Sage Kobo Sage for PDF reading

[wherahiko]

I'm wondering if some of you who have (or had) a Sage can comment on what it's like for reading PDFs? The two things I'm most interested in are contrast and speed.

I'm not planning to read born-digital documents designed for A4/Letter size (the 8" screen would be too small for my eyes), but, rather, scanned books from Internet Archive, such as these:

https://archive.org/details/laviespi...e/n11/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/lasainte...e/156/mode/2up

(In many cases, on Internet Archive, the .epub versions are full of OCR errors and basically unusable.)

I previously had a 1st-gen Onyx Boox Note—which was great for this purpose until the battery gave out—but, in comparison to a Kobo, it had the ability to make text bolder for reading (and speed wasn't an issue). I have tried loading PDFs onto my GloHD just to test these aspects, but text is often not very bold, and the page turns are ... oh so slow!

I welcome your thoughts on this.

[Quoth]

Some PDF novels from the IA work, but often you need to reprocess to make the background white and text black.

The Sage (and Kobo generally) now has added per document margin crop (Zoom) that stays as you page which reduces the number of PDFs that need processed.

However mostly I now read IA PDF novels on a 14.25¨TCL Nxtpaper 14, which is as kind to the eyes as Sage with front light on, if NOT in epaper mode and sRGB + adjusted colour balance and brightness, using Pocketbook app. It's better than Xodo for PDFs. Sumatra on a Windows Tablet (but I gave those away).

Edit:
I find the Sage better than the reMarkable or Elipsa for IA PDF novels. The 9.7″ Kindle DXG was got cheap from Amazon on maybe the final "sale" for PDF and was a total failure. Unusable slow page turns on PDF image files and poor quality (only 150 dpi).

The Sage page turns are fast enough.

[Quoth]

See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=144711 and ImageMagik and The GIMP for processing PDFs: Crop, fix brightness / contrast, convert to 14 greys with true black & White (saves storage and improves, background, text and images on eink) etc.

For Novels:
Tesseract or other OCR SW if no decent text layer, then edit & proof in LO Writer, (odt files), final extra save in Docx and then Calibre to epub.

[wherahiko]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Some PDF novels from the IA work, but often you need to reprocess to make the background white and text black.

The Sage (and Kobo generally) now has added per document margin crop (Zoom) that stays as you page which reduces the number of PDFs that need processed.

However mostly I now read IA PDF novels on a 14.25¨TCL Nxtpaper 14, which is as kind to the eyes as Sage with front light on, if NOT in epaper mode and sRGB + adjusted colour balance and brightness, using Pocketbook app. It's better than Xodo for PDFs. Sumatra on a Windows Tablet (but I gave those away).

Edit:
I find the Sage better than the reMarkable or Elipsa for IA PDF novels. The 9.7″ Kindle DXG was got cheap from Amazon on maybe the final "sale" for PDF and was a total failure. Unusable slow page turns on PDF image files and poor quality (only 150 dpi).

The Sage page turns are fast enough.

Originally Posted by Quoth

See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=144711 and ImageMagik and The GIMP for processing PDFs: Crop, fix brightness / contrast, convert to 14 greys with true black & White (saves storage and improves, background, text and images on eink) etc.

For Novels:
Tesseract or other OCR SW if no decent text layer, then edit & proof in LO Writer, (odt files), final extra save in Docx and then Calibre to epub.

Wow, thank you for the information and tips! I'm glad to know that the Sage will be fast enough. With k2pdfopt and the ORC to convert novels to ePub, I'm even wondering whether a 6" Clara will do perfectly fine. Food for thought.

Thanks for the mention of Nxtpaper, too. I'm looking for something with no backlight at all (I don't even use the backlight on my Kobo GloHD), but this has led me to consider an RLCD option like Hannsnote 2, or even Daylight Computer's DC-1, as alternatives to a Sage.

[Quoth]

RLCD and Daylight are terrible screens.

[wherahiko]

Originally Posted by Quoth

RLCD and Daylight are terrible screens.

In what sense? I understand they are terrible in indoor lighting (and less reflective than eInk in general). But for outdoor use, are there any issues with them?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by wherahiko

In what sense? I understand they are terrible in indoor lighting (and less reflective than eInk in general). But for outdoor use, are there any issues with them?

The remove the need for backlight or frontlight, but have miserable contrast. Poor even on overcast sky.
Also they are LCD.
QLED is better for outdoor. It's actually LCD, but either about 5x efficiency at same brightness or x5 brighter at same power.

OLED is limited in brightness.

I got a Nxtpaper 50 5G phone for reading outdoors / portable ebooks. There is an Amazon exclusive version €50 off due to less Flash memory, but it takes up to a 2T SD card. I've a 256G card in it with all my music, epubs and audiobooks. Pocketbook and Musicolet apps. It has extra dim and sunlight modes. A 5010 mAH battery/cell. About €100 less than a Kobo Sage.

A Sage is still my preferred ereader at home.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The remove the need for backlight or frontlight, but have miserable contrast. Poor even on overcast sky.
Also they are LCD.
QLED is better for outdoor. It's actually LCD, but either about 5x efficiency at same brightness or x5 brighter at same power.

OLED is limited in brightness.

I got a Nxtpaper 50 5G phone for reading outdoors / portable ebooks. There is an Amazon exclusive version €50 off due to less Flash memory, but it takes up to a 2T SD card. I've a 256G card in it with all my music, epubs and audiobooks. Pocketbook and Musicolet apps. It has extra dim and sunlight modes. A 5010 mAH battery/cell. About €100 less than a Kobo Sage.

A Sage is still my preferred ereader at home.

That depends on the QLED and OLED.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That depends on the QLED and OLED.

No, because OLED uses tiny electroluminescent dots, they are not LEDs in the regular crystal kind. QLED uses regular real blue LEDs, they can manage maybe 1000 times more brightness per device. OLED on a phone can't even compete with "white" LED* backlights on ordinary LCD for brightness, never mind the LEDs used on an HD LCD projector.

An HD or better phone screen LCD with LED backlight can easily be brighter than OLED. The QLED is about x5 brighter for same backlight power of regular LCD. Larger OLED screens with bigger pixels can be brighter than phone screens, but so too can LCD or QLED.

[*Really blue to violet LEDs with mostly yellow phosphor.]