I wholeheartedly agree. I use my e-reader (a Kobo Libre Colour) daily. I still buy physical books sometimes but it is nice being able to have such a small and light device with a few choices on board. I have had many e-readers and tablets over the years and the only one I have had that I do not recommend is Boox. I got the Palma and the screen broke within 24 hours and they said it was my fault? I sold it at a yard sale. I have had kindles and Kobos with no issue for decades at this point. They are well built and worth having around. I prefer Kobo at this point for similar reasons to yourself. I don’t use custom firmware but I do use Nickel Menu to get to the games that Kobo decided to hide away on the latest OS. Also great for things like inverting colors or rotating on the fly. Hope you get a lot of life and enjoyment out of yours as well!
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I love e-readers and the tech has gotten pretty impressive. The thing I have a problem with is repair availability, and the fact they often run software that's years out of date. I'm looking at one from Boox but even that one is running android from 3 years ago.
I have a Kindle paperwhite 6th gen and software or repairability have never been an issue
Depends on how you read. I have 3tb of manga locally hosted and with android readers I can just stream the books directly to the device. With kindle or some others I’d have to copy the books to my computer and then to the kindle, which is a total chore because I read a lot
Kindle does win because of repairability though, if only because you can actually source panels for most of them due to their popularity. A handful of boox readers can have their panels sourced but most can’t, including the most expensive color ones. This is more the fault of e ink though, who literally would rather have a monopoly on the panels rather than increase supply and lower costs (or relax their patent nonsense and maybe get some more innovation in the space)
How does Amazon handle repairs? I've had two of the Barnes and Noble Nook e-readers, and when they broke/stopped responding to the power button their answer was to buy a new one.
I doubt any company would offer repairs on such old hardware (I'm also the kind of crazy that fixes my own stuff so wouldn't know if they did) but the kindle is the most popular reader so parts are easy to source.
Yeah, though repair availability is hit or miss on most devices these days, sadly.
I got the Kobo, which is Linux-based, and the OS runs off an internal SD card. There's alternate firmware available I'm looking at, and should be easy to play with (can just swap the original SD card back in to restore it to factory)
I'm looking at the Box Tab Mini C, because I'd also like to use it for handwritten notes. But it's running Android 11 (and Android 15 should be launching in less than a month). I don't know if I want to spend over $400 on something that's already out of date and not likely to get updates for the purposes of security etc.
I have a Kobo and it's great but I go though cycles of wanting to read physical books too.
I used to be all about physical books, but when the used bookstore near me closed up, it was right around the time ebooks took off so I just made the switch.
E-Ink is actually magic.
Closest thing to magic I'll ever see, for sure.
They are just amazing aren't they? I got one with a colour E ink screen to read comics and it's just incredible
All the colors rich enough?
Color page on boox ultra tab c. They (and basically all manufacturers with kaleido3) do post processing on marketing images that make things look more vibrant. It’s fine for manga and I like it but it’s definitely underwhelming and washed out.
Additionally the color filter lowers the contrast of the display and makes the image overall dimmer. Like op I think it looks best with no front light but this one is so dim i often have it on unless I’m under intense light (reading outside for example). I can’t upload a second image with my app but it looks good, just dim
The color also increases ghosting. This is remedied by refreshing the screen fully on page turns but this eats up battery. Heavy reading (like 10+ hours a day) gets me 2 days at most. If I read more typically, like 2-3 hours a day, I get 4-5 days. The huge battery makes it heavy
Also fwiw boox is a mixed bag. The device itself is nice but their customer service is dogshit. I broke the panel, which is very easy. Mine broke from a roughly 1 foot drop onto carpet. The panels are much more fragile. Getting it fixed was expensive, over 50% of the cost of the device. That’s not their fault, of course, but then on top of that I had to pay shipping to them. Again, smaller company, but also a $600 tablet. Then the repair literally took 8 weeks and they gave me replacement panel with 5 dead pixels and 3 pixels “stuck on” that are super distracting, but they only define dead pixels as a problem if it’s in a small box that is the dead center. They don’t have enough panels, which is why the repair took so long, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are okaying shit panels because they are scarce. They also broke the fingerprint reader during the repair. They did offer to fix what they broke for free but I still had to pay to ship to them again (its like $30) and wouldn’t have the device for god knows how long again. I just use it without a fingerprint to unlock but typing the passcode (or anything) is a pain because of the latency for the screen to update.
On the other hand their software team is great. The software has some rough edges but it runs mihon fine and when the software has issues I report them and often get an update on how to fix and occasionally have gotten feature suggestions implemented even.
Mine is a boox and I find the colours totally acceptable? But I'm very simple and probably easy to please, maybe if you wanted to do art on it it might not be up to snuff but as someone who's just casually reading comics day-to-day I love it
I will pay through the nose and be thrilled about it when Boox is able to get a 13" color reader out.
I love the pocketable 7" color go with page buttons, but I really want one the size of my max.
I don't need a color e-reader, as I only use it for reading books. I just want Kobo to make their 10.3" tablet 300 ppi so I can buy it. For the life of me, I'll never understand why they made their Elipsa E2 227 ppi. It's a big screen and it needs the highest ppi possible. :/
I almost went for the color one, but got a "starter" one that's just black and white. I think it's a little smaller than the color model, too, which gives it a nice, paperback size to hold.
Check out annas-archive.org to get digital backups of books you already own that may be otherwise protected by drm. Definitely don't use it to pirate books. Piracy is bad.
Edit:
Also you can use calibre to manage your book library outside of various large book providers.
I do already manage my library with Calibre and use the webapp version of it to sync books to my phone (sadly, this reader doesn't support OPDS). But yeah, I've got some books that are locked up in Play books and/or Kindle I need to unshackle. lol
I got myself an eReader from Kobo mostly for the Pocket integration.
It's nice just scanning for potentially interesting articles and submit them to my Pocket account while I'm on the computer, and settle down to read the articles cleared from distraction and junk on a paper-like display before going to bed, or while riding the bus to work since it's all synced up for offline use.
That's what ended up buying, a Kobo. I've never really messed with Pocket (usually turning it off is one of the first things I do when setting up a fresh FF install lol). However, this may be a good use for it since it would be easier to do that than print to PDF, copy that over, and then read.
I love mine, too. It's nothing fancy, and is pretty old at this point. Maybe I should consider an upgrade.
Of course I can't mention it to anyone in person without them telling me how much they prefer reading "real books". It's no joke happened 100% of the time. I don't know why people feel required to reply that way.
What I really miss is the browsing. There's no similar experience to just wandering a section of a big library/bookstore and seeing what looks interesting.
I definitely prefer custom fonts and the ability to use a size that fits more than 3 paragraphs on a page though. And having whatever book I want on hand immediately.
I'm one who definitely prefers reading books. But, you'd have to pry my e-book reader from my cold dead hands. It's so much more convenient to read everywhere without having to haul around the weight of paper, it fits neatly in a backpack and I always have a full library of stuff to read. It multiplied my reading 10 fold.
I would definitely love to start a book collection once I have a home of my own. But right now I can still read to my heart's content without having to worry about storage space or costs when moving places. It's almost perfection. Planning to upgrade to a kobo soon.
What kind did you get?