Hello, all! Another newbie here seeking advice on what to buy.
First, let me say that I've been reading up on everything for about a week now, just long enough to know what I want versus what I truly need, but it's always good to hear opinions from those who actually have first-hand experience. I'll just describe my jumbled thoughts and hope that some of you would be able to extract my meaning and distil it into some fine advice.
The customs procedure and regulations in my country are an incredible hindrance, so I'm limited only by what I can order from here, to avoid disaster. Sadly, that means no live test, which I gather would solve a lot of my questions. Anyway, the choice falls on the Kobo Aura One, H20 1st Gen, Kindle Voyage and PocketBook InkPad2. In a strange twist of fate, the prices between them are almost identical, +-10 euros, with the Aura One being only 30 euros more expensive than the cheapest one. So price is not really an issue, which means that I get to nitpick, split hairs, and write an overly long post asking advice on a forum and whatnot.
What I'll probably not use: I'm not going to use the stores on any device, and I don't really need any fancy book transfer features, I'm perfectly content in doing it manually. No lending/DRM stuff needed, as I'm not in any of the supported countries. Also, not a lot of need for annotations, exporting, syncing, library maintenance, statistics. Dictionaries might be nice, but as I've already got my pc set up as I like it with GoldenDict, not too important. Also, I'll mostly be reading at home, so ultra portability/fit in my pocket is also not too big a deal. This is not to say that I scoff at the mentioned features, it's just that I'd much prefer that the reader has visual options and settings, since I like to tweak and setup and poke at things. I'm also not opposed to tweaking/installing/downgrading firmware, or get involved in any setup that would elevate the basic file performance.
Now, I'll either buy my books from what's locally accessible or - and here's part of the problem - use PDFs. I'm something of an occasional/amateurish book scanner, and when I transfer a book from paper to digital, I usually end up with a PDF/DjVu file, because OCR is finicky and extracting pure and clean text from a scanned/OCRed page is a problem for anyone except those with either exceptional skill or equipment. (Or maybe I just suck at it.) Anywho, as a result, I have basically three formats for the books I use - PDF, DjVu and epub, with a very few mobis and fb2. The PDFs I'll be using are mostly either high-quality modern text PDF documents (ie. digital downloads) or high-quality OCRed images. In both cases, they are ordinary books - no graphs, no formulae, and practically no illustrations apart from the front covers.
I've nothing against modern e-reader formats, and on principle, I wouldn't be against, say, converting epubs to mobi, I've just never done it before, and I'm not sure if I'd find the process comfortable, or if I would be bothered much by inconsistencies in the formatting (Is there such a thing when converting between formats? Can you tell a native mobi vs a converted one?). That's ultimately beside the point, as I expect I will find some of my PDF books in epub now that I have an actual reason to look, but many will still remain in PDF, so everything ends up turning around them.
Speaking of my preference for PDFs, I obviously have two concerns, one is space, and the other usability. As for space, I'm simply of the belief that with PDF's 8GB won't be enough, due to their varying sizes? There's also the moment when you remember a book you never thought you'd read again, and realising it's not there because you did triage and left it out because of memory real-estate that's a bit off-putting. Seems to me that an SD card would fix that. I could periodically switch out what I've read manually, and if I've found the otherwise perfect reader whose only flaw is the lack of expandable memory, I'll find a way to get over it. But for that, I'll need your help.
I am fully aware that PDF's are not the forte of E-Ink readers, but my eyes just can't endure tablet and phone screens. I'm not wearing glasses, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible, hence my decision to buy a proper e-reader. I also know that I won't be able to find most of my books in digital formats. I'm not expecting PDF's to fly off the screen with speed, just not to be cringe-worthy and discouraging to use. I know that if I have to wait for 10-15 seconds between page turns, it will simply discourage me from using it. On the other hand, 1-4 seconds, like I've seen on some tests, seems acceptable. But that was all on modern pure-text PDFs and not scanned ones. Can anyone comment on the general performance of those?
From the tests I've read and seen, the Kindle has fine PDF performance, but I'm not sure if it offers anything significant that would be advantageous for my use? It has lacklustre customisation compared to these others, and a whole package of features that I won't be using, no SD card, no epub/DjVu support, and no way to make Kindle compatible with them using software adjustments. Which is a shame, as I like its overall design best.
If the reviews are to be trusted, both Kobos have abysmal PDF support, and I'm still wondering how they perform with KOReader with, say 40-50MB PDF files that are scanned and OCRed? From the tests I've seen, they have absolutely beautiful screens. The Aura One has the larger screen that's better for PDFs, but no SD card, while the H20 has it, so as I see it, the main issue between these two comes down to memory expandability? On the other hand, I've read some posts here that folks were not happy with the PDF handling in their daily use with KA1, and I seem to find folks at the forums claiming that the Aura H20 is actually better in many other respects, lighting, responsiveness, etc, but does that translate to easier reading of PDF files?
Then we have the InkPad 2. I see that it supports all my formats natively, and the couple of tests I've found that compare it to the H20 showed a fine performance of its basic software. On top of that, I can load different apps into it, if I'm not happy with the defaults. (By the way, has anyone tried that?) However, it seems that the screen is iffy, with strange lighting issues and conspicuously older Pearl tech. Is that true, or is it a matter of quality control? Of course, the screen differences are noticeable when compared to the Kobo H20, and when compared by trained eyes with previous experience with e-readers. But is the screen all that bad by itself, or only when compared to the arguably nicest screen that exists? Also, it doesn't seem to be getting, well, any love at all, certainly nowhere near the love for the Kobo's, which is a cause for concern. I can't really trust the Russian reviewers, as it is a homebrew product, so what I mostly see here is the potential for something that would fit, and the potential for disaster.
Then there's the contrast bag of worms, as I gather that this can vary greatly depending on the scan quality and OCR? I presume that larger screens would have an edge with scanned PDFs in general, where re-flow wouldn't help, and there'd be less processing involved and consequently less strain on the hardware? I could go on yapping forever, but based on what I've read so far, I'm leaning either towards the H20 or the InkPad 2. Ideally, you guys and gals will comment on the best performance attainable on these devices, and how that looks in your experience, especially for PDFs.
Wow, I've just typed this out and realised how long it is. A big thank you from me to whoever reaches the end of this!