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.
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!
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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’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 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.
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.
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 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
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.
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What is an example of a good e-ink tablet?
I love my Paperwhite. I’ve had it for 10 years.
The Boox, Supernote and ReMarkable brands are a few of the typical choices.
I’ve heard Onyx (Boox) uses Linux but doesn’t release source code, for people that care about GPL violations.
I have as well, plus the devices do some sketchy phoning home to servers in China. Unfortunately, their hardware does seem to be better than the other choices, at least among current models.
(edit: I should add that lately I’ve only been looking at 10" screen models.)
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.
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.
Well, shit.
Same. Transflective LCDs are great, and I really wish they got used more. Smartwatches are such a perfect application, yet everyone still slaps on energy-hungry oleds that literally degrade from the UV radiation of sunlight.
But they have literally nothing in common with e-ink.
Love my transflective Garmin watch… But they seem to be moving towards oled too…
I have one of theirs too now, got it because great battery life.
Fossil has an eink hybrid now icymi
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.
I’ve been using a Garmin these days, very good battery life!
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.
Weird, has nobody made a real e ink watch? That seems like it’d be a no brainer to make as watch displays go. Or is there some reason it wouldn’t be good in a watch format?
It makes perfect sense.
But the transflective LCDs which were used by pebble were really fucking good. Especially with color in the Pebble Time, and the display that was going to be in the Time 2 was very promising.
E-Ink watches do exists, they are made by Fossil, and are great. Popping mine in a charger while I shower is enough to keep it going indefinitely.
But e-ink can barely do moving images, there are some tricks which can enable stuff like a small part of the display showing a smoothly animating loading icon, but generally, e-ink can’t surpass 1Hz refresh rate.
The UI for Pebble was getting super slick and smoothly animated. That’s where the transflective LCD shines, its the best of both worlds, super low power usage while displaying a static image, but when you DO interact with it, it can do 60Hz animations no problem.
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 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.
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.
