What are the best e-readers on the market?

I’m a lover of physical books but I’m looking to get an e-reader as well, for those books that are hard to find physical copies of, or are just very expensive.

I’ve ruled out Onyx, because I try to avoid Chinese tech as it’s usually poorly made. But I’m not sure whether Kindle or Kobo is best. Is being tied to Amazon’s ecosystem too restricting? Are the Kobo e-readers compatible with everything you need? Which ones have the best screens, ideally how a physical book would look?

So many questions, but hopefully some of you can help. 😁

TeaEarlGrayHot,

I use a Kindle Paperwhite which works well for me–colour shifting screen, USB-C charging, and incredible battery life. That being said, I have never connected it to wifi, and instead prefer to sideload books so my reading history/money are not sent to Amazon

Thewhizard,

I have only had kindles so I don’t have anything to compare to. But I love them. The paper white is the best balance for features vs money. I have an oasis now and I feel like I just paid more money for nearly the same thing. I don’t like being stuck with amazons book store. But it does have most of the books if ever want to read. Classic books can be a lot cheaper or free. It hurts to pay more than like $8 or $9 for a digital book, but I will confess that I do it anyway if I want the book badly enough. After all, I get many, many hours of entertainment from it. In my limited experience with uncommon books, if it is uncommon in printed form then it probably isn’t on the Amazon kindle book store. Obviously that depends on the book. I have sent PDFs to my kindle before and it was fairly easy, but I’ve never had to do it often. I don’t know if other competitors do this, but one complaint is that you can’t zoom on a picture. For example, many fantasy books have a map in the beginning, and depending on the map, you might not be able to read much of it.

BirdObserver,

Outside of buying stuff directly via the OS on the device, you’re not locked into Amazon’s store. I upload stuff to my Kindle with Calibre all the time (which works much better than the “send to kindle” function Amazon would prefer you use).

wjrii,
@wjrii@kbin.social avatar

Calibre and a paperwhite works way better than I'd have thought a locked down device would.

tjhart85,
@tjhart85@kbin.social avatar

Conversely, I use 'send to kindle' from Calibre all the time and absolutely love how easy it is to send a book to any of the 3 kindles in the house. I just send it and the book is there a few minutes later. The only time I've ever run into any issues with it is when I was loading up a Kindle for a kid with a TON of books and it wasn't happy about so many emails.

Overall though, I agree with your message: you're not really forced into using the Amazon ecosystem at all if you're willing to put in a tiny amount of work and the Kindle's are either sold at a loss or at such a small markup that it might as well be one that it's difficult for me to consider the competition since they cost so much more.

BirdObserver,

Yeah, I used “send to kindle” for a long time and it’s perfectly fine for just getting stuff on the device easily (especially since you’ve got multiple devices and might want to use the Amazon cloud), but there were a couple things about it that annoyed me and got me to switch. The first is obviously that it converts everything to a “document” pdoc file instead of a book (which is obviously more of a psychological thing to make anything not from Amazon seem like “the other”), but the second issue is that the mandatory conversion would seriously screw with the formatting of the book and they just looked worse than their “native” Kindle versions, with weird spacing and big margins on some books and no way to fix it.

Calibre is admittedly kind of a pain at first (not only do you have to plug in your device to a PC, the software is often unintuitive and confusing), but I think it’s worth checking out if you’re not buying books from Amazon but still want to get the best e-reader functionality out of the device possible (and it’s a nice way to see your non-Amazon ebook collection separate from the device). I convert all books to the AZW3 format with it, then use a plug-in called Quality Fix (specifically a function in it called “fix ASIN for Kindle”) and it makes all books pretty much indistinguishable from their Amazon counterparts.

tjhart85,
@tjhart85@kbin.social avatar

FYI Kindles now support ePub natively and it's fixed a lot of the random issues that used to occur with the spacing and such with no need to convert into AZW3 first (they recently dropped support for AZW ... at the same time they added ePub). It helps that I get everything I can in ePub format or convert to it when I can't.

All in all though, as long as we're all happy with our workarounds, it's all good :-)

I kinda like that mine costs Amazon fractions of a penny in compute time though!

Godort,

This is probably not what you’re looking for, but if anyone is looking to make their own Ebook reader I recommend checking out The Open Book Project

Grass,

Have you built one? I was looking into that before but I think I held back because it couldn’t handle images or something.

Statlerwaldorf,

I just replaced a Kindle Paperwhite that was probably 7/8 years old with a Kobo Libra 2. Can’t compare it to a modern Kindle, but the Kobo screen is bigger and looks more like paper.

My only gripe is that the software has some odd design choices. On a Kindle, the night mode button is on the main drop down menu, but in Kobo you have to hit the gear button to get to the settings, then scroll down a page to toggle night mode.

Both devices seem to read most formats out there. Look up a program called Calibre to maintain a local library on your PC and convert formats easily.

The main selling point for the Kobo was not sending more money to Jeff Bezos. I cancelled Prime last year and the Kindle was my last link to the Amazon ecosystem. I usually get my books from the library or other online sources but sometimes I’d be out of town craving a certain book and I’d buy it on the Kindle just for ease of use.

NaibofTabr,

I have a Poke 2 Color and I have to do disagree with your opinion of Onyx. This device is very well made, battery life is fantastic even with active use, and the software isn’t locked down like Kindle.

Chaosgasket,

I know you said you ruled out Onyx but I would actually suggest giving that a second thought. My spouse had a Kindle Paperwhite and switched to the Onyx Boox and really likes it. The construction is very similar to a Kindle but you aren’t stuck in the Kindle environment. It also has fantastic battery life (like most eink readers). Since it runs Android it works with basically any e-reader app you might want to use, she consistently uses Google Books and Libby and they work great.

phanto,

I hate to recommend Boox,but I have an Onyx Book Poke 3 color, and it’s basically an Android tablet that just pretends to be an e-reader. Any format, any audio, any webpage… Comics too. Had it for years, never let me down. Not as good of battery life as the Kindle, but with Calibre on my laptop and the Boox, I don’t ever pick up the Kindle anyways. Instinctively, I wanna crap on Boox as I don’t like some of their business practices, but the Poke is actually my go to e-reader, so…

As an alternative, I know that there are some e-ink e-readers in a phone sized form factor from a few companies, such as Hisense. Can’t say too much about them as I don’t have one, but half the time I read on my phone because it’s small enough to come with me everywhere. Just a thought.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah Boox seems nice but I won’t support a comany that violates open source software licenses.

phanto,

Agreed, sadly. I wish there was a good, inexpensive, color e-ink e-reader running Android that I could have gotten at the time.

joeyv120,

I did a lot of research and ended up buying a Kobo for my wife who was looking to switch from paperback. At the time the Clara HD was the newer model in the size and feature family she was looking for. I made the choice based on e-ink quality, wide compatibility of formats (including public library rental), and price.

Keep in mind that Amazon keeps device prices artificially low by pushing ads to your screen. I have had four different Kindle Fires over the years, and hate how intrusive the advertising is on their devices.

After spending a year or so jealous of my wife’s Kobo Clara HD, I bought myself the then newer Kobo Libra 2. Then she was jealous of my Libra and bought herself one, and gave the Clara to our kid who is a bookworm as well.

We love our Kobos.

hedgehogging_the_bed,

I’ve got 3 Kobos in my house and we love them. I got one of my best friends to switch to Kobo after her final Nook died. If a Kindle doesn’t appeal to you, a Kobo might be exactly what you want. And they have a huge variety of models to choose from.

rabidpug,

How bright are Kobo’s in a dark room? My wife and I have used kindle paperwhites for years but at some point they changed their backlight and now it’s a beacon at night even on the lowest brightness

Anticorp,

You can pay $20 to permanently remove the ads from Kindle. At least that’s what it cost when I bought mine. Definitely worth the money if you hate ads as much as I do.

Tsubodai,

Lurking to see what folks think… I have a really old nook which I rarely use anymore. Reasons for getting it was my ebooks are all in epub format, and I heard scary things about Amazon doing shady things with my books/data.

After setting up a home server, I now self host my books and haven’t found an easy way of transferring books onto it, other than plugging it in with a cable. (Tried rooting it, kind of got it to work but it wasn’t great).

I really miss being able to send any new epubs to it over WiFi/email/without needing a cable.

Now I usually read books on my phone, using Moon+ reader app and a WebDAV (LAN) connection to my server. Calibreweb is running to enable me to grab books when I’m travelling/away from home, but for long trips I’ll sync the nook up with a cable. Battery life is incredible compared to a phone…

Semi-Hemi-Demigod,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

I'm not a reader but I do have three readers on my Christmas list. Based on this thread they're getting Kobos

originalfrozenbanana, (edited )

Kobo is compatible with Overdrive and Kindle, and they have their own store if you want that too. I love the screen and the battery lasts about four hundred years per charge. Way better than giving money to a monopoly

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It is not compatible with Kindle unless you remove the drm and convert it, but it can be done. It is compatible with Adobe Digital Editions which is pretty much what every store except Amazon uses.

originalfrozenbanana,

Sorry I was thinking of the Libby phone app, for some reason. Thanks for the correction!

Anticorp,

and the battery lasts about four hundred years per charge.

LOL

ultranaut,

I’ve had a Boox Palma for a few months, it seems very well made. I’ve been really happy with it so far and have no regrets about buying it. My only complaint would be the battery goes quick with the radio enabled. I like the screen a lot, you can adjust all kinds of settings to get things dialed in. It’s Carta 1200, which I think is the newest and best version of eink besides the color stuff.

eighthourlunch,
@eighthourlunch@kbin.social avatar

I've thoroughly enjoyed my Kindle Paperwhite. I've had it for six years now. I've occasionally cursed it when it forgets the WiFi, but that hasn't really happened a lot.

The phone app has a lot more features, but it hurts to read on something that small and heavy for very long.

pan_troglodytes,

had a 1st gen paperwhite for years and eventually it just became too slow to use. go a fire8 tablet recently, does all the same things + other options.

itchick2014,

I have a Kobo Aura H2O that I have had for ages that I love. It replaced another kobo without water resistance. Had kindles before that and I like the integration with overdrive too much to move on to anything else. Plus the store if you want to use it is nice and also has some DRM free options available last time I looked.

Duallight,

I have a kobo libra 2, but have had kindle paperwhites in the past. The kobo is the better experience IMO, for 3 big reasons. 1, physical buttons. The buttons on the side also mean there’s a good place to hold the device, where on my old paperwhite I would accidentally skip to the next page constantly. Someone with smaller hands probably won’t mind as much though. 2, easier to get library books. Overdrive is built in, so I don’t have to go find my phone to search for books. 3, more customizable with the fonts and layouts and I can load in custom fonts really easy. That being said, my partner has the newest Kindle, and she adores that thing and hates how big the kobo is.

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