do you use e-inc tablets?
do you use e-inc tablets?
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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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.
You can enable an email address for it and then can email EPUBs to it, so can use it without paying more to Amazon.
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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!
I have thought about getting a Boox e-ink tablet but currently just read ebooks on my phone. It's hard not to get distracted though with other apps installed.
I have the Leaf 2 and would highly recommend. Works great, and is much better for your eyes. I use it every day.
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.
I bought a Kobo Libra 2 at the start of the summer, after trying reading both on my 7" OLED phone and a 14" OLED blet/tablet for about a year prior.
It's one of the best purchases I did this year.
I have an Kobo Glo since 2013 that is working well and still getting software updates. My only gripes are that the back light is a little too bright and it can lag a bit when following endnotes.
I love my paperwhite. Frankly I don't think I could enjoy reading on a typical screen, and I read other shit on my phone a LOT. So reading for fun I need that difference I guess.
Does anyone recommend any e-ink e-readers that have compatibility with apps? Mine is so old I can only get stuff directly from Amazon store but can't use the library apps like libby.
I have a Nook Simple Touch. It’s nice to read on, but the button and touch screen are failing. I don’t know where it is. I mostly read on my phone or a paper book
In my curiosity, I bought a Nook Simple Touch off eBay for 15 dollars a few months ago. It actually works really great for reading EPUBs off Overdrive and OpenLibrary, and it definitely makes night reading a hell of a lot more comfortable, lasts quite long on battery, even as a cheap second hand device.
I think that e-ink is better for books, and tablets are better for magazines and comics. I like the feel of my ebook, it has very much the same kind of feel as a paperback. The larger format of a tablet is great for magazines, and being able to pinch and zoom is useful there too
I am kind of split on manga. It looks great on my Kobo but I prefer it on my iPad. Maybe if I had a larger e-ink device, but then I wouldn’t enjoy books on it as much.
I have one that can rent library books. It's decent and I like it, but there's no open standard, you are chained to their store. I want to be able to shop all stores including tiny real-world bookstores on my Kobo.
I have an E-ink e reader. It’s nice on the eyes and books are super cheap along with not needing a bunch of physical space for the books. I love an actual book but I prefer the convenience of an electronic device and with the e-reader I can have at least a paper look and feel.
I have a Supernote A5x, use it as a note pad, annotate cad plans on site and sketch basic renders on it, I use it a lot at work.
loaded it up with the kindle app, but I find it's a bit annoying to use the app, so I upload books as a pdf to a folder on it and that works. It's just a shame I have so many books locked into the kindle app. But it might get better with an update one day.
Had 6' onyx. Replaced all textbooks in school with it. Then internal flash memory broke and I returned to reading on the phone. I use speed reading module in KOReader and it'd need third crosshair, third glance per line on a wider screen. Considering how I plan to switch to zig-zag reading.. Mb I prefer phone size. Most books I read nowadays are for studying, which means emacs, large screen. I'll test a friend's reader and mb buy one if it really reduces eyestrain
Yup. I have a Likebook Ares that I put Tachiyomi on for manga. It's a bit bigger than my phone, and the aspect ratio is a much closer match to that of manga volumes. It's nice.
It's worth noting that the paper look isn't the only benefit of e-ink, it's also crazy power efficient. Only changing what is on the display requires power. Unless you use the front-light (e-ink has to be lit from the front, light cannot pass through the display), the battery life on these things can be weeks and even months.
If you want to get into books or comics, I recommend one, but starting off reading on your phone, which I did, is a good idea.
I have a few Kindles - got the first couple from a thrift store, then I upgraded to a Paperwhite. I like them! I don't usually have time to go to the library and get paper books, so it's really convenient for library books, almost everything I've looked for has been on Libby. I do still buy paper books, I love paper books, but I think I prefer reading on Kindle (or my phone) because I can change the font, and it's super light, fits in all of my bags. I also have problems with my hands sometimes, and holding a kindle is easier on them than holding a book. Lately I've just been reading on my phone though lol.
The only eink device I ever owned was a Pebble. It was pretty great in its time though.
Pebble's marketing campaign is so good, I'm still correcting people to this day. xD It's something they call "e-paper", but it's really a transflective LCD (remember those?). Nowhere like e-ink.
The pebble was "e-paper" which was a marketing term for a transflective LCD. It was not e-ink.
E-ink is a proprietary display tech that uses actual magnetized "ink" suspended in "liquid" cells. By pushing and pulling dark/light ink particles with an array of tiny electromagnets, it physically "paints" an image onto the display surface. Even if you entirely cut power, the image remains indefinitely.
Transflective LCD, is an LCD, and while its an extremely small amount, it does still need power to stay on.
Fossil has an eink hybrid now icymi
I've been using a Garmin these days, very good battery life!
I have one. Been wearing it for years. I like it a lot. I'd still take pebble still being around, over it, but it's a close second.
The only eink device I ever owned was a Pebble. It was pretty great in its time though.
I've got the 10" kindle that I resurrected a year ago with a new battery and jailbroken & several 6" kindles (one jailbroken) but I recently got a cheap chinese e-ink Android device (Xiaomi Inkpalm 5) and I like it a lot better than anything else that I've had before. My primary use case is RSS/news reading, not books. I side-loaded the Feedly Classic APK onto it and except for the "smooth scroll" feature of it (which takes several screen refreshes instead of just one - and subsequently uses up like 3-4 times more battery just because of the smooth scroll feature), it's really almost the perfect device. I'd love to find a larger e-ink Android device and figure out somehow to get rid of the smooth-scroll feature of the Feedly Classic app. If I could do that, it'd be the perfect device. :)
I have a Kobo eReader. I like it a lot but unfortunately I forget to read books so I don't use it much...
I've got a ReMarkable (got it for free from a friend who never used it) and I think it could be great depending on your specific use-cases.
It's a pretty great tablet for taking notes on, using the pen to write feels like writing on paper, the writing is responsive, and now they have an optional keyboard for typing things up on it for situations where that works best. The biggest downsides on the note-taking front is the difficulty in adding new templates. It comes with 15 or so templates, and you can add more, but you need to be somewhat tech savy (basically if you can work SSH and know how to move files around on the CLI, you'll be fine). Though the added templates won't be able to display previews properly, but that's not the end of the world IMO.
As an E-Reader it's functional, but a bit subpar. The screen size is awesome for reading, I use a somewhat small font, and so I can fit a good chunk of a chapter on a single page, which is nice. The built-in E-Reader is basically useless, but you can download KoReader on it (again, some proficiency in using the CLI is required here), which is excellent. The biggest issues I have with it's ability as an E-Reader are the lack of a backlight (so no reading in bed without a reading lamp) and - somewhat ironically - the size (which is both a blessing while you're using it, and a curse while you're travelling with it).
It's somewhat (but not really) FOSS - they use a proprietary flavor of linux under the hood, and you can access the base operating system over SSH. If you're a linux guy/gal, it can be pretty cool, since you can install all sorts of stuff on it and setup recurring jobs via systemd (for instance, I wrote a short systemd service which swaps out the screen saver image every 5 minutes while it's in use). This also means you can potentially brick your remarkable though, and it's not easy to unbrick (though it's possible most of the time using a USB-C breakout board).
Overall, i honestly don't use it a whole lot, but if i was the sort of person who liked making handwritten notes, I'd probably use it a whole lot more. But I generally find it easier to just use my kindle for on-the-go reading, and my phone/desktop for note-taking
I don’t have one I have a kindle and love reading on the screen. Much nicer to the eye. Even with the backlight compared to an LCD or OLED screen for reading. As for e-tablets, if I had to work with a lot of document reading I would probably get one. But I don’t have a need for it.