i don’t since i don’t read much and i am fine without the paper feeling mabye
I think I’m on my 3rd kindle now - I had the paper white, the voyage and now the oasis. I read loads, a good hundred books a year. I have lupus though and the arthritis in my hands was making it really painful to physically hold open a book. Plus I’d filled two huge bookcases in my tiny flat. The kindle is obviously much lighter and with a case or popsocket it doesn’t hurt me to hold it. I have damage to my vision now and the kindle has worked out brilliantly for that too - I’ve been able to upload a particularly legible font to help me out and adjusting the screen brightness has been kinder on my eyes too. They really come into their own when you go on holiday - the oasis is waterproof too.
One of my favorite things is I can read on my side without having to switch positions with each new page turn.
I never thought about real accessibility on kindles, but those are all huge benefits
It was so depressing when I couldn’t hold a book anymore, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say having a kindle changed my life.
I just got an Oasis (few weeks ago) after using my iPad Mini extensively for reading. I wanted something more portable and noticed they were quite popular with tourists on a recent vacation.
It’s my first Kindle and I had no experience with the Oasis in person really other than asking someone on the trip what it was.
I thought something was wrong with it, like maybe it wasn’t the traditional e-ink that had always been advertised. Had I missed something?
No, it had all the bells and whistles. Compared to the color of the iPad, this seemed like an order of magnitude lower in terms of quality. So please help me figure out what I’m doing wrong wrt settings because obviously this is a me problem. Otherwise I love it!
What’s lower in terms of quality?
The e-ink display is different than something like an iPad. I find it easier to read, to be honest. I can read the kindle for longer in comfort and it’s easier to read while falling asleep.
It’s crap at displaying anything that’s not intended for the platform. PDF files or graphics heavy books are a poor fit for the kindle, but novels or regular books are far better in my opinion.
I have an iPhone, an iPad Mini, an iPad, and multiple laptops. I prefer the kindle for reading in any formats that support it.
What’s lower in terms of quality?
Good question - I just realized I failed to mention specifics facepalm
It seems - blurry or fuzzy? Not as sharp, as if there’s a film over the screen. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well, but it’s just not clear.
Regardless of dark or light background, and brightness, I can never get a clear picture. It gets brighter, sure, but then it’s too bright - it’s never clear.
I don’t know how else to explain it other than it’s like there’s a film over the screen. It’s not crisp, etc.
Like the person below commented, it’s a completely different beast compared to an iPad or an iPhone screen. It’s only intended to be a book so it might help to think about it like that - it’s designed to be as close as possible to paper, not a screen. It’s not a step down in technology, rather it’s a completely different tech for a completely different set of needs.
Put your ipad and kindle side by side in different conditions and try and read a page. In full sunlight you can’t see an ipad screen. In the dark an ipad screen is really really bright. In both cases the kindle lets you read easily. Because it uses e-ink, the screen isn’t made from glass, making it lighter and much less breakable. Because e-ink is only black and white it uses far far less power than an iPad screen so you don’t need to charge it remotely as often.
If you only read a few pages in bed before you go to sleep, you might not need a kindle. If the reflective screen and brightness of your iPad don’t bother you, you might just want to stick with that. But if you read a lot, read in the bath, or in the sun, or at night with the lights off, or if you have a physical disability that makes holding a book/iPad difficult - a kindle is the answer.
Thanks! This is helpful. And good point - I haven’t tried it in sunlight. I have tried my iPad…with not the best luck, like you said. I guess I really didn’t know what I was expecting with the “Paperwhite” description, so that’s on me.
I like its portability. I also use my iPad Mini for work - so it has a case with a keyboard, and not the slimmer Apple or Logitech ones - those don’t work with the Mini, so it requires Bluetooth, and it’s just bulkier overall.
I wanted something smaller for when I’m waiting at appointments or if I stop somewhere to eat, etc. It’s more portable and lighter and slips easily into my purse.
You’re welcome! For what you described it should be ideal - you can keep it in your bag and forget about it for days/weeks at a time. The battery won’t die, it’s nice and light, you don’t need internet connection and you can use it in any condition/situation. It’s the last, and best, book you’ll ever buy! But it is a terrible, terrible tablet so don’t even considered it as one.
You made a good choice with the oasis btw. My voyage died at an inopportune time and I couldn’t afford the oasis so I initially bought the newest paper white - the one you can get in different colours. That was a giant step down from the voyage and I hated it! So plasticky and cheap feeling - it actually made me a bit sad to use it! I returned it and got the voyage on a payment plan (there was a bigger difference in the price when I got mine) and I’m really glad I did.
I’ve just thought of one other feature you might not know about yet - the send-to-kindle function. If you have ebooks saved elsewhere, or ebooks acquired on the high seas, you can send them directly to your kindle via email. You’ll find your assigned email address in the settings. You can also make a “family” with someone else with a kindle and have a shared library. Happy reading!
I have e-book readers that use e-ink, and I love it. I can read books for hours and not have my eyes feel tired, that’s what it was designed for.
I have a remarkable 2. Had it 2 years, use it daily for taking notes during consults.
I don’t use it for reading or any other task. For me it’s pretty much just an infinite notepad. For this purpose it’s perfect. After 2 years it’s cost has reduced to something similar to paper notepads and pens.
These devices are definitely not for everyone. They have a way to go to really fulfil their potential, but I wouldn’t be without one.
I’ve had my eye on this for a while, I’m a rigorous notebook and pen note taker but the ability to search through notes would be a huge benefit - do you find the integration with other services to work well? (I would want to export notes to a separate cloud storage platform like OneDrive)
Nah, it doesn’t work like that. You couldn’t search hand written notes.
I’ve never tried it but I think the OCR stuff happens remotely and the only output is email. As in, you can email yourself a notebook and it will arrive as text. The whole idea of this seemed so clunky to me it could barely be called a feature.
Similarly with services like onedrive. I think you can upload a notebook to onedrive but not sync with onedrive.
This may have changed, I haven’t looked into this for a long time.
My advice would be to think of the device as a paper notepad with infinite pages, nothing more. If that’s not worth it for you then don’t get one.
I used my old ones a ton. I had the original nook and had been using it for 13 years. I finally upgraded to a newer one with a color e ink screen and I like it a lot. It’s a boox ultra tab c. It was pricey so I wouldn’t get it unless you really read a lot and like e ink
I use it for reading almost exclusively. I read 1-2 books a week and a few volumes of graphic novels/manga per week as well. I have poor vision and the e ink is much easier on my eyes than lcd/oled screens. I can read on this for hours but reading on a traditional phone/tablet/laptop gives me eye strain/headache after a few hours. It’s nice to have a screen you can read with no back or front light. I do use the front light at times but I usually have it off
It’s handy for taking notes and annotations. I’ve read it’s good for drawing as well but I am terrible at drawing so I don’t know. The stylus seems comparable to my friends Apple Pencil except you can use the back as an eraser like an actual pencil
battery life is much better to a traditional tablet - a charge lasts 2-3 days usually, can last longer if I keep the front light off and all the wireless radio stuff off. I’ve gotten it to last a week. It’s a bit heavy bc of the battery though
Wrt color it’s a mixed bag. It’s a very handy feature for manga and graphic novels. But the color panels are new tech so they come with issues; primarily ghosting/image retention. After some time I’ve found an ideal mix of settings to minimize the issue and make the color look as good as possible. The boox os also has a little nav ball that can quickly force a full refresh the screen at any point to remove any retained image. But the color is still not comparable to an lcd/oled by any means
Mine is based on a kaleido3 panel. There’s a newer gallery3 panel that has more vibrant color but with a trade off of noticeably slower refresh rates. It’s not actually an eink panel but something called acep; it was more meant for advertisements/billboards so quick refresh rates weren’t a priority. There’s also no real options for a device with it at the moment aside from one that has real mixed reviews and one that has an open preorder with no eta on delivery as far as I know.
It’s also a somewhat capable android tablet but I don’t really get this part. Like you can run YouTube and games and stuff. But i don’t know why you would bother? It’s workable but not nearly as good. The exception to this is web browsing depending on the site. Heavy text based sites work well in Firefox.
My spouse bought a Kindle Paperwhite that was gathering dust on a shelf, so I loaded it up and gave it a whirl. I absolutely love the thing: it’s light, clear, easy to read, and easy to load things onto (especially via Calibre). The only thing I dislike about it is that the idle battery usage seems completely random at times. Sometimes I can leave it alone for two days and it’ll be at half power, sometimes I go away for a few hours and it’ll drop from 80% to 8%. Usually it’s fine, but I’ve learned to keep a power source handy.
Keep the airplane mode on
That’s… very unusual. I can use mine for weeks.
There’s something wrong with the device. Paperwhite’s battery should last for weeks, especially if it’s somewhat recent model. Try to calibrate the battery by charging it to full, and continue to charge couple more hours after it’s full. Then use the device until the battery is completely empty (the device turns off by itself). And finally charge it to full. Do not charge it while you are discharging the battery, or interrupt the charging while charging to full. If that doesn’t help, the battery might be faulty or there is something wrong on the software side of things.
Bought a Kindle Paperwhite in 2018, loved that and still use it as my carry-around book because I prefer reading on that over my phone. Recently bought a Boox Nova 2 for note taking, I don’t use it for that as often as I want to but I still love reading comics on Tachiyomi and regular books synced with my Kindle through their app. Love my einks cause the battery lasts for weeks at a time
I have a Kobo Libra 2, I quite enjoy it for borrowing books from the public library.
Upgraded from a Kindle Oasis. Very pleased with the Kobo Libra 2. I love that Overdrive is built in.
I know Rakuten probably isn’t a great company (what company is?) but I feel much better about them than supporting Amazon.
I was originally thinking of getting a BOOX or so after my old tablet died. In the end I went with a Lenovo that was on sale instead, and that was a good choice.
I just don’t have the use case for them, much as I love their screens. I already own a Kindle, so maybe I’ll look into the BOOX again if my Kindle ever dies and I need a new reading device. I will say that I cannot imagine reading on an normal screen after reading on a Kindle for a while. There’s so much eyestrain from looking at a lit screen compared to the more paper-like e-ink display. An important thing to note is that my current Kindle came with the back-lighting set up all wrong:
It was set to behave like a mobile screen, getting brighter the lighter the room was. But that’s not how you’d use it IMO. I now set it up so it’s off when it is bright, and dimly lit in the pitch dark, so that when there is external light it behaves exactly like an actual paper page, and only when reading at night in bed is there any backlighting so I don’t have to keep the lights on.I have been really hankering for an 8 inch ereader, but it seems like everything needs to use a proprietary OS with all sorts of drawbacks. Is there anything out there that is more FOSS-minded, or is the best option to load a Kobo with KOReader and just disable as much of the main OS as possible?
It’s only a partial match, but the ReMarkable runs linux under the hood, and you can install a package manager on it.
It’s not a fantastic E-Reader, as it’s mostly designed for taking notes, but it does work as one. The main drawback is the lack of a built in light, but depending on your use-case that might not be an issue for you
That did look tempting, and I could probably work with the lackluster eBook functionality, but 10" is too big for me
I have a kindle (paperwhite I think) that I won in a raffle and I’ve grown to love it. Much lighter than a book or a phone, no cramps from holding my hand in strange positions, and a very gentle backlight. The only thing I don’t like about it is being tethered to Amazon. When it dies I’ll try to find an alternative that’s still compatible with my library’s ebook system.
You should look into Calibre, it’s library management software for e-readers, and it works wonderfully with a kindle.
You can convert between lots of different formats and load them to your reader from your PC or Mac.
I’ve loaded books from Google’s service and public domain stuff from Project Gutenberg and archive.org. I’ve loaded some PDFs on it which are kind of janky, but sometimes workable depending on the book.
But basically, I’m not worried about being able to read a book on my kindle unless it’s a PDF.
My main problem is that, if I let go online at all, it’s reporting everything I read and when back to Amazon. I don’t buy many kindle books.
You don’t need to go online with calibre. you convert it to the file format you need and then connect Kindle to computer, drag and drop files.
You can enable an email address for it and then can email EPUBs to it, so can use it without paying more to Amazon.
Recently got a Onyx Boox Ultra and it’s incredible compared to my previous Kobo. Basically, its 10" with stylus input and a keyboard case. The special sauce is it running Android, complete with the Google store. The display tech is advanced enough that normal apps, for instance Connect for Lemmy, work fine. I have mine setup with Syncthing, Home Assistant, Obsidian, it all just works, mostly. I’d recommend using a 3rd party launcher and not touching the Onyx account, though.
I’ve had great experiences with Kobo, though. I literally went through 4 models because they kept upping their game. They’re less sketchy than Onyx and are very open; you can load your own books of nearly any format and modify it as it runs linux. You can even completely replace the OS.
I have one and barely use it, but that’s more about my reading habits than it is about the tablet. When I am in a good reading habit, I love it because it’s frontlit, lighter than a book, and way easier to read while laying on my side.
I got a Sony PRS-505 from late 2007, around the time of the first kindle. At the time it was amazing to be able to travel with just that instead of travel guides and multiple novels like I did before taking up weight and space. That was also like two years prior to me getting a smart phone. Since then I have had two different kindles, but they did not have as much of an impact as that sony ereader did.
In 2010 or 2011¹, I bought the Kindle Keyboard, in 2014 a paperwhite, and earlier this year I upgraded to a current gen paperwhite (between trade-in of the old one and the Prime Day sale, I only paid 60€), the bigger screen and higher DPI are nice, as is the fresh battery. I love reading, I hate holding heavy books, and normal screens are horrible for reading longer texts.
¹: I can find the warranty replacement Amazon gave me in November 2011 (which also upgraded me from WiFi to 3G because they ran out of Wifi versions), but the first order was before they were available in Germany, so I had to order it from .com or .co.uk neither lists the order for some reason and I can’t find the order confirmation mail.
I like the tech but I’m waiting for a phone with a 60Hz (minimum) color display to come out first. So I’ll be waiting awhile.
Yeah, you’re not kidding. Last I heard, full color eink was at less than 1 hz refresh rate.
But I can dream too!
eink can be pretty fast!
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