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. 😁

diaruemnus,

I know you said you’ve ruled out Onyx, but I just purchased the Boox Palma, and I really can’t complain about the quality of the device. It’s light years ahead of anything by Kobo, which I was considering.

I didn’t realize that Onyx is a GPL violator until after I purchased the device, but they really engineered an awesome little solution otherwise. Conflicts of interest are hard. :-(

intensely_human,

I’ve used a kindle paperwhite for maybe a decade. Any time one dies or gets lost I replace it. I’ve bought 3 or 4 now.

I love it. Very happy with this little machine. Haven’t tried Kobo to compare.

BlackSkinnedJew,

I’m using a Lemon Read, very good reader for the pocket.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

I use a Kobo Glo with Calibre and it’s been great. Calibre will even install firmware updates for me.

The screen doesn’t really look like a page and the experience isn’t like having a physical book, but it’s been good enough for me to enjoy it.

Teknikal,

I like Kobo it pretty much let’s you load anything you want manually I even did a mobi once by accident and was really surprised it worked.

Mr_Blott,

Been using Kobos for a decade and I’ll gladly admit they were utter shite to start with

They’ve changed dramatically and are now twice the price and ten times the quality

Plus not giving Gif Bozo money

Jollyllama,

I picked up 2 ancient kindles on FB marketplace for $25 and they work great as long as airplane mode stays on. They throw a fit trying to connect to Amazon if you get on WiFi.

amzd,

IMO the one you already have. I use my phones Books app. It can read epubs and you can buy books in the store too. Also has settings for different colors, I really like the white on black dark mode theme.

Kage520,

Eink is so much nicer to stare at long term though

thelsim,
@thelsim@sh.itjust.works avatar

I used to own a Kobo Aura One and was very happy with it, until the battery decided to balloon and it got destroyed.
I did a bit of research for the replacement. Initially I was happy to go with another Kobo, but the Mozilla Privacy Not Included article about Kobo e-readers made me reconsider. It’s from 2021 so maybe by now they’ve changed their policies but it prompted me to look a bit further.
In the end I bought a Pocketbook Verse Pro and I’m very happy with that one. It has a nice screen, is small and fast enough and comes in pretty red (which is already covered up again with a protector :) It supports all the usual formats and that’s about all I really need from it.
Pocketbook is a Swiss company, so I’m not sure if you can get them easily in the US.

zergtoshi,

Well, you don’t need to give your Kobo network access to get ebooks on it. Transferring ebooks via USB cable works fine.
Their privacy policy might still be bad or they may have improved it.
Either way, they can’t collect data if the device isn’t online.

thelsim,
@thelsim@sh.itjust.works avatar

That’s true, and I’m not saying that Kobo is a bad buy or anything. For me the reasoning was that if there’s another company that has a better privacy policy and delivers a similar or better product. Then I prefer to choose the other one on principle.

zergtoshi,

Your reasoning makes sense.
I just wanted to point out a way to use Kobo readers without privacy issues for people who already own them. I should’ve stated that more clearly.
People still looking for an ebook reader should consider leaning onto your reasoning.

Grass, (edited )

Get a Kobo. They are excellent. I had a 2020 or so Paperwhite from 'zon but it made me feel sad all the time. My Kobo Libra 2 has caused me to read more since I got it than the entire before portion of my life.

If you get any books off amazon use calibre and DeDRM. IIRC DeDRM has stopped but also has been forked on git and continued by someone else so you would want the more up to date fork. Adobe digital editions DRM or whatever it was called I believe can also be removed up to a certain version but you have to download it for the first time with an old enough Adobe app version get the old drm version or it will get permanently locked to the newer version that can’t be removed. Anyway removing DRM let’s you read the ebooks on whatever device you want. It’s not illegal in any country I have bothered to research except if you are doing it to distribute or sell.

As a side note if it helps anyone, I was able to get the whole procedure to work on Linux too by installing the required versions of kindle desktop and Adobe digital editions via Lutris and wine. Calibre and plugins are already cross platform.

Edit: updated DeDRM fork link because goog search results are utter shit these days. github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

helmet91,

I have a Kobo Aura 2, and I love it. That’s my first ebook reader, and I haven’t had any other one since.

Personally I avoid Amazon because I definitely don’t wanna get tied to them. I’m not sure if this is still true, but when I got my ebook reader, these were my choices:

  • get a non-Amazon device, and I can read anything except books from Amazon
  • get an Amazon device, and I can only read books from Amazon

So it was a no-brainer for me. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

You can get ebooks from any source (well, not considering the AI generated crap that Amazon is getting flooded with; if you want that, you need to get a Kindle), and your computer/smartphone will handle it as a standard USB storage device, so you can simply copy over your ebooks.

Anticorp,

Kindle is annoying if you want to move your books around and the author didn’t release them without DRM like the awesome Brandon Sanderson does. There used to be a crack using Calibre, but that didn’t work last time I tried it, because Amazon keeps changing the format to prevent people from being able to control their own content. It sucks.

I have the Oasis and the form factor is pretty good. Not as good as the older Nook was, but okay. The old Nook had a really good form factor, tactile rubber, and was very lightweight. They released a new Nook a couple of years ago that was pretty close, but it’s gone again last time I checked. I had the Kindle Voyager before the Oasis and it’s okay. The Paper White is pretty good, but I want physical buttons, and a large edge to hang onto so that I don’t accidentally change pages by touching the screen.

The Kindle store is nice because they have pretty much everything, but it’s kind of expensive. Recently my Kindle started updating the store every single time I open it, which is very annoying. There doesn’t seem to be an option to disable the automatically update.

Text selection on the Kindle is great! I play around with the Nook whenever I go to Barnes and Noble and it’s not as good. On the Kindle you can hold one word, then tap another word somewhere else, and it’ll highlight everything in-between and the two words you touch.

I’ve looked into Kobo a couple of times when frustrated that I couldn’t move a book to a non-kindle device, but they’re pretty expensive. My Oasis was also expensive, but it still works, so I’ll probably stick with that until it stops working.

Best of luck! eBooks are awesome and I greatly prefer them to real books now.

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve had an Oasis since 2017 and I generally like it. I am not crazy about all my e-books being hosted in the Amazon cloud. But I made that bed over a decade ago, and will have to lie in it. I do love the convenience of e-books, too.

One thing that annoys me about Kindle is that if it can’t connect to the Amazon cloud for some reason, it will burn through the battery pretty quickly as it desperately tries to connect over and over again. This is an issue in my house, because my WiFi is filtered by a Pi Hole. So I end up leaving my Oasis in Airplane Mode most of the time. The battery lasts a lot longer that way. When I want to sync or download a new e-book, I just take it out of Airplane Mode for a couple of minutes.

Anticorp,

I guess it is trying to connect to sync your read progress. That’s another benefit that I forgot to mention. You can read on your Kindle, and then if you’re on the bus or something, you can read on your Kindle app on your phone and pick up right where you left off.

sparky678348,

You might be shocked how quickly you get used to reading on your phone. A nice epub reader (I recommend a nice app called FB reader) + libgen and you’re golden.

I also have a nice 7-in tablet that I got for reading, one of Samsung’s non-flagships. I use my phone more out of pure convenience, but I have definitely put my hours in on both. Usually I’ll load up a book I’m reading on both and kinda go back and forth.

Grass,

I did this before but couldn’t keep it up. When I got my first OLED phone I was able to do it with inverse colour and 2 notches over minimum brightness, plus blue light toned down. I read Atwood’s maddaddam trilogy like this.

DashboTreeFrog,

I’m gonna chime in with some of the others and say Onyx is actually really good. I got my Nova 3 (black and white, not color) to replace an old Kindle and I’ve been loving it. The fact that I can write notes on it has been a game changer for me and has completely replaced pen and paper notes. On top of that, the fact that it’s Android means I can install other apps and that just opened all kinds of windows for experimenting with the device that I didn’t expect, it really is just basically a tablet with a much more readable screen. And second best thing to notes I’ve found about my Nova is how nice reading manga is on it, I’m even paying for a subscription to Shonen Jump now plus using Tachiyomi for fan-scans.

Only damage the thing has taken in the time I’ve had it is a couple corners coming off the case, which I just glued back on. Device itself feels good as ever.

DesertCreosote,

I’m going to jump on the Kobo train along with everyone else. I have a Kobo Libra H2O that I really love. I had a couple Kindles before deciding that I really didn’t want to stick with an Amazon product, and chose Kobo because of its integrations with Overdrive. It’s really nice to be able to check out a book from the library directly on my e-reader.

The screen is bright when it needs to be, but dims down quite nicely. The touchscreen is fairly responsive, though it’s e-ink and there are limits to refresh rates. The physical buttons to turn the page are perfect, and I still can’t believe Amazon took them off their Kindles (though I guess I understand them removing the keyboard… even though I liked it).

I actually like mine so much, I bought a second of the same model after I somehow managed to lose my first one. So the one thing I wish they had was integration with Apple Airtag or one of the other device tracking networks!

speck,

Can you do things like highlight text on a kobo? And can you then export with all the edits?

Also, can you the plug into a computer and transfer books over?

DesertCreosote,

You can definitely highlight text. I haven’t tried exporting with edits, though, so I can’t speak to that.

You can plug it in and transfer, but again, I haven’t personally done it. I get most of my books from the library, so I just use the Overdrive stuff for that.

speck,

I should follow the law of the internet and insist that you can't export edits and that's why Kobo sux and then someone can let us know if it can!

In all seriousness, I appreciate the input, thank you! I just don't enjoy reading on my ipad as much as I did on the Nook I had, back when. So the recent posts about e-readers has me considering getting one. But I also need the ability to highlight and jot notes when I read.

Drusas,

I know everybody hates Amazon and they want an alternative to the Kindle, but my Kindle is waterproof and I almost exclusively want to use it in the bathtub. I also want one that doesn't have a strong backlight and feels natural to look at. The Kindle is damn near perfect.

Grass,

I’ve taken my Kobo into a stream that people cliff jump into. I felt off about it because it doesn’t look waterproof even though it is advertised as such. Maybe I’m just too old for waterproof electronics.

Drusas,

That's fair. I mostly want my device to survive if my dog knocks it into the bathtub. This has happened before and it will happen again.

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