[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

For some time, I've been considering an Aura HD, but the price was too high to justify, taking into account that I already have a Kindle Paperwhite 1 which is perfectly fine. Now that the AHD price has come down to ~€145, I'm considering it again, because of the font adjustments, and the larger screen.

Even though I can go take a look at the reader in a nearby store, I will not be able to side-load my own EPUB/KEPUB books; I don't even know if I'll be able to actually get it in hand and turn it on.

The Aura HD has a micro SD card slot. If you have a card, put a few books on it and take that with you. If they have a demo model, insert the card and the books will be listed in the library.

Therefore, I have some questions that I cannot answer by searching the web, and can't find out on my own. I would greatly appreciate some help resolving them to see if the AHD is a good addition to (or maybe even replacement) for the KPW1.

First: I like to make clear that I will always side-load any books, even the ones I buy at Kobo. My base format is EPUB, and I use Calibre to convert to AZW3 for the KPW1 (I even go as far as converting Amazon books to EPUB, and then working from there), and would also use the KEPUB plugin to convert to KEPUB.

Second: I am only interested in book statistics: time to read per chapter, per book, and page numbers. I'm not interested in any overall reading statistics, or any online capabilities whatsoever. After registering the reader, any synced books will be deleted, and Wifi will be turned off, probably forever (except if it's needed to accomplish something special).

Third: I will not be hacking or jailbreaking the device.

But it's so much fun

The questions:

1. I'm seeing complaints in reviews that the Kobo readers always have space between paragraphs and no indentation. Is this true? If so, for EPUB, KEPUB, or both?

Kobo do a good job of displaying the epubs as per the code and CSS in the book. If they are coded to have spaces as you describe, they will be displayed that way. The same goes for kepubs but I think Kobo have changed the base CSS used for these so that new kepubs are less likely to look like this.

2. Does the AHD monitor and display Time To Read for the chapter and book for EPUB, or does it only do this for KEPUB? If it's the latter, does it work with Calibre-created, side-loaded KEPUB?

There are two sets of stats. The in-book stats are for purchased kepubs only. These are the ones that have the time for the current and next chapter. The other stats are for all books, but ar just counters of the reading so far.

3. Do the font adjustments (weight, sharpness, etc) work on side-loaded EPUB / KEPUB books?

These work on either type of books when using the supplied fonts.

4. Is the "leave half of the screen blank at random locations"-bug resolved?

I can only think of two things this could mean. One is the widows and orphans, which I consider to be working correctly. The other is a bug in epub rendering where paragraphs that are longer than a screen will start at the top of the next screen. This is still there but is an epub only problem.

5. The Kindle driver is able to send the page numbers calculated by the Count Pages plugin to the Kindle. So, the Kindle displays the same page numbers as Calibre does. I have chosen a custom page count, setting the plugin to count using 2400 characters per page. (This is the average for an English Del Rey Paperback.) Can the Kobo or KoboTouchExtended driver also send the page numbers created by Count Pages to the Kobo, or does the Kobo always use the Adobe algorithm? (In this case, I'd need to recount the page numbers in my library.) Also, is there a difference between EPUB and KEPUB in this regard?

For epubs, Kobo uses the Adobe algorithm. For kepubs, the page count is per chapter and is how many screens there are for the text in the chapter. Changing the font size, changes the number of pages in the chapter.

I can't help with the test as I don't have an Aura HD.