One 10 inch or a pair of 7.8 + 13 inch?

[etn]

Hello Everyone,

new on this forum - long time lurker, first time poster.

I would like to get users' opinions about the following.
I currently own a Pocketbook Inkpad 3 which I use to read epub files. What I like most about it: 1) it is lighter to carry vs real books (I travel a lot for work) and 2) I am somewhat insomniac and read a lot at night. The backlight does not disturb my wife as reading with a flashlight did. I hardly read paper books anymore for this reason.

I also enjoy reading a lot of technical books (yes, I'm a nerd ) which are all in pdf form, A4 format (give or take). I am thinking about getting a larger device for this and currently see two options:

Option A - get a 10 inch reader to replace the 7.8 inch Inkpad and use it for both epub and pdf reading.
Advantage: just one device to carry.
Disadvantage: single-page pdf display is a no-go - too small for my eyes. This is what scares me most actually, as I noticed I need to keep my ebook reader far away from my eyes and increase font size, particularly at night. Reading half-page pdfs would be necessary here, not sure how convenient it is, though.

Option B - keep my 7.8 inch Inkpad for epub reading and add a 13 inch device for pdf reading.
Advantage: single-page pdf display is possible.
Disadvantage: no 13 inch device exist with backlight, which would heavily restrict its use.

I am in no hurry, in other words I can wait for a 13 inch device with backlight to be developed if this is likely to happen in the coming 1-2 years (?). Also, not saying I'm super rich (I'm not) but the couple extra 100 $ for a 13 inch vs a 10 inch are no problem.

Just looking for user experiences of these 2 cases (or others) to help me make a decision. What do you think? Thanks in advance!

Etienne

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by etn

Option A - get a 10 inch reader to replace the 7.8 inch Inkpad and use it for both epub and pdf reading.
Advantage: just one device to carry.
Disadvantage: single-page pdf display is a no-go - too small for my eyes. This is what scares me most actually, as I noticed I need to keep my ebook reader far away from my eyes and increase font size, particularly at night. Reading half-page pdfs would be necessary here, not sure how convenient it is, though.

Option B - keep my 7.8 inch Inkpad for epub reading and add a 13 inch device for pdf reading.
Advantage: single-page pdf display is possible.
Disadvantage: no 13 inch device exist with backlight, which would heavily restrict its use.

Have you considered a tablet? A Surface Pro, HP Chromebook X2 or iPad Pro will have a nearly 13" screen that is lighted and in general, tablets seem to handle PDFs better than e-ink devices (from what I've heard. I never read PDFs on an e-ink device).

[patrik]

A third option could be do to what I usually do (depending on the pdf).

Buy ABBYY Finereader and use that to convert the pdf to an epub which you can read on your Inkpad 3.

[etn]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Have you considered a tablet? A Surface Pro, HP Chromebook X2 or iPad Pro will have a nearly 13" screen that is lighted and in general, tablets seem to handle PDFs better than e-ink devices (from what I've heard. I never read PDFs on an e-ink device).

Thanks for your feedback! I already have a 13 inch iPad. This is what I am using now to read my PDFs and indeed it is great for handling the format. I however much prefer ebook readers displays. I also realized I sleep better if I read a book or an ebook reader than if I read from my iPad.

[etn]

Originally Posted by patrik

A third option could be do to what I usually do (depending on the pdf).

Buy ABBYY Finereader and use that to convert the pdf to an epub which you can read on your Inkpad 3.

This is a great suggestion, thank you! Will give it a try. (When posting here, I was sure I would get options I didn't know existed )

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by etn

I also realized I sleep better if I read a book or an ebook reader than if I read from my iPad.

Have you tried a blue light filter on your iPad? On Android it's called Night Light. I'm sure there's something similar for iOS.

[helen19770707]

For me, I think 10 inch one would be enough for reading PDFs and it is more portable compared with the 13.3 inch one. I also owned an Ipad, but I would get distracted all the time since Ipad provide more entertainment options.

[etn]

Thanks for your answers!
Yes iOS features a night light function. It's just that I don't like LCD displays too much (I spend the entire day at work with a computer, I try to avoid more panels when I can).
I'll stay with what I have now and see how the market evolves in 1-2 years, maybe a 13 inch with backlight will appear on the market.
Anyway, Thanks again everyone

[mobama]

Originally Posted by patrik

A third option could be do to what I usually do (depending on the pdf).

Buy ABBYY Finereader and use that to convert the pdf to an epub which you can read on your Inkpad 3.

Wouldn't conversion - any kind of conversion - mess up everything technical about formatting, such as footnotes, graphs, columns, pagination, etc? This has always been my experience, so I try to live my life with as little conversioning as possible.

[patrik]

Originally Posted by mobama

Wouldn't conversion - any kind of conversion - mess up everything technical about formatting, such as footnotes, graphs, columns, pagination, etc? This has always been my experience, so I try to live my life with as little conversioning as possible.

Well.... it depends....

If you want the resulting epub be _perfect_ and look like a professionally made ebook, then yes, it can be very much work to make it so.

But, if your purpose it to read the pdf, and it doesn't have to be perfect, then it is usually good enough. It's typically large tables that needs manual work to be readable.

Please note that I didn't write "buy an ocr-program", I wrote a very specific one. Finereader is, in my experience, way above any alternative and does ocr really well and keep most of the formatting as well.

[BookyHatguy]

Originally Posted by mobama

Wouldn't conversion - any kind of conversion - mess up everything technical about formatting, such as footnotes, graphs, columns, pagination, etc? This has always been my experience, so I try to live my life with as little conversioning as possible.

Does the converting apply to mobi from mobi to epup, from epub? Do these conversions also mess up graphs columns pagination formating etc?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by patrik

A third option could be do to what I usually do (depending on the pdf).

Buy ABBYY Finereader and use that to convert the pdf to an epub which you can read on your Inkpad 3.

I've used it.

Won't work properly for average PDFs that are scans. OCR after 30 years since Kurtzwiel is still poor. Only a starting point to human proof & convert for TEXT ONLY. Doesn't address technical documents well. An average book or magazine is WEEKS of work.

10" or larger eink or 10" or larger tablet. 7.8" just isn't big enough, sadly. Not at even 300 dpi and reading glasses.

A 13" for ANY PDF and 6.8" to 7.8" for real ebooks is fine. I find the 6" readers slightly too small.

You can test by laser printing a few pages at different sizes using 300dpi / lowest laser quality. Even 10" can be marginal. Fortunately most old magazines & books out of copyright are not as large as letter/A4.

I use PDF import to Gimp @ 300dpi, export as animated PNG and use ImageMagik to strip margins & fix contrast. Your mad if you change imagemagik security to re-enable PDF reading. Export is safe.

[patrik]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

I've used it.

Won't work properly for average PDFs that are scans. OCR after 30 years since Kurtzwiel is still poor. Only a starting point to human proof & convert for TEXT ONLY. Doesn't address technical documents well. An average book or magazine is WEEKS of work.

They your average pdf scans are really bad, or you used a really old version of Finereader.

Sure, it's far from perfect, and if the scan is bad, or the fonts in the book is "artistic" it can be time consuming to get something readable.

But Finereader from around version 10 or so became quite good, and I think it was around 12 it actually got quite impressive.

Still a lot of manual work if you want it to look like a professionally made ebook, but if you just want to read it, it's pretty close to good enough most of the time, IMHO.

(Magazines are awful for ocr, mostly due to the layout, tiny fonts and a lot of graphics.)