[enuddleyarbl]

I ordered a Sage from Walmart.com and it arrived yesterday. I did a bit of a comparison between it and my Forma (8GB model) and thought I'd put my thoughts here in case anyone else was interested in moving from a Forma to a Sage.

The most obvious difference (and it's definitely perceptible) is that the Sage is thicker and heavier than the Forma. I knew this when I ordered it, but thought it wouldn't be noticeable. But, when you pick the Sage up, you definitely feel that extra thickness and weight.

The only other physical differences I see are 1) the Sage has a new power button (a round, "innie" button on the back as opposed to a rectangular, "outie" button on the side), 2) the Sage gets rid of the angle of the "handle" and replaces it with a thickening, and 3) the Sage slightly increases the spacing between the forward/back buttons (they're entirely separate from each other on the Sage and might be a tad shorter as well). I much prefer the Sage's power button and don't notice the differences in the "handle" or in the forward/back buttons at all.

Regarding the screen, the resolution and speed of the Sage seem the same as on the Forma. The blacks in thumbnails *might* be slightly darker than on the Forma. But, if the difference is there at all, it's barely visible. Paging through a book on the Sage side-by-side with the same book on the Forma seems almost exactly the same (no perceptible difference in speed or behavior). Again, with the two devices side-by-side, the Sage screen seems less white (more yellow at my manual "color" setting (just a tad short of halfway)) than my Forma screen. However, once I use the Sage on its own (i.e., without the Forma sitting there as a comparison), I don't notice any difference. I did have to increase the brightness from 30% on my Forma to 40% on the Sage. These observations are with standard, side-loaded text-based kepub books. So, if you use other kinds of books (PDFs or comics), maybe you'll see something different.

There are two other things that strike me as different between the devices. First, when bringing the Sage out of sleep, it doesn't prompt me to "Swipe to Unlock" (which I appreciate) as the Forma does. Second, the Sage's method of returning from a "Powered Off" state is weird. On the Forma, to power it back up, I just have to hold the power button for 6 seconds, it flashes to a white screen and I release the button. It then finishes booting. With the Sage, I'm not sure what happens. Sometimes, the behavior is the same (with a longer hold-the-button time (say, 9 seconds). Other times, nothing happens at all and I have to try again. It's not a matter of the power button being persnickety. But, I just don't know what's supposed to be happening with that process.

Regarding side-loading my library of books (as kepubs) from Calibre, there's not much difference. I transferred 558 books over and the actual transfer time (not including the processing time) was possibly 33% (5 minutes) faster. I'm pretty sure it takes about 15 minutes to transfer those books to the Forma via its USB 2.0 connection. It took about 10 minutes to the Sage via its USB 3.0 connection. Also, just as tends to happen with the Forma, the transfer of all those books didn't completely succeed. Once I Disconnected the device from within Calibre, the Sage went to its importing screen and stuck at 70%. I went away for about 15 minutes and when I came back, it was prompting to be connected to the computer again (I don't know if it rebooted or if it just decided to reconnect on its own). When I reconnected, 151 out of those 558 books hadn't made it over. I transferred them again and checked the database with Kobo Utilities and all was well.

And, finally, battery life. I charged the Sage to full. I read for an hour (lighting at 40%, refresh screen every chapter, and Wifi on). The battery went from 99% to 88% (11% per hour). I went away and came back to read for another hour. Again, another 11% per hour drop in battery (87% to 76%). I put the Sage to sleep (not powered down) for the night. The next day, it was still at 76% (so power draw while sleeping seems minimal). But, 11% of battery for every hour of reading gives me only about 9 hours of reading time on a single charge. That's quite a bit worse than what I get with my Forma (which uses about 8% of the battery per hour (i.e., about 12 hours of reading per charge) -- granted, that's at 30% brightness vs 40% on the Sage, but that's visually about the same level across the two devices). I'll fully discharge/charge the Sage several times over the next couple of days and see if anything changes. But, I was really hoping for better battery life, not 3/4 of the battery life.

EDIT on battery life: I fully drained the Sage's battery (until the unit shut down), recharged it and read for one hour at a time until it shut down again. I got a total of 8 hours and 12 minutes worth or reading time. Here's the breakdown of charge used for each hour:

Hour 1: 100% to 92% = 8% battery use
Hour 2: 92% to 79% = 13% battery use
Hour 3: 78% to 63% = 15% battery use
Hour 4: 62% to 46% = 16% battery use
Hour 5: 46% to 26% = 20% battery use
Hour 6: 25% to 18% = 7% battery use
Hour 7: 18% to 13% = 5% battery use
Hour 8: 13% to 1% = 12% battery use (and then 12 more minutes for that last percent of the battery to go and the Sage power itself down).

So, along with the battery life of the Sage being only about 2/3 of the Forma's, whatever algorithm they're using to determine the State of Charge of the battery needs work. The supposed battery use for any given hour of reading in the same text-based kepub should not vary from 5% to 20%.

Also, the Sage seems to charge faster than the Forma. But, the difference isn't anywhere near what it should be by using a USB 3 port vs a USB 2 port. My Forma charged from 0 to 94% in the first hour, 94% to 99% in the second hour, and then fully charged to 100% sometime thereafter. The Sage went from 0 to 99% in the first hour and then to the full 100% charge 50 minutes later.

So, in summary, I'd say there's not much of a reason to move from an existing Forma to the new Sage. Yes, the USB C connection is nice to have (just as a standard form factor). Yes, the new power button shape and location is better. And yes, if you do a lot of transfers to the book, maybe the slight speed increase might be worth it to you. But, that's counterbalanced by the Sage being perceptibly thicker and heavier and having only 2/3 of the Forma's battery life.

UPDATE, 14 MONTHS LATER:

My Forma died and I needed a replacement. Regardless of the poor battery life from last year, the Sage was the best replacement I could come up with. So, 14 months after returning the one I tested, above, I bought a new one. It arrived with a totally drained battery, so I was able to check the charging time:

- Hour 1: 0 to 78% (said 11 minutes more).
- 11 minutes later: 90% and doesn't give estimate any more
- Hour 1 and 50 minutes: 97% (to match the charging time, above)
- Hour 2: 99%
- 2 hours and 7 minutes: 100%

So, charging this unit took an extra 17 minutes over the one from last year. Also, the estimated charging time it gives is WAY off.

Once charged, I measured my reading times before the battery was totally discharged:

Hour 1: from 100% to 91% = 9%
Hour 2: from 89% to 81% = 8%
Hour 3: from 81% to 73% = 8%
Hour 4: from 73% to 63% = 10%
Hour 5: from 62% to 51% = 11%
Hour 6 (and 3 minutes): from 50% to 40% = 10%
Hour 7: from 38% to 31% = 7%
Hour 8: from 31% to 22% = 9%
Hour 9: from 21% to 8% = 13%
Final 8 minutes: from 8% to shutdown = 8%

The time in between those reading times, the Sage was asleep (losing perhaps 2% over 12 hours). So, this Sage gets about an extra hour of reading over last year's, but still about 3 hours short of what the newish Forma was giving me. BUT, the old Forma and Sage were with Wifi and automatic syncing on and in normal mode. This Sage has Wifi and automatic syncing off and is in Sideload Mode. So, I don't know if the improvement is due to firmware updates or my having turned stuff off.

My other comments from a year ago still apply.