Quote:
Originally Posted by Ridcully
I really like Kindle's collections, dictionaries and the bookmark/note taking feature, these are really things I wouldn't want to go without. I'm also a big fan of the touch screen, although I do wish it could be turned off while reading, reading with the touch screen while lying in bed can get tiring -- I loved the side buttons on old kindles for this reason, although they would fail within a couple of years. 
I want weak backlighting and I'd like the ability to turn it off to save the battery. The Paperwhite lighting looks pretty good for that reason, but I'm wary of buying from Amazon again, because the build quality is meh and I want to get rid of Amazon's snooping. Also, Kindle's sidecar files are worthless for backup. I can't figure out how to read them, and when I restore them after a factory reset, the Kindle doesn't recognize them anymore. 
So, anything that fits the bill, hopefully at or below Paperwhite's price? (My main priorities are lighting and dictionaries) |
I never had a Kindle, so I don't know what sort of build quality you have in mind. I have mostly owned Pocketbooks. Their build quality varies. Inkpad 3, their current top model, is very good with metallic feel, but I don't like the narrow keys and narrow bezels.
Touch HD (and HD 2, their only difference is that HD 2 has a tinted comfortlight setting) has very nice wide functional keys, but you may dislike the fairly deep-seated screen. The build quality seems okay to me. The physical form factor (sizes of bezels, thickness and weight) is very much okay.
Software on Pocketbooks is sufficient both for pdfs and epubs, it's an important strength of Pocketbooks. Bookmarking, annotations, scribbles, highlighting, dictionaries, multi-language keyboard (Greek, Cyrillic) etc. all out of the box. The first startup offers a bunch of online accounts to register, but you can skip all of them.
I also have a Kobo H2O. The build quality on this one is very impressive for me at least, even though I'd like to have a few keys. But the software is a disaster. I ignore it completely. Don't go for a Kobo unless you are prepared to experiment with installing other stuff on it. Kobo fans would talk about patching, but patching is in reality reinstalling the entire software for every patch, and the patches are a hit and miss, some simply won't work.
Onyxes can be good because they run Android, but they don't have a good build quality as far as I have seen.