32GB e-ink reader recommendations?

[Sonnenfee]

I’m surprised to read about the bad battery life of the Oasis. I haven’t read this before. Which model is it the Oasis 2nd (7”) without adjustable warm light or the 3th/present Oasis?

I would only recommend the kobo sage for reading by buying the PowerCover also.
Without the PowerCover, the Sage's battery won't last long. The battery life of the Sage is poor.

I had the Sage and sold it. However, the reason wasn’t the bad battery life, the Sage didn’t fulfill my Note Taking demands. The display and typeface on the Sage were really good.

The Libra 2 would be the much better choice with his long lasting battery life, perfect display and contrast. I have the Libra 2 as back-up Reader to my Oasis 3, 32 GB.

Another device that might be interesting for you is the PocketBook ERA. Like the Oasis the ERA have a flush screen. It is available with 64 GB. Maybe you will get more and more books in the future, 64 GB fits better than 32 GB

I was thinking about selling my ERA, 64 GB and had already advertised it. But since it is more handy and lighter than the Libra 2, it will be the e-book reader that I will take with me on the road.

One point is, with the ERA I would recommend to use the device with KOReader cause the setting options of the PB software are quite little.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The OP should be warned that Calibre Companion is abandonware, its development has been dead for a while now.

Yes - I don't recommend buying CC either, but version 5.4.3.4 works great (except for cloud logins) and can be found on the web

[Fat Abe]

Which eink manufacturers support 64GB or 128GB memory cards in an accessible slot?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sonnenfee

I would only recommend the kobo sage for reading by buying the PowerCover also.
Without the PowerCover, the Sage's battery won't last long. The battery life of the Sage is poor.

The power cover is a waste of money. It's not needed. Certainly the Sage battery run time is poorer than most 6" ereaders, but it's fine and takes only a little more than 45 minutes to charge with a compatible charger.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Which eink manufacturers support 64GB or 128GB memory cards in an accessible slot?

Meebook P78 Pro, Boox Leaf 2, Boox Tab Ultra.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The power cover is a waste of money. It's not needed. Certainly the Sage battery run time is poorer than most 6" ereaders, but it's fine and takes only a little more than 45 minutes to charge with a compatible charger.

It may be fine compared to an Android tablet but I've heard a lot complaints about its battery life. The same goes for its Tolino sibling the Epos 3. In my opinion, the battery (1200 mAH) is too small for the power of the CPU and all its features. And I'm guessing (don't know) that the new Kobo (which supports a pen) might be a replacement for the Sage/Epos 3. A lot of people are used to E-Ink readers going for weeks (or even months) without worrying about charging them.

I'm guessing the PocketBook Era or PocketBook InkPad have better battery life, just judging by the great battery life of my PocketBook HD 3. The PB Era has a 1700 mAH battery and the PB InkPad Pro has a 1900 mAH battery – and neither has as powerful of a CPU as the Sage/Epos 3.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rcentros

It may be fine compared to an Android tablet but I've heard a lot complaints about its battery life.

Ah, but have you used one? There are 4x Sage in our family. Wife previously used Original Libra and PW3. I've previously used PW3, KK3, DXG, Nook Simple touch, Kobo Touch, iRiver Story, original H2O. My Likebook Mars is worse on battery life. My Sony PRS350 is poor, but likely needs a new battery. The worst one, but still useable, is the yiben Y-Ben P47L 4.7″ ereader, but it has a tiny battery.

I agree not as good as most 6″ ereaders, but 8″ screen and charge run time is absolutely not an issue and any LCD Android I have is rubbish in comparison.

No complaints about life. You can read all day or all night. Possibly excessive use of front light (bigger screen = more power), WiFi or BT or dodgy sleep covers causes issues for some.

[isarl]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

Looking at the Calibre Kobo driver, it talks about turning series into collections. Will it work equally if you choose tags instead of series (esp. since a book may have multiple tags)?

You should not have any problem using tags instead of genres, or in addition to genres. In the driver settings (true for both the KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended drivers), you can even visit the “Collections, covers & uploads” settings tab and use the “Collections template” field to set up arbitrarily powerful custom processing. For instance, if you only wanted a collection for a specific tag, then you could do something like:

program: tag = "My Super Special Collection Tag"; if tag in $tags then tag fi;

This is a *very* simplistic example and if you want to do something more powerful then you may wish to save a template function and call your saved template function from the “Collections template” field. (For a similar example, I have a complicated template function which automatically spits out a list of to-dos based on incomplete metadata; then I have a custom column built from other columns whose template is simply:

{:todos()}

You could similarly make a complex saved template function and then in your Collections template simply reference it like:

{:kobocollections()}

(or whatever you wish to name your saved template function in place of “kobocollections”, a totally arbitrary name I just made up).

If this is a road you wish to go down and you wish to be able to produce more than one collection from this template function, then by carefully reading the tooltip for the “Collections template” input field, which mentions joining separate collection names with :@:, we can infer that the list_join() function will be of great help to you. Example:

program:
  tag1 = "Obviously you would do some processing here";
  tag2 = "Rather than just hardcoding some nonsense tags";
  tag3 = "But hopefully this illustrates the point";
  list_join(':@:', tag1, ':@:', tag2, ':@:', tag3, ':@:')

(This function accepts a variable number of arguments, you don't HAVE to use it with 3 tags. And you can use it to join existing lists, rather than simply joining single elements together into a list, as I've done here.)

Fine, here's one more example with slightly more practical code, heavily commented for readability:

program:
# Set up basic variables.
  collections = "";
  sep = ":@:";
  
# Set up custom information.
  tag1 = "My Super Special Tag Name";
  field_to_flag_if_missing = $#super_important_custom_column;
  
# Process our custom rules, adding each qualifying result to the list of collections as we go.
  if tag1 in $tags then collections = list_join(sep, collections, sep, tag1, sep) fi;
  if !field_to_flag_if_missing then collections = list_join(sep, collections, sep, "Change this to a custom name for your collection assigned to the books with this missing field", sep);
  
# Return the final value of our collections list.
  collections

Depending on how comfortable you are with programming concepts, I think chances are good that I've either inspired you as to how flexible the KoboTouch[Extended] driver is for managing collections – or possibly completely overwhelmed you with complexity. If it's the latter, do feel free to ask questions!

[Lys]

Originally Posted by isarl

You should not have any problem using tags instead of genres, or in addition to genres. In the driver settings (true for both the KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended drivers), you can even visit the “Collections, covers & uploads” settings tab and use the “Collections template” field to set up arbitrarily powerful custom processing. For instance, if you only wanted a collection for a specific tag, then you could do something like:

If I may add another thing to your post: in case you end up using different Kobos at the same time, and you want to have different collections on them, the KT(/E) drivers allow you to define different collections for each device. As the one who manages Calibre for the whole family, it's one of my fave features

[isarl]

Originally Posted by Lys

If I may add another thing to your post: in case you end up using different Kobos at the same time, and you want to have different collections on them, the KT(/E) drivers allow you to define different collections for each device. As the one who manages Calibre for the whole family, it's one of my fave features

I see options for profiles in the Kobo Utilities settings, but not in the KT(/E) settings. What am I missing?

[Lys]

Originally Posted by isarl

I see options for profiles in the Kobo Utilities settings, but not in the KT(/E) settings. What am I missing?

It's not explicit like in the KU where you have different profiles, but you can handle it through the collections template option: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=346321

A very easy way to handle it would be:

program:
	globals(serial_number='Serial Device 1');  
	if serial_number == 'Serial Device 1' then
		return list_join(
 	        	':@:', $#collection_column_1, ',', $#collection_column_2, ',', $#collection_column_3, ',' , $#etc etc, ',')
	fi;
	if serial_number == 'Serial Device 2' then
		return list_join(
			':@:', $##collection_column_n, ',' $#etc etc, ',')
	fi

[isarl]

Originally Posted by Lys

It's not explicit like in the KU where you have different profiles, but you can handle it through the collections template option: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=346321

Very cool, thanks for the demonstration!

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by Sonnenfee

I’m surprised to read about the bad battery life of the Oasis. I haven’t read this before. Which model is it the Oasis 2nd (7”) without adjustable warm light or the 3th/present Oasis?

Umm. It's a 7" screen, and I bought it in 2020. It has an adjustable light.

The Libra 2 would be the much better choice with his long lasting battery life, perfect display and contrast. I have the Libra 2 as back-up Reader to my Oasis 3, 32 GB.

Another device that might be interesting for you is the PocketBook ERA. Like the Oasis the ERA have a flush screen. It is available with 64 GB. Maybe you will get more and more books in the future, 64 GB fits better than 32 GB

Thanks. I'll look at both of these. 32GB is plenty ATM, but it does no harm to plan ahead.

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by isarl

You should not have any problem using tags instead of genres, or in addition to genres.

Not sure I understand, as Calibre just has tags, which I use for my genres (among other things).

Depending on how comfortable you are with programming concepts, I think chances are good that I've either inspired you as to how flexible the KoboTouch[Extended] driver is for managing collections – or possibly completely overwhelmed you with complexity. If it's the latter, do feel free to ask questions!

I'm very comfortable with programming, so thanks for the tips.

[Phssthpok]

Summarising the recommendations I've had (Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Sage, Pocketbook Era):

Screen: the Sage has an 8" (1920x1440) screen, all the others are 7" (1680x1264), same as the Oasis.

Storage: all 32GB, except for the Era (64GB).

Connectivity: all USB-C, instead of the awkward micro-USB on the Oasis.

Battery: 1200mAH (Sage), 1500 (Libra 2), 1700 (Era), compared to 1300 on the Oasis.

Price: a quick search shows $240 for the Sage and the Era, $170 for the Libra (as opposed to about $300 for the Oasis 32GB without annoying ads).

So the Libra wins on price, the Era wins on storage, the Sage wins on screen size...