I'm willing to pay for something that has the following:
1. Clear screen (ideally close to the Kindle Paperwhite, but just clear in general)
2. Annotation support (either highlighting/notes, or both)
3. Some way to read articles (does this even still exist anymore?)
4. Sideloading, no full lock-in is a must. Willing to jailbreak if needed.
5. Reasonable page-turn speed (less than 1 second)
Are there e-readers that fit most of these?
For some reason not popular state-side, but it's absolutely the bees-knees.
Drag and drop install of Koreader. Built in RSS reader. Performant PDF reader (if you want to not use Koreader) Linux, so you can write your own stuff if you want.
I own the Era model, and it's been amazing.
When using their Kepub format, Kobo has the best eink renderer on the market. I believe you can also install Koreader on them.