Aura HD Kobo Aura HD Impressions Thread

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Ansileran

All in all, I liked it and might still get one, despite the fact that it doesn't support Chinese...

Have you tried one of your Chinese books? To read the Japanese characters, I usually use Ryumin or Gothic. Somehow I thought that when a device could read one of the CJK characters it could read the others
Anyway, glad you found an Aura to try. I love mine so much! That's my evening ereader now

Edit: have you noticed which firmware version it was? At my nearby FNAC the displayed devices are not updated at all.

[Ansileran]

I didn't check the firmware version, but it was probably the same. I mean, if they couldn't be bothered to turn on the wifi and load a fr-en dictionary for the demo, I doubt they went through the trouble of connecting it to a computer...

I ended up getting an Aura anyway yesterday. Chinese is not supported natively at all, I probably need to install Chinese fonts first so that I don't get squares instead of characters (my PRS-505 displays "?" ). Though I'm not sure why... The fonts were included in the epub I tried...

Oh, and again, it's damn fast! I tried a very big ebook (bible in Chinese ~7000 pages) and it opened almost instantly. When I tried it on the PRS-505, I thought something had gone wrong because it took around 30s to open the file

[adbosch]

Can anyone inform me about the comics reading experience. I find my Onyx Firefly 6 inch too small. Is the Aura good enough for reading a standard comics page without zooming?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Ansileran

I didn't check the firmware version, but it was probably the same. I mean, if they couldn't be bothered to turn on the wifi and load a fr-en dictionary for the demo, I doubt they went through the trouble of connecting it to a computer...

Shops like that are very annoying. The last time I was in a shop that has Kobo devices on display, they all had the flat batteries.

I ended up getting an Aura anyway yesterday. Chinese is not supported natively at all, I probably need to install Chinese fonts first so that I don't get squares instead of characters (my PRS-505 displays "?" ). Though I'm not sure why... The fonts were included in the epub I tried...

The firmware is a bit picky about the names of fonts. There is a bit of discussion about it. Start with https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=204363. That is mainly talking about sideloaded fonts, but from memory the same rules apply to embedded fonts.

Oh, and again, it's damn fast! I tried a very big ebook (bible in Chinese ~7000 pages) and it opened almost instantly. When I tried it on the PRS-505, I thought something had gone wrong because it took around 30s to open the file

That is impressive. I think it would have been more impressive if the pages had displayed characters rather than a pile of squares

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Ansileran

I ended up getting an Aura anyway yesterday. Chinese is not supported natively at all, I probably need to install Chinese fonts first so that I don't get squares instead of characters (my PRS-505 displays "?" ). Though I'm not sure why... The fonts were included in the epub I tried...

So you found one? That's great!
I have fond memories of the question marks on my Sony I had to add the specific font to each book before loading it on the ereader. So I was very happy with the Mini and then the Aura to just put a font once for all on the device.

Did you buy the cover too?

[Ansileran]

@Davidfor:
I'll check the thread and see if I can get it to work...
Of course I would have liked it better if it had displayed Chinese properly out of the box, but it's already better than the PRS: at least I got to know really fast that it didn't work ^^

@samhy
I got one from "Le bon coin". The guy had gotten it as a gift, but he wanted a tablet. He hadn't even opened the box. I guess he didn't really know how much it was worth because I got it for 2/3 of its price and he was surprised by how many calls he got ^^ Lucky me
So no cover, but I'll see if I can get one. Meanwhile, I'm using an old Nexus 7 cover (doesn't really fit but it will protect the screen).

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Ansileran

I got one from "Le bon coin". The guy had gotten it as a gift, but he wanted a tablet. He hadn't even opened the box. I guess he didn't really know how much it was worth because I got it for 2/3 of its price and he was surprised by how many calls he got ^^ Lucky me
So no cover, but I'll see if I can get one. Meanwhile, I'm using an old Nexus 7 cover (doesn't really fit but it will protect the screen).

Good deal indeed!
Regarding the fonts, giving them the right name is very important. You can try with a regular one (Deja Vu looks very nice ) and once you're sure to do it right*, you can try a Chinese font. If I'm not mistaken, the Kobo needs to be turned off to update those changes.

* It took me several tries and some fonts are trickier than others.

[Ansileran]

I got the font displayed in the menu so far, but the e-book still doesn't work. I'm going to try with simpler files first and see if I can figure out where the problem comes from...

[Haesslich]

Make sure the ebook doesn't have a specified font face inside - if it's hard-coded to use only MingLiu, then the font you added won't get used. Also, restart after any font additions to be sure they're loaded correctly.

[Ansileran]

It works! damn... I just needed to restart the device...

It seems the default police in the epub doesn't work. I thought it was hard-coded but apparently not since I can change it (now that I restarted the Aura). In the css stylesheet, the font for the "body" part looks like this

@font-face {
font-family: "DroidFont", serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
src: url(res:///system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "DroidFont", serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
src: url(res:///system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "DroidFont", serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: italic;
src: url(res:///system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf);
}
@font-face {
font-family: "DroidFont", serif, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
src: url(res:///system/fonts/DroidSansFallback.ttf);
}

(which doesn't work, I assume said font doesn't exist on the device). Is this hard-coded?

Another thing, do you know how to retrieve txt files put on the device? The one I put doesn't show in "Books"...

Thanks a lot!

[RadarReader]

Just got my Aura HD yesterday and here are my initial impressions.

I considered the Kobo Glo, and to a lesser extent the Paperwhite. I'm very glad I spent the extra $40 on the Aura HD for the size alone...couldn't imagine reading on a smaller screen. Then again, I'm used to reading on a 10" tablet. I just wish it was about an inch taller - then the screen would perfectly mimic the size of a paperback book.

I like the way it feels holding it and I like the ridges on the back. Definitely a lighter, more comfortable hold than my tablet.

I don't have any other e-ink display to compare it to (I think I saw a Nook Glow a couple years ago), but the screen looks good to me. The main reason I got a dedicated e-reader was for reading in direct sunlight, and this seems to fit the bill really well. Other than direct sunlight, I'm not sure why you wouldn't want the glow light on all the time though.

I like that it shows the cover of the current book I'm reading when in sleep or even power off mode. Nice touch. I didn't realize these e-ink readers could still display when not powered on.

The software is okay, nothing special. It serves it's purpose I suppose, but after coming from Moon+ Reader it's a big step back. I realize a lot of this has to do with the technology of the e-ink display.

I wish there was a way to have it go directly to my library rather than the main Kobo screen. I couldn't find a setting for that.

My books primarily come from Amazon, and I used Calibre (along with the Amazon Windows app) to get my books on the Aura and it all seemed to work well.

Overall, I'm satisfied as it serves the main purpose I wanted it for - sunlight reading. And I highly recommend spending the extra $40 on the Aura HD just for the size alone (unless you're looking for something really small).

One complaint - it seems to leave too much space at the bottom of each page...I wish the text went down a bit closer to the bottom.

Not sure if it will completely replace the tablet as a reader, although one factor that may determine if it will - can I easily sync everything (including last reading marker) between devices? Preferably wirelessly, but not completely necessary.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by RadarReader

One complaint - it seems to leave too much space at the bottom of each page...I wish the text went down a bit closer to the bottom.

Kobo reserve a bit of space to show the show the page number and display the bottom menu. I like this, but I think they could halve the space taken. The other possible problem is widows and orphans. Kobo use a default of either two or three. That can mean extra space because the first the paragraph gets forced to the next screen. A lot of people set these to zero in the CSS of their books to prevent this from happening.

Not sure if it will completely replace the tablet as a reader, although one factor that may determine if it will - can I easily sync everything (including last reading marker) between devices? Preferably wirelessly, but not completely necessary.

Unfortunately not. I haven't seen anything that syncs reading position between dissimilar devices. You can sync between Kobo eReaders and apps for books from their shop. My Kobo Utilities plugin will store and restore reading position for sideloaded epubs. But, this is only for Kobo ereaders.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The other possible problem is widows and orphans. Kobo use a default of either two or three. That can mean extra space because the first the paragraph gets forced to the next screen. A lot of people set these to zero in the CSS of their books to prevent this from happening.

This is a generic ADE issue. ADE tends to be a little "over-enthusiastic" when it comes to widows and orphans.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by HarryT

This is a generic ADE issue. ADE tends to be a little "over-enthusiastic" when it comes to widows and orphans.

That's interesting as every other time this has come up people have stated that it definitely isn't ADE. They usually point to other ADE* based ereaders that don't seem to use zero for both. I assumed it was Kobo deciding on options when building their reader around the ADE code or libraries.

* For the nit-pickers: Yes, I know it's not called that on the devices, but I can't think of the correct name and can't be bothered looking for it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That's interesting as every other time this has come up people have stated that it definitely isn't ADE. They usually point to other ADE* based ereaders that don't seem to use zero for both. I assumed it was Kobo deciding on options when building their reader around the ADE code or libraries.

* For the nit-pickers: Yes, I know it's not called that on the devices, but I can't think of the correct name and can't be bothered looking for it.

I've got three different ADE-based readers (Sony, BeBook, and Pocketbook), and they all exhibit this behaviour.