Kindle Voyage vs. other ereaders: screen comparison at 0 brightness

[leifan89]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also KOReader is not the native. Needs jailbreak on Kindle and only a tiny minority of Kobo users use it (MR isn't indicative).

Indeed. I only pulled up KOReader so I can do absolutely 0 light comparisons, since it's not possible on the Voyage natively.

(I also just have a preference for how configurable everything is in KOReader.)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by leifan89

I'm a little confused though - do you turn the light brighter when there is more ambient light?? If so, why? (Just curious )

Yes. To make the screen whiter. It doesn't have to be blindingly white like glossy magazine paper, but not grey either - I like somewhat off/creamish or greyish white in daylight and light yellow in artificial light. Those colors are not possible with an unlit screen, except in extremely bright ambient lighting - and I never read in such lighting conditions.

[leifan89]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yes. To make the screen whiter. It doesn't have to be blindingly white like glossy magazine paper, but not grey either - I like somewhat off/creamish or greyish white in daylight and light yellow in artificial light. Those colors are not possible with an unlit screen, except in extremely bright ambient lighting - and I never read in such lighting conditions.

I see - gotcha, yes, those colors are not possible with an unlit screen without really bright ambient lighting.

In my personal experience, I haven't seen any ereaders that are as bright as actual paper (of good quality) in ambient light with no front light of their own. Kind of unfortunate, in my opinion.

Now that I have the Voyage, it seems to come the closest, but still not really there.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by leifan89

I'm sitting in my living room, all devices on a white table, facing the southern balcony with the bright sun right ahead of me, a little after noon, in the peak summer of the northern hemisphere

In a word, a representative ambient light condition for day time reading for me.

Heh. I couldn't even bear to be in such bright light, let alone read. On a sunny day (mind, none of my windows open to the south, and at noon I'm usually still asleep) I read in the shade, never in direct sunlight. Unshaded noonday sun - hurts my eyes even to think about it.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by leifan89

I see - gotcha, yes, those colors are not possible with an unlit screen without really bright ambient lighting.

In my personal experience, I haven't seen any ereaders that are as bright as actual paper (of good quality) in ambient light with no front light of their own. Kind of unfortunate, in my opinion.

Now that I have the Voyage, it seems to come the closest, but still not really there.

No, no eink device with a naturally white screen exists.

Old Pearl screens without any installed lighting were actually lighter than unlit Carta screens, with a few exceptions. But still not white.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I only use a front light setting at all if somewhere too dim. My Oasis Gen 2 was certainly inferior to libra and libra 2. There is no greenish tinge in any of my Kobos on Ambient light (LED stick lights or one room halogen), nor outdoor.
Or indeed on Sony, Kindle, Boyue Mars or Y-Ben. They only vary in brightness / sharpness etc.

The Oasis 2 was one of the poorest screens I've used. The Oasis 3 was considerably better, but still worse than the Libra 2 (all this was with the frontlight on - I have no idea what any of them looked like with the light off).

[Quoth]

I agree, none are actually white.
Also most paper gets brighter white even with blue or UV source.
Interestingly the eInk screens are very dark in a room with UV LED insect death, pulp paperback is dark, but POD sourced books, paper for printer and magazine white are bright

Most CFLs and fluorescent tube lamps have a peak greenish hue and will make eink look greenish/grey compared to printer/copier paper which will mysteriously still be white. So don't use copier/printer paper to set electronic camera white balance.

Also the camera -> processing -> local screen will not match what the human sees. None of my desktop screens and laps have the same colour temperature or rendition. The 23.5″ LG 4K UHD HDR is the most natural and least blue tinged (cheaper tablets and laptops use poor colour temp and rendition phosphor doped blue/violet LEDs. Native white LEDs don't exist. It's why LED lamps when off look yellow and glow yellow under UV).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I agree, none are actually white.
Also most paper gets brighter white even with blue or UV source.
Interestingly the eInk screens are very dark in a room with UV LED insect death, pulp paperback is dark, but POD sourced books, paper for printer and magazine white are bright

That's interesting. I've never read anything in blue/UV light, either paper or eink.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by leifan89

Indeed. I only pulled up KOReader so I can do absolutely 0 light comparisons, since it's not possible on the Voyage natively.

If you can run KOReader your Voyage is jailbroken, so you can set the brightness to any level possible with the hardware/firmware. To turn the frontlight off completely, use the shell command:

echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/max77696-bl/brightness

Any integer between 0 and 255 inclusive will work.

You can play around with fine tuning the brightness with the KUAL extension in the thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=293718

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by leifan89

I'm a little confused though - do you turn the light brighter when there is more ambient light?? If so, why? (Just curious )

That is what the default out of the box auto-brightness does on kindles. If ambient light is bright enough, it will go to full brightness, which drains the battery quickly. Any brighter and it goes to the lowest setting.

I think amazon has always considered the primary purpose of the frontlight to be making the display look whitish.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

That's interesting. I've never read anything in blue/UV light, either paper or eink.

I'd not claim to have read anything! I was just curious when I went into the kitchen late at night with the new bug zapper on and noticed some very bright white things.

BANG!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I think amazon has always considered the primary purpose of the frontlight to be making the display look whitish.

Hence the first Kindle with a front light was called a Paperwhite!
In reality without the front light it's as grey as any other ereader of that era.

[leifan89]

You can play around with fine tuning the brightness with the KUAL extension in the thread

Very interesting. Thanks for the pointer - I'll check it out!

That is what the default out of the box auto-brightness does on kindles. If ambient light is bright enough, it will go to full brightness, which drains the battery quickly. Any brighter and it goes to the lowest setting.

Yeah, this has always driven me insane on my Oasis with the automatic light. On Kindles it's annoying to keep adjusting it all the time (not nearly as convenient as on Kobos/KOReader - yet another reason why I prefer KOReader), but the auto adjustment does almost (though not quite) the opposite of what I want. I don't want it looking white with the light - that, to me, just feels disingenuous.

I think amazon has always considered the primary purpose of the frontlight to be making the display look whitish.

Hence the first Kindle with a front light was called a Paperwhite!
In reality without the front light it's as grey as any other ereader of that era.

Marketing...

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

None of my desktop screens and laps have the same colour temperature or rendition. The 23.5″ LG 4K UHD HDR is the most natural and least blue tinged (cheaper tablets and laptops use poor colour temp and rendition phosphor doped blue/violet LEDs. Native white LEDs don't exist. It's why LED lamps when off look yellow and glow yellow under UV).

Yeah. The first thing I always do when I get a new laptop (I don't use desktops) is to adjust its color. If I can find a calibrated color profile for just that model, I'll install that too, but color usually still needs adjustment. Even with expensive laptops (true, less so than with cheap devices).

I do some photo editing for personal fun and so I want good colors on my laptops and tablets. I've seen all kinds of screens on different brands and models - too blue, too red, too green. Oversaturated, undersaturated. Some cheap, some not. But always needing some color correction.

[Kindleing]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Most CFLs and fluorescent tube lamps have a peak greenish hue and will make eink look greenish/grey compared to printer/copier paper which will mysteriously still be white. So don't use copier/printer paper to set electronic camera white balance.

Copier/printer paper, as well as many other types of paper, is made with OBAs (Optical Brightening Agents) that fluoresce when exposed to UV light. It's similar to the stuff used in laundry detergents to give "whiter whites". A small amount of UV output is found in most non-incandescent lighting sources as well as sunlight.