Kindle Voyage vs Kobo Aura H2O

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by aceflor

We are not talking about the keyboard or the search function Josie, we are talking about for instance highlighting a word or a sentence. Try doing this 3 or 4 times for each page you read with the H2O, in one book, and then I'd be curious to hear what you think.

Harry and I need e-readers for our classes, I know he does a lot of highlighting but I don't know if he comments them, I need to comment mine A LOT, and export those comments, and all my classbooks have tons of footnotes too. In this perspective, the Voyage beats the H2O hands down. I could never recommend the H2O if you are going to need it for classes.

I have no problems at all with the Voyage Keyboard, but I have small fingers.

I highlight whole paragraphs on my H20 but that's for my eyes only so it doesn't matter for me if I got further than I need to. I find that element fine. My problem with the Voyage keyboard is a must type too fast as I always get the wrong keys. I have to really concentrate to accurately type on the Voyage keyboard.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, that's it exactly. I have quite large fingers, and footnote selection and text highlighting just work 100% reliably for me on the Voyage. They didn't on the H2O, which is a real shame, because other than that I really liked it.

Ditto. The H2O is an excellent e-reader, for leisure. It is not if you need it for PDFs, or classbooks, or for instance history books or biographies with tons of footnotes.

[uppon2]

Thanks for all of the feedback, everybody. Luckily, I use a laptop for university and much prefer to have something extremely fast, with an external mouse where I can do all of my copy/paste and highlighting!

Are there any discounts or coupons to get the H20 cheaper?

Based on the comments, I think the H20 seems like a better buy for me, as I really only want it for reading books and the occasional PDF.

It is really a shame that there is no speaker, as I like to listen to audio books and music. Nothing I can't handle on my phone, though.

There was one person in the forum, eschwartz, whom I would like to hear from, as his points on the Kindle seemed very passionate. I am 87% set on the H20! -

It's a shame my country only has the KPW2 and Aura HD right now. I can not test yet. Not until February for the latter, at least.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by uppon2

Are there any discounts or coupons to get the H20 cheaper?

You could always buy a 2nd-hand one. Eg, I sold mine a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on the "flea-market" forum.

[uppon2]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You could always buy a 2nd-hand one. Eg, I sold mine a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on the "flea-market" forum.

Thanks

[uppon2]

Which device is the closest to either of these ereaders, that has audio?

[aceflor]

None that I can recommend. Pocketbook are horrid and not reliable. The Onyx T68 has, but it is more of an andoid tablet with e-ink than an e-reader with android.

If Audio and PDF are important, you should get a tablet.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by uppon2

I currently have an ereader that you are all obviously jealous about , the iriver Story (original, not WiFi and not HD)

I remember being quite impressed with that when it first came out. Almost bought one -- I think they had them at Target.

Edit: No, it was the HD that I was looking at...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by uppon2

Thanks for all of the feedback, everybody. Luckily, I use a laptop for university and much prefer to have something extremely fast, with an external mouse where I can do all of my copy/paste and highlighting!

Are there any discounts or coupons to get the H20 cheaper?

Based on the comments, I think the H20 seems like a better buy for me, as I really only want it for reading books and the occasional PDF.

It is really a shame that there is no speaker, as I like to listen to audio books and music. Nothing I can't handle on my phone, though.

There was one person in the forum, eschwartz, whom I would like to hear from, as his points on the Kindle seemed very passionate. I am 87% set on the H20! -

It's a shame my country only has the KPW2 and Aura HD right now. I can not test yet. Not until February for the latter, at least.

Hello.

As far as PDF support, you will want to use KOReader anyway, which runs on Kindle and Kobo.

Since you are expecting to get the PW2 Kindle if any, jailbreaking shouldn't be a problem. I don't know of any reports that they shipped with the latest firmware, they will ship with the firmware they were made with, and then receive an OTA update when you connect WiFi. See HERE for what to do if you decide to get it.

You mention audiobooks. If that's really something you are interested in doing with your ereader, the Kindle Touch is pretty much the only major ereader that has audio, you might be interested in finding one used/refurbished. It happens to be extremely hackable, mostly because it no longer receives updates. (Yeah, I'm just devastated it doesn't get Goodreads integration. )

I happen to prefer the Kindle Touch over the PW1/2 -- it has a physical home button.

Originally Posted by uppon2

Hello everybody. This is my first post; actually this is my first time even visiting this forum. I currently have an ereader that you are all obviously jealous about , the iriver Story (original, not WiFi and not HD) See here for the specifics. Now all the jokes are behind us, I am looking at either the Kindle Voyage or the Kobo Aura H20 as a replacement.

Please excuse my ignorance but can somebody like-minded please confirm my
assumption: (hypothetically speaking) Kindle is like Apple and Kobo is like Android or at least Microsoft? - I am an Android user and can not stand the limitations of iOS. After a little bit of research, it seems that Kindle falls on the other side of my liking in some respects.

The only thing really stopping you from doing whatever you want on the Kindle is gaining root access, which at least used to be pretty simple.

- Slow. I mean REAL SLOW!
- Complex navigation
- Lack of WiFi and what comes with it
- Lack of touchscreen
- Build quality and design
- Disgusting GUI and rudimentary options and menus
- PDF files were sometimes impossible to navigate

...

The Kindle is designed simply, to do one thing and do it well with the minimum of fuss. It is not complex at all, in fact, JSWolf might say it is TOO simple. Rudimentary options, eh, who cares about that so long as it has the right ones. Maybe you cannot squeeze every inch out of the screen, like you can with the Kobo, you'll have to decide whether that is something you care about. Personally, I'm happy.
The cleanliness of the UI is something I value.

The Kindle's homescreen is, conveniently enough, the Library view, allowing you to sort by author/title/recent/collections as you please, and knowing that will always be the first thing you see when you go Home. Apparently you can use davidfor's useful Kobo Utilities plugin* to permanently dismiss whole classes of unwanted tiles, but I believe you are still limited to Recent (of whatever type) tiles, and it sounds as though, for example, you cannot keep the collections pinned in front -- which is something I do on the Kindle. The whole jumping around thing, from what I've heard, makes me uneasy -- my ereader is a library of books and that is all I want on the homescreen.

(* -- Because, you know, I should really have to run software on my computer just to get basic functionality out of the UI.)


Fun fact -- the Kobo has to process books before they show up on the device, which can take a while.
The Kindle shows them immediately, but you cannot search them until they are indexed.

So in general, my impression about Kobos, from what I've heard, is that the UI and firmware is a little buggy and all over the place.
On the other hand, the Kindle does not offer much customization in how the book should look, not a lot of font/size/margin/spacing choices at all,... but that is not what I am looking for, so I prefer it that way. My Kindle has never ever crashed except sometimes when running a 3rd-party browser hack. The Kindle firmware has a much better reputation for stability than the Kobo.

The Kobo having customization, the Kindle having simple stability, those two might actually have something to do with each other.

Originally Posted by aceflor

None that I can recommend. Pocketbook are horrid and not reliable. The Onyx T68 has, but it is more of an andoid tablet with e-ink than an e-reader with android.

If Audio and PDF are important, you should get a tablet.

I would generally tend to agree. On the other hand, if it is only for occasional use, it is probably more helpful to get a dedicated ereader and make do.
The Kindle Touch is a great ereader, very reliable, which can do audio in a pinch. Keeping in mind that audio on a dedicated ereader is probably never going to be wonderful.
As for PDF, KOReader does a pretty decent job.

[uppon2]

Originally Posted by aceflor

None that I can recommend. Pocketbook are horrid and not reliable. The Onyx T68 has, but it is more of an andoid tablet with e-ink than an e-reader with android.

If Audio and PDF are important, you should get a tablet.

I have many tablets but I much prefer e-ink for reading books. I look at LCD/LED all day and It does my head in and I do it too much for university as it is.

Audio would be good only because of audio books (rather than using a separate device (my phone).

@eschwartz Wow. Thank you for such a detailed response. I think I like to tinker, hack and customize and I'm wondering if the Kindle will offer me enough. I actually build custom themes for Android devices, so I really like to have root access and software flexibility. They both sound like they offer that to some point, though, the Kobo might have greater depth but lack the stability overall.

Something tells me to get a Kindle, I think it might be the whole social/ecosystem. I know I can still get books from there either way but it is not the same.

I think I will be like to customize the Kobo a lot more but feel more involved with the Kindle. It is still 85% Kobo, though.

[Ghitulescu]

Is it right that Kindle doesn't support ePub?

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Is it right that Kindle doesn't support ePub?

Yes, kindle uses their own format and supports mobi ebooks plus other file types but not epub

[howyoudoin]

The omission of ePub support on the Kindle never bothered me when I read on one. I run all my books - even purchased ones - through calibre to tweak the formatting to my satisfaction anyway. Therefore it does not matter to me what the input or output formats are. ePub -> azw/kePub or azw -> azw or azw -> ePub/kePub are all one extra step I have to go through no matter what reader I use, which makes wireless cloud delivery and multi-device synchronization useless features to me.

My reasons for purchasing the Aura instead of a newer Kindle were mainly the lighting and "purity" of the e-ink screen - I haven't seen the Voyage in person yet, but I have seen the demo paperwhite 2, and the screen was a let-down. From what I understand, the capacitive layer is an extra over the e-ink screen, which combined with the cool temperature of the lighting, this made the paper-white look more like an LCD display than an e-ink screen to my eyes. Text on the non-touch Kindles seemed darker and more "printed on paper" than on the touch-screen paper-white. I can live with the relatively less reliable touch input with infra-red on the Aura and the lower resolution (264 ppi on the Aura vs 300 ppi on the Voyage), but I cannot compromise on the actual realism of the reading experience itself.

The new textured glass layer on the Voyage makes things worse. What were Amazon thinking?? Have a look at the comparison here (around 00:45 to 0:55 in the video) -



( Link to video in case embedding does not work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdXo0z6Vyg )

That amount of glare on an e-ink screen is absolutely unacceptable to me. I plan to read in my office that has bright lights, and having to keep adjusting the angle I hold the device at to avoid catching the lights would drive me crazy. Apple seem to be in the process of mitigating this problem with the unavoidable glass screens on their iPads, but Amazon inexplicably seems to be going in the opposite direction!!

The bigger screen and more customization options on the Kobo are bonuses for me. If Amazon had ditched the textured glass and the capacitive touch and fixed the lighting, I'd probably have replaced my Kindle Keyboard with the Voyage for the mere fact that Kindles are easier to purchase in my country than the Aura and I have no complaints from my experiences with Amazon customer care. Happily things worked out and I got a friend of a friend who was flying in from the UK to get me the Aura. I think Amazon have made some poor choices with their hardware design over the past couple of years. For friends and family who are new to e-ink, I might recommend the basic non-touch Kindles because they are easily available here, but I would not recommend their pricier models to someone looking to upgrade.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

From what I understand, the capacitive layer is an extra over the e-ink screen, which combined with the cool temperature of the lighting, this made the paper-white look more like an LCD display than an e-ink screen to my eyes.

It is a "layer" in the sense of being a transparent chemical coating on the screen surface. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the appearance of the screen.

The new textured glass layer on the Voyage makes things worse.

I must respectfully disagree, and I, unlike you, actually have and use a Voyage. The glass screen does not reflect noticeable amounts of light: certainly no more than the H2O or any other eInk device that I've used.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It is a "layer" in the sense of being a transparent chemical coating on the screen surface. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to the appearance of the screen.



I must respectfully disagree, and I, unlike you, actually have and use a Voyage. The glass screen does not reflect noticeable amounts of light: certainly no more than the H2O or any other eInk device that I've used.

I have not seen a Voyage IRL, so I cannot state it out of personal experience. However there does seem to be a definite difference if that comparison video is anything to go by. Both devices were tilted towards the same light source (window?) more than once and the Voyage is seen to reflect more of the glare. Perhaps in practice the glare on the Voyage is indeed not significant enough to hinder comfortable reading, but the Aura does seem to reflect less of the glare, and that was a factor in my decision.