Do you find size or resolution more important for pdf reading?

[MarjaE]

I sometimes read that small screens are fine for pdfs, as long as they have good resolution. Also complaints about screens which have weaker resolution.

Now I have an astigmatism, so for me, size is a lot more important than resolution. What are your experiences?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I sometimes read that small screens are fine for pdfs, as long as they have good resolution. Also complaints about screens which have weaker resolution.

Now I have an astigmatism, so for me, size is a lot more important than resolution. What are your experiences?

Sadly both. You need the resolution but you also need the size unless you really enjoy reading flyspeck 3 sized fonts.

[rkomar]

I think it depends on what you are reading. Fiction tends to use "normal" fonts that are easy to read even on older ereaders. Scientific articles tend to use fonts with narrow strokes, making them harder to read on low resolution displays. I have an old 10" ereader with a 1200x800 pixel display. I had to read the scientific articles in landscape mode to make the text readable, though it was still not very comfortable on the eyes.

[Quoth]

Small screens only work for small PDFs. Not suitable for most PDFs. In general a 10" screen is needed, but it needs to be decent resolution. Some very cheap 10" tablets are same X Y dots as cheap 7" tablets.

[pwalker8]

Size for me, though I do need a certain resolution regardless.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I sometimes read that small screens are fine for pdfs, as long as they have good resolution. Also complaints about screens which have weaker resolution.

Now I have an astigmatism, so for me, size is a lot more important than resolution. What are your experiences?

Size for me. 13 inch at 150dpi is adequate, though I would prefer 200dpi or more.

[Quoth]

Note that at 254 shades + white and black gives superior antialiasing and rendering of fonts than the SAME dpi at 14 shades + nearly white and black of eink. Even apart from colour. Also many OLED and LCD devices use subpixel addressing which roughly doubles the DPI in the horizontal direction, which is more important for most fonts.
So 120 dpi to 150 dpi on a good LCD or OLED can seem as sharp as 300 dpi on eink.

[Apache]

I prefer to enlarge pdf files to fit my tablet, especially if they have pictures.
Apache

[haertig]

Size. My smartphone has higher resolution than my tablet, but the tablet is larger. I definitely prefer PDFs on the tablet, but wish the tablet was even larger for PDF viewing. For everything else, I like the small portability of an 8" tablet, but PDFs are a weak point on something this size. Still, they're much better on even a small tablet than on a smartphone.

Smartphone: 6.2", 2270x1080, 403 ppi

Tablet: 8", 1200x800, 189 ppi <-- PDF winner

[thompsonmax]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Small screens only work for small PDFs. Not suitable for most PDFs. In general a 10" screen is needed, but it needs to be decent resolution. Some very cheap 10" tablets are same X Y dots as cheap 7" tablets.

Totally agree with you. Usually I use 10'' screen.

[Pajamaman]

Software. The right software divides the page into panels so the text is magnified and allows the user to navigate intuitively around the page. I find neoreader is the only app that does it.

[Solitaire1]

I put size over resolution, but I make my own PDFs that are sized specifically for my ebook reader screen. For reading, I prefer to have a typeface size of around 12 to 14 points.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I put size over resolution,

For me it depends on the usage.
Eink 7.8 and 10.3 have the same resoluton (1404 x 1872).
When holding in hand, I prefer 7.8 because it weighs less.
When using eg as a piano score I prefer 10.3, because I am further away from it and weight doesn't matter.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sadly both. You need the resolution but you also need the size unless you really enjoy reading flyspeck 3 sized fonts.

This for me. 10" 150 ppi is fine for the most part (only requires occasional zoom) but legibility is much improved going to 200+ ppi.

I got a $229 iPad 7th gen last holidays (with $50/59? Logitech Crayon) for marking up 8.5" x 11" PDF documents for the office. Works great and even smallprint is nice and legible.