Which reader do I need?

[sunreader]

Hi all,
I have read about about various readers but there seems to be a ton of information making it hard to get an overview respectively decide for a product to buy. Maybe you can help me decide. Here are my needs:

- Will be mostly used to read in the sun / travelling.
- Will mostly be used to read PDFs (text only).
- Should be rather compact than sizable.
- A dictionary and a vocabulary trainer (English <-> German) would be great!
- Being able to read in the dark would be great!
- A touchscreen keyboard would be great, the possibility to plug in an external keyboard too. The latter though would be a nice add on but is not that essential.
- Being able to search the full text of ebooks / pdfs would be great.
- Integrated browser would be great. EDIT: Plus, being able to save websites as html to read them offline.
- EDIT: Not really important: Being able to have an offline version of the wikipedia on the device would be nice.

Goal: Reading and writing (I know this will limited) in the sun.

I ordered the features more or less from important to not so important. Looking forward to any feedback.

Best
Bastian

[susan_cassidy]

There is no such thing as an offline version of wikipedia. Do you have any idea how large that would be?

A Paperwhite Kindle would fit most of your needs. It cannot take an external keyboard, though.

However, no 6" screen device is much good with pdfs, because they are usually designed for a large page size. You can easily convert all text pdfs to mobi format, which makes it much more usable on the Kindle.

[barryem]

I agree that a Kindle Paperwhite (or Voyage) would be the best fit for most of your needs. I also agree that you probably want to convert the PDF's. PDF's tend to be difficult to read on a small screen, even if they're text. Most ereaders are designed for epub or mobi formats. They'll all read PDF but you won't like it.

The Paperwhite does have an on-board dictionary. You can also put a German to English dictionary on it.

It can give you easy in-line access to translations and to Wikipedia as long as it's connected to the internet so you might want to look at the 3G models if this is important to you, and if they'll work where you'll be travelling. I also like to look up things on Wikipedia as I read and to translate any foreign phrases I run across in my reading so I use the 3G version. It's never failed me yet but I don't travel that far.

You can use the freeware program Calibre to convert your PDF's to mobi format as long as they don't have DRM. Conversion from PDF takes longer than from other formats but it'll still convert the average book in less than a minute.

Barry

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by barryem

You can use the freeware program Calibre to convert your PDF's to mobi format as long as they don't have DRM. Conversion from PDF takes longer than from other formats but it'll still convert the average book in less than a minute.

Barry

You can use Calibre to do it, but a decent OCR program will do a much better job.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

There is no such thing as an offline version of wikipedia. Do you have any idea how large that would be?

Actually, there is. More than one, e.g. XOWA or the Wiki Encyclopedia Offline Android app. The full English Wikipedia main articles dump is about 11.5 GB, (which roughly matches the 3.6 GB the Android app cites for the 'top 2 million articles') so one of the Android-based readers might be able to handle it.

How fast it would be on their somewhat underpowered CPUs is another matter, but it's not out of the question.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can use Calibre to do it, but a decent OCR program will do a much better job.

If the PDF is made from scans you're correct. Most, but not all, PDF's I've encountered are text and Calibre will convert them just fine.

Barry

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by barryem

If the PDF is made from scans you're correct. Most, but not all, PDF's I've encountered are text and Calibre will convert them just fine.

Barry

The trouble is that even "text" PDFs don't actually contain text - they just contain a sequence of drawing instructions. Calibre tends to lose a great deal of formatting information when converting such PDFs. This may not matter, of course, but a good OCR program like Abbyy FineReader will almost always do a better job (at a price, of course!).

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

There is no such thing as an offline version of wikipedia. Do you have any idea how large that would be?

Wikipedia can be downloaded and read via a number of Android apps (goldendict, I think).

Maybe your best bet is the Onyx 6.8" reader. You can choose from a number of apps to read pdfs and browsers, and it is the most likely to be able to handle an external keyboard. But you will probably end up having to convert the pdfs to epubs at some point.

I don't recommend the Kindle. It is an extremely limited device.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I don't recommend the Kindle. It is an extremely limited device.

It's a great book-reader, but it certainly isn't a general-purpose tablet. Personally I think the Voyage is the best reading device around at the moment, but obviously everyone has their own views on these things.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's a great book-reader, but it certainly isn't a general-purpose tablet. Personally I think the Voyage is the best reading device around at the moment, but obviously everyone has their own views on these things.

The OP's requirements are diverse: pdf reading, off-line wiki, attachable keyboard. The Kindle Voyage is the most limited e-reader on the market because of its restrictive software, and therefore the worse fit for the OP's requirements.

@OP: I suggest an open Android device like an Onyx or a Boyue if you want flexibility, as long as you can deal with Android and installing apps.

If you are happy converting everything to text, then maybe get a Kindle, but be aware, it contains very little customization abilities because of Amazon's restriction of the software. The Voyage is really at its best when you mainly buy books from the Amazon store. As you will be reading mainly pdf, you don't sound like that customer. One thing it does have that the others don't have is the vocabulary builder.

Another point to consider against the Voyage is that there are reports of color gradations on the front-light. This is not particularly significant, but it is worse if you read in landscape. If you try to read pdf natively, you will want to do it in landscape, and then the color gradation could become a problem. Though I'm not even sure the Voyage will display pdf in landscape.

If the pdfs are text only, personally I'd convert, but it can involve quite a lot of work.

A Kobo would be a better fit than a Voyage as it is far more customizable. In addition, the new Kobo Glo HD has the same hi-def screen as the Voyage for a much lower price.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The OP's requirements are diverse: pdf reading, off-line wiki, attachable keyboard. The Kindle Voyage is the most limited e-reader on the market because of its restrictive software, and therefore the worse fit for the OP's requirements.

@OP: I suggest an open Android device like an Onyx or a Boyue if you want flexibility, as long as you can deal with Android and installing apps.

If you are happy converting everything to text, then maybe get a Kindle, but be aware, it contains very little customization abilities because of Amazon's restriction of the software. The Voyage is really at its best when you mainly buy books from the Amazon store. As you will be reading mainly pdf, you don't sound like that customer. One thing it does have that the others don't have is the vocabulary builder.

Another point to consider against the Voyage is that there are reports of color gradations on the front-light. This is not particularly significant, but it is worse if you read in landscape. If you try to read pdf natively, you will want to do it in landscape, and then the color gradation could become a problem. Though I'm not even sure the Voyage will display pdf in landscape.

If the pdfs are text only, personally I'd convert, but it can involve quite a lot of work.

A Kobo would be a better fit than a Voyage as it is far more customizable. In addition, the new Kobo Glo HD has the same hi-def screen as the Voyage for a much lower price.

The other advantage of the Kindle is the ability to store all of your books in their cloud for free and sync them between other devices on your account, whether you bought them from Amazon or not. Can Kobo do that?

Shari

[PeterT]

No. Kobo will not store sideloaded content in the cloud.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

A Kobo would be a better fit than a Voyage as it is far more customizable. In addition, the new Kobo Glo HD has the same hi-def screen as the Voyage for a much lower price.

But it also has the horrible Kobo IR touchscreen.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

There is no such thing as an offline version of wikipedia. Do you have any idea how large that would be?

Let me google that for you ...

Here is the page where you can download complete dump of ENglish Wikipedia:
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/
You should, however use torrent if possible, for details, please see my first link.

In 2013 the complete English version of Wikipedia, including all the images could fit on a 128GB card.
Nowadays, there are larger cards available ;-)

Text-only complete version of Wikipedia only needs some 20GB, so you can install it on a 32GB card on an Android phone or an iPad.

So the request is not THAT unreasonable as it might seem to you at the first glance ;-)

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by shalym

The other advantage of the Kindle is the ability to store all of your books in their cloud for free and sync them between other devices on your account, whether you bought them from Amazon or not. Can Kobo do that?

Shari

As I understand it, you now have to pay to store non-Amazon content in the cloud. I believe the OP will be reading primarily non-Amazon content. Does the OP wish to pay that subscription?