Hello,
I recently bought a bunch of e-books from some independent sites. These come in epub format, and I am interested in getting a new e-reader so that I can really enjoy these because my phone just isn't doing it. I have a Kindle 4 that I haven't used in a while, but I remember it worked well enough, I was mainly just tired of paying full retail on e-books when I could pretty much always get paperbacks at the same price new, and even cheaper used.
That being said, I am looking for the following feature set, split into "need to have" and "nice to have":
Need to have:
- Waterproof (for bathtub use)
- Basic browser functionality (mainly Reddit text posts and comments, light articles)
- Expandable storage, either a card slot or easily being able to open the back and swap an internal SD or micro SD card, or optionally 64GB+ storage not expandable
- Easily sideload books in nearly any common format, probably mostly epub, maybe some mobi
Nice to have:
- Physical buttons
- Open / unlocked software and ecosystem, the more open the better
My budget is max $100 for a new or used reader, preferably closer to $50. I have done some research already and it seems the only option that matches both waterproof and expandable storage within that budget is the Kobo Aura H2O Edition 1. Though, if there are any other suggestions, I very much would like to hear them. International reader suggestions are OK as long as I can find one to import.
Ideally, I am looking for something more "open" and "hackable". While Kindles are extremely common here in the USA, they seem very locked down to Amazon's ecosystem - meaning they want you on Kindle Store only. In my case, I want to be able to read books on a dedicated device and easily transfer them from Calibre on my PC or similar. If there is a little more work involved then just placing an Amazon order and having a book show up, that is OK if it's set up more for sideloading.
Any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks in advance.
Peliaien