Exactly! That was my problem as well. When I decided I wanted an ebook reader I started looking into them and felt like diving into a rabbit hole since I always try to be really informed about expensive purchases and there are so many options and features to consider...

I bought Tolino Vision Color (Kobo ereader hardware, but a German market name for it and apparently bit different UI).

Why: In the end I settled with what I could buy locally, is nice to hold while laying in bed, has enough storage space to hold a lot of ebooks (unfortunately I didn't get one with an actual SD card, mine is soldered onto the board), seems to be somewhat "hackable" if need be and has color/a lot of supported file formats (wanted to be able to read comics with color).

Now I know it has some features I consider unnecessary for me (stylus pen support, bluetooth for bluetooth headphones and support for audiobooks, and stupid fixed shop toolbar button that is locked to your vendor, tolino cloud feature, web browser.. etc) and I could have went cheaper and still be happy, but wanting to buy it locally from a store was in the end what limited my selection.

There were other, cheaper Tolinos but this one was not too small or big, and was actually nice to hold due to the grip space on the right. I also waited quite awhile for a sale in my local bookstore to buy it and was able to get 30% off which was close enough to the one-step-cheaper-version.

There is so much more but I think you already know that :D

I've been really happy with mine! But one important note though: I noticed that my version has a "experimental feature": a web browser. Atleast on the stock OS the browser is ... not optimal. I didn't expect much, I was surprised I could browse lemmy and news but lack of adblock makes the experience on any other site terrible and you know e-ink displays are just not great for dynamic content.

I wish you luck on finding an ebook reader for yourself. Like you said, there's too many things to consider..