Page turning latency benchmarks?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Hyphen-ated

It would probably be a good idea to use the same public domain ebook in tests. Since display lag is my white whale, how about Moby Dick. Specifically the "compatible epub" version from standardebooks dot org. (I would just link to it, but apparently I'm not allowed to link to things)

I think that shortened URLs are a no-no but ordinary URLs are okay. For anyone who is interested, the link to the compatible epub version of Moby Dick at Standard Ebooks is: Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Perhaps a limitation on new users until you hit a minimum number of posts?

[DNSB]

For what it is worth, I downloaded Moby Dick and put it on my Kobo Forma. Using my iPhone 12 to record a video of swiping to change pages (I have the page turn options set to the buttons or swipe, no tap). From the time I started the swipe to the time the page change was completed averaged 34 frames or 34/60 of a second (0.57 seconds).

[BookCat]

Compared to my old Sony prs 505, I find the page turn times of my two kindles - listed on the left - negligible to the point of unnoticeable.

If you compare this to the speed of turning a paperbook page, it's much faster and less inconvenient.

To me, page turn speed has become a none-issue, unlike the very early days of ereaders. If you find them too slow, why not take the opportunity to look up, focus on a distant object, then continue reading? This will help your eyesight.

Edited to say that I normally play an ambient video in the background; you can find lots of them on youtube, and frequently glance at these for the beautiful scenes they display. You could do this while your pages are v...e...r...y sl ...ow ...ly tu...rn ...ing.

[Ereadlog]

Originally Posted by Hyphen-ated

Oh interesting, so that's an android device that also has horrendous latency.

Although your testing methodology wasn't fantastic...

You know what, I'm willing to do the frame counting work to analyze any test footage that anybody posts. Most phones can take 60 fps video nowadays, but 30 fps is not even that bad when we're talking about latencies THIS high.

You can see an example of what footage should look like at the youtube video with id M3rbWfmHpQk
(This is the second time I've written this post, I linked to youtube before but I think that made a spam filter eat the post)

If I get enough responses I'll make a little website with a nice overview of the data

I'm not into doing more testing of this myself, but I'm interested in results just out of curiosity; for me 1s is v.good although 0.5s would be more ideal, 1.5 would likely be good enough and more would be annoying; with 2s I'd likely return the device; I suggest you make a test with real paper book as this is true benchmark vs all devices

btw if I recall correctly Koreader app have noticeably better turn speeds than default Boox reader

[Ereadlog]

Originally Posted by meeera

It comes down to having choices, and using the right tool for the job. Not "accounting for the screens" is basically missing the entire point.

you missed my entire point which was to show how expensive are ereaders and how eink screens prices and market contribute to this situation

Originally Posted by meeera

People don't buy eink readers for web browsing; they're for reading static pages.

people do this - just look on reddit how often this topic is brought; people are interested in this, same as are interested in using eink as monitor (obviously for web browsing and all other types of computer use cases);
also FYI - web browsing can be done using page turning (instead of scrolling), so treating web pages as static pages basically - using browser like EinkBro; this is truly awesome eink browser that is game changer for me (likely other browsers eg firefox have this feature too with some addons but idk them)

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Ereadlog

{buying ereaders for web browsing} people do this - just look on reddit how often this topic is brought; people are interested in this

OK, I'll modify: "sensible people"

I will agree that ereaders are ok for reading completely static articles page by page (I use Pocket for this), but I wouldn't call that 'web browsing'.

[JSWolf]

Don't use any eBooks from Standard eBooks to benchmark. They use some really awful CSS.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Don't use any eBooks from Standard eBooks to benchmark. They use some really awful CSS.

Doesn't seem to matter, Jon. I ran my tests on 4 different epubs and the results were pretty even across all 4 including Moby Dick from Standard eBooks unedited.

What I found odd was that my results ranged from 29 to 35 frames which seemed to me to be a lot faster than either of the other two posted timings and yet I was using a swipe so I counted from when I started the swipe to when the page finished changing. I'm going to have to take a closer look at the settings and see if anything odd is going on.

Edit: My bad. I was in what I thought was relatively decent lighting but my iPhone 12 decided was dim lighting so it dropped back to 30 fps. So 34 frames is 1.13 seconds and my range of results was from 0.967 seconds to 1.17 seconds for a page turn from the start of a swipe to the page being stable and readable. This basically matches @Ereadlog's results.

[Renate]

Hmm, I once checked this on the B&N Glow3 (6") & B&N Glow4 (7.8")
I actually measured electrically from page turn command to the actual update of the eInk.
A screen changes "slowly" but it actually goes back and forth and when the update stops it's like musical chairs.

My new Poke3 is a ton faster loading a book, but I haven't made any real measurements for update yet.

Edit: A completely unscientific test of my Poke3 showed that I could flip through 75 pages in a minute. A lot of that was my reaction time.

More edit: I made a USB device that I can set to repeatedly do page downs at a specific rate.
At 3 page turns/second it seems that it wasn't running smoothly.
At 2 page turns/second it ran smoothly.
Wow, I just ran through Moby Dick, but my comprehension was poor.

[Hyphen-ated]

(edited to remove duped posts)

[Hyphen-ated]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Are you refreshing the screen on every page turn? I don't and I know I don't get page turn speed that slow.

Nope, I mentioned before and you can see in my video that it's not refreshing every turn. Would you like to post video of some faster page turns?

[Hyphen-ated]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I think that shortened URLs are a no-no but ordinary URLs are okay. For anyone who is interested, the link to the compatible epub version of Moby Dick at Standard Ebooks is: Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Perhaps a limitation on new users until you hit a minimum number of posts?

It was a regular link to youtube.
Thanks for linking to the epub for me!

It does seem like it might be new-user related. Just now I wrote a big post replying to a bunch of people, and the forum ALSO rejected that post, so now I'm writing a bunch of tiny ones.

[Hyphen-ated]

Originally Posted by Ereadlog

I suggest you make a test with real paper book as this is true benchmark vs all devices

Nah. My comparison is with reading text on my computer, which has something like 0.05s or less page turn delay for an epub.

btw if I recall correctly Koreader app have noticeably better turn speeds than default Boox reader

Oh really! I looked at Koreader's list of features in the past and saw no claims about improved performance, which I figured would be a big deal they would want to brag about. I'll have to check it out.

[Hyphen-ated]

(edited to remove duped posts)

[Hyphen-ated]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Don't use any eBooks from Standard eBooks to benchmark. They use some really awful CSS.

So? Sometimes books that people want to read will not be formatted ideally. A reader needs to deal with it. If anything this improves its value as a test imo