Thanks for the answers! I decided to go with the Pocketbook.
Some observations:
- It costs as much as I paid for the KA1 but is a slight let down in terms of overall quality :/.KA1 has a sort of premium feel compared to it.
- Software seems a bit flaky (internal memory got corrupted immediately after connecting it to the PC).
- I couldn't get Calibre to recognize it properly (It recognizes it as the Inkpad 740 and there is a bug present when accessing the menu (object has no property "get_name" IIRC).
- The screen is not as nice as on the Kobo (despite claiming to be the same).
I put KOreader on it and it works
much better than the stock reader except that there are some issues present which I'm hoping to fix soon (wireless doesn't work for one:
https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/3458).
I would recommend against buying it but it's good enough for me I guess.
Another interesting thing, regarding the Kobo mini: I searched ebay today for some and there a rather strange looking listing appeared a few days ago, selling apparently
brand new Kobo minis, in unbranded packaging from China:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Kobo-Mini-E...d=272099214824. Ebay claims that the seller sold about 10 of these devices in the past three days. The seller account has been active since 2017 but it has only two ratings and after running a reverse image search I found a number of exact same listings (same image, text and everything):
https://www.tineye.com/search/38413e...0111b34044577/ from ebay and similar sites.
Could this be a scam or are they some knockoff Chinese Kobos? For $20, I may just go for it.