Continuing the discussion from Are we (in the US) going to end up with empty shelves and much higher prices in May? What should we do to prepare:
Ooh, what do you like?
I recently bought a Kobo color e-reader, because i wasn’t happy with the options for the Kindle. And my beloved oasis is getting old and doesn’t hold a charge as long as it’s like. I’m not really in the market for another e-reader, now. But I’m curious what’s out there and what features people like and dislike.
eInk seems to be really slow in actually getting anything new to market. They haven’t really seemed to change much. Two decades later they’re still slow and expensive.
I’m excited about some competitors just starting to show up, like the Daylight Computer and various transflective, daylight-readable monitors (they seem like generic no name ones of questionable reliability, though).
In the meantime, I’m happy enough with my older black and white Kobo Libre. I like the physical buttons and love that it’s waterproof, since I usually like to read in or near bodies of water. Backlight and USB C charging are nice too.
I do miss the big Kindle DX I used to have, and the first Kindle that had a built in keyboard. Gave up on Amazon after the pee scandals. Sadly, the touch screens on ereaders all seem to suck.
I wish there were more readily available eInk portable monitors that I could plug into a laptop and use for things like reading and writing. Or an eInk typewriter.
rubs hands together
I used to be Kindle exclusive. I had a Voyage and an Oasis until the new line of Kindle products came through. Then I got the Boox and I’m jailbroken.
Kindle Colorsoft - I had to get one. While I do enjoy seeing the book covers in color, it’s not very vibrant, and what makes it great is it’s practically a Paperwhite. I’ve yet to find any e-reader as well designed as the Paperwhite. It’s no longer my favorite - we’ll get to that - but it’s a solid choice and has the most beautiful display among the ones I’ve seen. This is probably the most attractive, hassle-free device you can get.
Kindle Scribe - This is good for me and my Buddhism study group, especially now that you can just write notes directly on the page. We study texts in detail and I often just bring it to the Zendo to take notes.
This was my first writing tablet and I was amazed at how natural the writing feels. It’s so natural that whenever I hit a glitch, I shake my pen on instinct. This is great for taking notes on non-fiction books but it’s also great for journaling and helping to get me thinking outside the box with my fiction. I’ve drafted several scenes on it. Perfect for writers block.
This is a great tool if you have ADHD because you don’t have half a dozen notebooks lying around the house and have to guess where things are.
Also as a writer I’ve just got to say it took me back to my roots. When I was a kid I wrote anything and everything on paper. I had reams and reams of notebooks filled with stories. This is the best of both worlds. You get that mental shift/relaxation that can only come from handwriting, only it’s WAY easier to erase.
Boox Palma 2 - This is my main e-reader now and here’s why. The Palma is a phone-sized e-ink ink reader that runs Android 13. Anything you can install on the Play Store you can install on the Palma. This means I can access anything I want on it. In this case, Libby, Bookshop, the Kindle reading app, all of my News apps, and a word game. I also keep Docs and Dropbox on there so I can read the written submissions of my writer friends. It is fantastic for reading on any app.
The ostensible point of this was to quit using my phone so much, and it does help, but I think I keep returning to this one because of its portability, plus it helps me get away from the Kindle ecosystem. With Bookshop.org, all my e-reader purchases go to local booksellers. It’s great. And because of Libby I’m spending less money on books.
The caveats I’d give there are that the Boox does not have an intuitive UI. Expect to spend a lot of time reading old Reddit threads to figure out how it works. The Chinese company that makes it will not help you. Also, don’t get this thinking it’s a second, e-ink cell phone. It’s fine for a word game, for scrolling the web, but it’s designed for reading, and reading is where it shines.
I haven’t picked up my Colorsoft since I bought it. It’s so small I can drop it in my small everyday purse, and I took it on a plane and to the beach recently and the experience was very nice.
I have the Kobo libra color, an old Kindle Oasis, and a dead first Gen Kindle. I almost never used the first Gen one. I’m not sure why not. But the Oasis changed the way i read. It feels nice. The font is clear. The backlighting is perfect. It’s waterproof. The basics are intuitive. (Changing settings isn’t, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make the font smaller, it turning down the light.) The physical buttons meant i could stand on the train platform in the cold, and read my book with my gloves on. And i could side load random stuff.
Actually… It’s probably not the physical advantages of the Oasis that sold me, but Libby. I read a LOT of electronic library books over the pandemic. I’ve never been comfortable buying media with DRM, so I’ve not invested much in the Amazon Kindle ecosystem, but i have zero qualms borrowing a DRM-protected library book.
Anyway, the battery is going. It only lasts about a day, which isn’t good enough to take it on vacation (i vacation on an island where the cabins don’t have electricity.) So after waiting to see if Amazon would update the Oasis with it’s recent refresh, i switched to the Kobo. Not only did Amazon fail to produce any reader with buttons, they also made it much harder to side-load content. It’s clear that the new Kindle isn’t for me.
The Kobo battery is still new and lasts a good long time. And it has physical buttons. (Although .. they somehow aren’t quite as easy to use as those on the Oasis. The shape is wrong, and they are easier to press from one side than the other.) The screen has muted colors, which don’t look great but add a surprising amount of value to images. It also has a much higher pixel density. So maps (common in books i like) aren’t great, but they are often usable, unlike on the Oasis, where i basically just gave up on even trying. And it’s really easy to side load content. I’ve been collecting drm-free versions of books i own in hardcopy over the years. (Probably not legal, although Sony v Universal gives me a leg to stand on ) And all of that ports cleanly to the Kobo. The Kobo also has an intuitive way to create groups of books, like “children’s fantasy” or “math & science” making it easier to browse. Really, the Kobo interface is a lot more intuitive than the Kindle interface. Maybe it’s good i didn’t buy the Boox. I doubt I’d have the patience to research the interface, and besides, i want to use it here and there, I’m unlikely to really remember it over time. So I’d be constantly looking stuff up.)
The Kobo doesn’t feel as nice in my hand, and the buttons are a little uncomfortable in some directions, but it’s good enough, and it’s now my primary e-reader. (Although I’m still using the Kindle for library books. Everyone touts the Kobo’s direct connection to overdrive, but i hate the interface. Libby works much better, and Libby talks more readily to my Kindle, although maybe i could adjust that if the Kindle actually dies.)
I wish i could find something that feels as nice as the Oasis, but works like the Kobo. Maybe in a few years.
I prefer the kobo since its easier to load pirated books.
But for the most part when it comes to e-readers, I just use a 10" android tablet I bought for that purpose.
I also bought a premium version of an e-reader app that will turn any ebook into an audiobook. Its nice, but it doesn’t understand what footnotes are and it tries to read those as part of the book. But overall its a nice way to absorb information from an ebook.
Whereas i haven’t yet really enjoyed interacting with a tablet for anything. I use my phone all the time, but don’t like reading long form stuff on it, it doing anything that requires a large screen or multiple windows. I use a laptop extensively. And i enjoy a nice e-reader. But a tablet is heavy to hold in bed, and needs to be charged all the time. I know they are wildly popular, but they aren’t a format i find best for anything.
(It didn’t help that when i got the apple tablet, it was totally different from my phone, and i found it massively unintuitive. I had to Google how to move icons on the screen. Also, the keyboard was horrible.)
I had the Oasis, which I loved, and then got a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which actually felt like an upgrade. I know some people can’t live without the page turn buttons, but it was not a hard adjustment for me to make. If someone asked me to recommend an e-reader, it would be that one. It’s just so clean and fast.
The Colorsoft is almost as good + color, so it’s really a matter of preference if you want to stick with Kindle.
The Boox Palma, is, I think, for a specific kind of person looking for a specific kind of thing. I wanted to use some Android apps without phone distractions. I wanted to cut my screen time. I wanted to spend less time reading SMS messages and doomscrolling and more time reading books. And it’s been good for that. It’s also good for reading stuff my friends have written the way I would any other book. You can technically do this on the Kindle by sending docs to a certain email address, but it’s so so much easier for me to go into Dropbox and open the shared file directly. And the Boox has its own reader for these things.
It would be hard to go back to the Paperwhite now that I’ve discovered Bookshop and prefer buying local books. And I think that’s the Kindle’s biggest weakness. It is locked in. (Bookshop, unfortunately, is also locked in, otherwise I’d consider porting those books to Kindle. I still prefer the Kindle app reader over any other. The Bookshop reader is serviceable but lacks many features of the Kindle reader.)
One thing that does suck about Kindle is how bad the system is for organization of books. It couldn’t be less helpful. So I’m glad Kobo is better in that regard.
It’s not backlighting. Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves, but there is a difference between frontlighting and backlighting, and the former is what e-ink ereaders have.
Huh. Today i learned.