Which Colour device is best…. but?

[puremagic]

I have been with kindle since the first e-reader, have the Pw 11th generation but I would like a colour e-ink.

I am not as tech savy as I used to be and I think I should have done something with my kindle books so I could read on Kobo or similar.

If I buy a kobo could I read my kindle books on it. I don’t have a pc just now but I have use calibre years ago.

Thanks.

[DNSB]

You would need to remove DRM from your Kindle books to be able to import them into calibre to convert them to ePub to be sent to a Kobo device.

As for colour devices? Most current colour eInk devices use a Kaleido 3 screen which involves an overlay over a B&W eInk screen. This makes the screen look dark unless you crank the front light up. My grandkids like colour for their graphic books but for people who reading text books, I find a B&W screen to be a slightly better choice.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by puremagic

I have been with kindle since the first e-reader, have the Pw 11th generation but I would like a colour e-ink.

I am not as tech savy as I used to be and I think I should have done something with my kindle books so I could read on Kobo or similar.

If I buy a kobo could I read my kindle books on it. I don’t have a pc just now but I have use calibre years ago.

Thanks.

I’ve had both the Kobo Libra Colour and the Kindle Coloursoft. IMO the Colour soft is better, it’s more vibrant. I sold my Kobo.

[Josieb1]

Here is the comparison picture I kept of both devices. Obviously these are my devices and anyone else’s could be different. Both has brightness on full.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

Here is the comparison picture I kept of both devices. Obviously these are my devices and anyone else’s could be different. Both has brightness on full.

Front light off in light where you can read an old paperback would be a better comparison, because Nxtpaper 2.0 & 3.0 is better than front light more than 20%.

[nana77]

I've liked this video comparison, yet posted in here: ( Best Color eReader: Boox, Kobo, PocketBook or Bigme?)
As mentioned in the forum already, the pics or videos often does not provides an accurate feeling about the screens and them colors.

Can I misuse to ask if on a color device (where the 300DPI drops at 150DPI on color reads) is it possible to use them as a B/W but may choose other color's backgrounds (in place of using the frontlights)? If so does it drops the pixels ratio anyway?

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Front light off in light where you can read an old paperback would be a better comparison, because Nxtpaper 2.0 & 3.0 is better than front light more than 20%.

I no longer have my Kobo Colour, that is the only picture I kept. I use my Colour kindle on full brightness as I like it that way.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

Here is the comparison picture I kept of both devices. Obviously these are my devices and anyone else’s could be different. Both has brightness on full.

The one thing to note is that the Kindle Colorsoft can have darkish and muddy looking graphics with a loss of detail whereas the Kobo Libra Colour has more detailed graphics that are not darkish and muddy.

It's the same way with both Kindle and Kobo B&W Readers as well as the color ones.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nana77

I've liked this video comparison, yet posted in here: ( Best Color eReader: Boox, Kobo, PocketBook or Bigme?)
As mentioned in the forum already, the pics or videos often does not provides an accurate feeling about the screens and them colors.

The video codec compression makes comparison and judging ereader screens almost worthless. Maths says you need photos at twice the finest detail, with twice the dynamic range and then a screen to view as good as that.

Originally Posted by nana77

Can I misuse to ask if on a color device (where the 300DPI drops at 150DPI on color reads) is it possible to use them as a B/W but may choose other color's backgrounds (in place of using the frontlights)? If so does it drops the pixels ratio anyway?

It's more complicated than that.
The 300 dpi mono screen has dots in a 2 x 2 pattern that don't fill the pixels, so that the screen isn't too dark. That means the brighter colours are all pastel and the darker colours lose colour. The underlying screen has white, black and approximately 14 grey levels.
R G
G B
pattern
So inherently you can't have good colour and any colour is limited to 150 dpi. Mono content is rendered at 300 dpi (unless an anti-rainbow setting, not on all ereaders is set, when it's 150 dpi). This means any strong pattern (especially either 45° or vertical or horizontal) alternating black and white at 300 dpi will have banding (a rainbow effect) and strongest artefacts can be yellow, cyan, magenta or green. However only certain fonts or images will have this effect.

The colour is printed dots that don't fill a pixel printed on top of the Carta 1300 screen, so they can't be turned off. Thus it's darker and poorer contrast as dots reflect more light than native Carta 1300 black.

Mostly the colour artefacts are not noticeable. May be worse with good reading glasses.

Why do LCD, OLED, QLED etc not have these artefacts?
1. Only eink runs the screen at underlying resolution. The LCD & QLED do use mono panels but they and OLED only run them at the colour resolution. LCD & QLED often has 1/3rd width native pixels to allow RGB. OLED may use the 2 x 2 array. Only the colour resolution is quoted on non-eink.
2. When screens were lower resolution RGB, often fonts had blue edges on one side and red on the other to pseudo triple resolution in one direction. Sometimes these artefacts were visible. Higher resolution and screens not using RGB stripes don't do the font enhancement.
3. The eink can't do decent anti-aliasing as it's 14 levels, black and white and the colour dots don't cover the pixels. The other current colour display technologies have black, white and 120 to 500 levels per pixel and the pixels are entirely coloured.

No LCD/OLED/QLED (or CRT in the past) maker claims resolution the way eink Corp does with Kaleido 3 eink (coloured dots printed on mono eink). The Gallery 3 isn't conventional eink and each pixel is C M Y W, not dots printed on a mono panel.


EDIT
It's in theory possible on Kaleido 3 eink to have a simple 300 dpi mono pure black & white (no greys) pattern that creates a 150 dpi image in a single colour (green, red, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan are simplest. It can only be prevented by rendering all monochrome content at 150 dpi, because the colour can't be turned off. It's translucent red, green, green or blue dots smaller than the pixels in a 2 x 2 pattern at pixel spacing.

The fast mode refresh for a B&W image or font with no greys can't be done with colour content. It will be slightly slower than full greyscale image. The eink doesn't have the kind of pixel refreshing of plasma, crt, LCD, oled etc. The Gallery 3 system is about x10 slower.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The fast mode refresh for a B&W image or font with no greys can't be done with colour content. It will be slightly slower than full greyscale image. The eink doesn't have the kind of pixel refreshing of plasma, crt, LCD, oled etc. The Gallery 3 system is about x10 slower.

If you don't mind poster colours, you can use fast refresh with colour content. It's pretty fugly but you do get colour.

BTW, you can pixel address an eInk display. With the newer chips and Regal waveform, it doesn't even cause the severe ghosting older eInk displays suffered from when the full screen wasn't rewritten with the occasional triple flash.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

BTW, you can pixel address an eInk display. With the newer chips and Regal waveform, it doesn't even cause the severe ghosting older eInk displays suffered from when the full screen wasn't rewritten with the occasional triple flash.

Yes, but it's poor and for full grey shades or max colours you need the dreaded flash.
See word lookup when the popup box partially covers a toned image. It's a fudge.

I think fast refresh is likely pixels fully white or black, so maybe 8 colours rather than maximum 4094 mix of hues, saturations and brightenesses/greys with black and white. However I've not tested that. There is a limit to what a shop will let you do!