I’m looking into the idea of buying an Android tablet with an e-ink display.
Only just starting to find out what is available, but for context the idea stems from wanting to read more, but without ending up with a large book collection taking up loads of space!
A Kindle is an obvious option but (a) I don’t really want to support Amazon any more than I can help and (b) I would rather have plain Android for flexibility and also ensure compatibility with Open Library. (I use the OL Reader app)
Any thoughts, or experience with the good and bad options out there?
Price is also unavoidably important - probably needs to be under £100 which significantly thins out possible options. Secondhand is fine though…
Alternatively, I also want to research if any simpler e-reader (sans Android) can access the Open Library.
I got a small Kobo Clara because you can use Instapaper to sync blog posts to it for free. That was my main aim, to finally reduce the number of open tabs on my browser… I had something like 150 open on various browsers.
I’ve found Calibre useful for managing e-books, research PDFs and so on.
It will convert between different e-book formats. (I did also try converting PDFs to ePub and that didn’t work at all well.)
You can also download local library books to the Clara.
I had several Amazon Kindles, and liked them very much, but then Amazon disabled transfers via USB-C so I had to look for an alternative.
I got a Pocketbook Verse Pro. The display is great, you can install extra apps on it (that I haven’t experimented with much though, I only like to read), it is IPX8 rated so you can literally dunk it in water (so I can take it to the beach, pool, etc). It also connects via Bluetooth and plays music. Downsides: it could be a bit more responsive (for large books I notice an opening lag of about 1/2s, but that is not a big deal).
I also got a Kobo Clara because you can drop the KO Reader binary on the file system and run it. It was easy and KO Reader is awesome.
Open Library is interesting and I hadn’t seen it before… Not compatible with KO reader it seems, and it looks like it mostly farms out to other places.
I have another Kobo (the bigger model). They are truly delightful E-Readers. Even many years after I bought it, the device is still getting regular software updates. Mine includes support for Instapaper, Pocket, and Dropbox (I maintain these accounts exclusively for use with the Kobo), but support varies by model. Another fun feature is user-provided font support. I’ve even used one as a Bluetooth audiobook player in one desperate instance.
But the most important point is, Kobos have the nicest reading experience I’ve seen on any E-Reader. Text is layed out very well for an E-Reader, with working justification and hyphenation. There are plenty of really nice touches, like a shortcut for switching between recently read books (tap top left corner), or easy brightness adjustment (slide left edge). Or inline footnote popups.
One minor downside is that regular ePubs are not treated quite as nicely as “kepubs”, but Calibre auto-converts them. It can also deal with the (optional) kepub DRM, and convert kepubs to epub where needed.
And don’t forget you can run KOReader on them if you need even more features!
I own a pocketbook inkpad 4 , really love the device. It’s not an android device, but the OS is Linux based.
Just install KoReader on it and you can read whatever you want.
This may sound obvious, but: check out what kind of books you will be able to buy for your new reader; you will be outside Amazon’s DRM universe. I am not missing it as I found their business practices infuriating (huge regional price differences for the same ebook, ebook more expensive than the hardcover, etc), but YMMV.
Thanks, this is a very good point that I was always aware of to some extent, but it’s become clearer and clearer that it is not to be taken for granted!
I’m a little puzzled that this seems to be somewhat glossed over in reviews, while it is, at the end of the day, the only reason to buy a reader is to read books
Note that most E-readers can read ePubs and Adobe-DRM ePubs (as well as PDFs). There are hundreds of device-agnostic eBook stores that sell them. Kindle can read ePub, but can’t do Adobe DRM, locking them out of most of these books.
I stayed with kindle devices for one reason: cloud sync support. I get epubs and upload them to Amazon system via the email address they provide. This allows me to read the book on any device and cellphone and Amazon will keep track of the reading location. I once tried to setup something like this on calibre, but it was not easy (before I had a dedicated home server). I have around 3 Kindles thru the house that I can just grab and start reading.
I haven’t check recently, does anyone else has a similar system now? ideally Foss.
