estimate. Setting a target before you start — "I'll finish this chapter" or "I'll reach 40%" — gives each session a clear finishing point and makes it easier to stay on task.

Highlight selectively, and add a note: Kindle makes it very easy to highlight large chunks of text. On its own, highlighting does little for retention — a large review of study techniques rated it as low utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Adding a short note in your own words to each highlight makes you process the idea rather than just mark it.

Use the built-in dictionary sparingly: looking up every unfamiliar word breaks your flow. Instead, highlight the word and look it up after the session. You keep your momentum and do all your vocabulary review in one go.

Export highlights for retrieval practice: your Kindle highlights and notes are collected in the Kindle Notebook (read.amazon.com/notebook), where you can review and export them. Turning them into questions — reading each highlight and trying to recall the context before checking — turns passive highlighting into active review. Paste the best ones into our flashcard tool to review them on a spaced schedule.

A 15-minute Kindle speed reading routine

A short, repeatable session is the easiest way to read faster on Kindle without losing track of how much you're understanding:

1. Baseline (3 minutes): take the reading speed test to get your current words per minute and a comprehension score. You only need to do this every week or two.
2. Settings (1 minute): check your font, line spacing and margins from the list above, switch on Do Not Disturb if you're using the app, and set the progress display to "Time left in chapter".
3. Timed reading (10 minutes): note the "time left in chapter" figure, then read for 10 minutes at a pace slightly faster than comfortable, keeping your eyes moving forward and saving dictionary lookups for later. Afterwards, compare how far the estimate has dropped with the time you spent; as your pace picks up, it should fall faster than the clock.
4. Check (1 minute): without looking back, sum up what you just read in two or three sentences. If you can't, slow down next time — speed without comprehension isn't progress.

For a structured plan to go alongside this routine, our free speed reading course takes you through regressions, RSVP and daily practice in five short lessons.

Where Kindle falls short

Kindle doesn't support RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation), which shows words one at a time at a pace you set. That's its biggest limitation for anyone who wants to train their reading pace. For how RSVP works, and when it helps or hurts comprehension, see RSVP Reading Explained.

To use RSVP with ebook content, you'll need a separate tool:

• Paste text you have access to into the RSVP reader
• Open your own DRM-free files (PDF, EPUB or DOCX) in the reader
• Use browser-based RSVP extensions for web articles

Most Kindle Store books are DRM-protected, so they can't be opened outside Kindle apps. For public domain classics (Austen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Homer), you don't need your Kindle copy at all — warpread.app's free library already includes the full texts, ready to read at RSVP speed.

Screen vs. paper: does it matter for speed?

Research comparing screens and paper has found small advantages for paper on comprehension tests, especially for longer texts (Mangen et al., 2013; Singer & Alexander, 2017). The effect is modest, isn't found in every study, and tends to shrink when readers are used to reading on screens.

For practical purposes: read in the format you'll actually stick with. Someone who reads for 30 minutes a day on a Kindle makes far more progress than someone who insists on paper but only reads when they can settle down with a physical book. Consistency matters more than the medium.

The exception is very dense, argument-heavy material, where some readers find the physical position of text on a printed page helps them keep track of where they are. For narrative fiction and most non-fiction, the difference between formats is small.

Read at your ideal speed on warpread.app — free, no account needed

References

• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.
• Mangen, A., Walgermo, B.R., & Brønnick, K. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen. International Journal of Educational Research, 58, 61–68.
• Singer, L.M., & Alexander, P.A. (2017). Reading on paper and digitally: What the past decades of empirical research reveal. Review of Educational Research, 87(6), 1007–1041.
• Rayner, K., et al. (2016). So Much to Read, So Little Time. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34.
• Benedetto, S., et al. (2013). E-readers and Visual Fatigue. PLOS ONE, 8(12), e83676.

Worth knowing your starting point before any of this: the reading speed test gives you a WPM figure and a comprehension score in about three minutes.