Quote:
Originally Posted by exaltedwombat
A reader is a one-function tablet, optimised for that one job.
But if you need (or just enjoy) all the OTHER things a tablet does, and are going to carry one around and charge it daily anyway.... well, it really isn't as bad at reading ebooks as some of you like to believe.
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For limited/moderate reading at least. My craptastic Android tablet gets, at best (with the screen dimmed to its lowest setting, wifi/gps/sound off) five to six hours between charges. Nowhere near good enough for an ebook reader, though it is what I relied on for a couple of years. Also, only useful indoors - absolutely impossible to read in sunlight. Basically, I hated the thing from the day I bought it, though it was a great upgrade from reading on my netbook.
About a month ago, I *FINALLY* got a Kobo Mini. Not only has my tablet not been turned on and used since, but honestly I don't even know where it is - probably under a stack of papers or lobbed in a box somewhere.
I'm blown away by the display quality of e-ink. Yes, I knew it would have a higher DPI than my tablet - but I am amazed by the fact that I cannot see pixels *at all* no matter how hard I squint. It's far better, in fact, than magazine print (where the dots of the print are plainly visible) let alone a traditional raster display. And, of course, many pricier readers have a higher DPI than my mini, but really I don't see the point since it really couldn't be improved any as far as my one good eye can tell.
Other than the visual quality, I would agree that a tablet is probably fine for someone that reads at most a few hours a day indoors, or doesn't mind spending much of their time chained to a power outlet so they can charge while reading.
That being said, the battery limitation probably isn't significant for the vast majority of people - most of whom will only read a handful of books in the course of a year and will almost never read anywhere near six hours in a day. So for most people the only limitation presented by a tablet is sunlight readability, which is far less of an issue.
This means that dedicated ereaders are definitely niche market devices, but it would take a *massive* improvement in tablets before they could fill that niche.