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Old 10-09-2012, 09:06 AM   #17
Gagarin Gambit
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Device: Onyx i62HD
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGMerlin View Post
Hi Gagarin,

Would you say that the screen of the Onyx is much better than the Kindle Touch?

I am in your situation. I read a lot of pdfs for hours at a time, but I don't work on them like you do.

I just need a good reader, but I am loathe to invest 350€ on an M92, inasmuch as I don't know who they are and it seems that the quality of the stuff depends on the goodwill of the vendor and I don't really understand who does what. There are so many vendors each with its own branding, firmware and support. And pricing.

I could possibly invest 250€ in an Amazon product (a new DX for instance, but I doubt that Amazon will come up with this type of product any more), but being a conservative type I just need belt and braces before spending the price of a week in a 4 stars hotel in Thailand on unknown quantities.

Thanks for your time.
The best reply I can offer is a couple of screenshots. In both you can see an article I read recently in paper, two pages printed in A4 (thus A5 per page), compared with the same test as viewed in the Onyx i62HD. In both cases I used the beta pdf reader (which although it needs some work, it's clearly superior to the old reader), available with the latest firmware update.

In the first image I used the auto crop mode. The only reason that the printed article is more readable is that the reader's background is on the grey side (which is a limitation with all e-ink devices). In the second image you can see a two column article, and thus I'm using the paper (column) mode; and it's actually easier to read in the Onyx screen.

In addition, I discovered that many pdfs can reflow properly, and thus you can read them as conveniently as any epub file; in general, the simpler the text formation, the more likely the reflow will work. Landscape mode can also come handy for pdfs with small font.

Keep in mind that you'd need reasonably good eyesight in order to read the articles the way I print them, and it's the same for the Onyx screen. Also, things get harder when your pdfs include figures or tables.

My opinion is that this reader is doing an impressive work with pdfs, considering it's a six inch device. I compared it with a regular 800x600 device, and the difference is more than significant.

Knowing that M92's software is almost identical, I believe that the latter has two advantages over the i62HD. First, the 9 inch screen, meaning that you can read anything without much tweaking. Second, thanks to the stylus and the screen size, you can keep notes just like you would in your paper books/articles (the technology is also present in the i62HD, but in practice it's not feasible).

In summary, if you need it for pdfs with relatively simple formatting, I believe the i62HD would do fine. Otherwise, you should consider the M92 (or another 9 inch reader).

A final piece of warning. I get the feeling that picking an Onyx over a Kindle is like choosing a Linux operating system instead of Windows. While the first is clearly better, you'd need to look into it yourself in order to truly enjoy its benefits. For instance, there was not a full manual included, and I learned many important things (such as how to upgrade the filmware or add more applications) via Googling or searching this forum.


PS. For comparison, that's where you can find the articles pictured. Print the first two pages in one A4 sheet in order to understand the scale.
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs..._1970-2006.pdf
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs...5_19-51_IN.pdf
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