Worth updating from a Libra H2O?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Here is my review of the Boox Go 7 I put on Amazon. As well as some pictures. I still have my Kobo H20.

My brother got this for me for Christmas, since it has been on my wish list for a while. I wanted this for the freedom that it offers in that I'm not tied to just Amazon or Kobo,

With a Kobo, you are not tied to Kobo even when you are registered. You can buy eBooks from eBooks.com and other eBook shops. You can also read ePub from Overdrive. You are not forced to buy eBooks from Kobo to use on your Kobo.

[some call me tim]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Here is my review of the Boox Go 7 I put on Amazon. As well as some pictures. I still have my Kobo H20.

My brother got this for me for Christmas, since it has been on my wish list for a while. I wanted this for the freedom that it offers in that I'm not tied to just Amazon or Kobo, and having access to Google Play to explore other reading apps is great. Choice is good!!!

I have the black version so the screen is glass, it is very thin and light so a protective cover is mandatory. I also wouldn't carry it with me for trips because I wouldn't want to put the reader at risk for breaks, it's too expensive for that. That is what my covered Kobo reader is for.

I like that it offers page turn buttons, I love all the fonts that are available on it. My favorite is the bold option. I also love the fact that it has an SD card slot. I put all my music on a card so that I can play my music with headphones while reading.

Now to address some other comments I've read. Does it take a while to boot up? Yes, but it is a tablet not just an e-reader, so it has a lot more to check which of course takes a little time. Compare the boot up time with your phone or tablet it is probably the same. It also has lots of options for you to sort through and check out when you first get it if you wish. But once you have it set up, you are good to go.

If you just want to sit down and read, get a Kobo or Kindle. But you also have to set these up when you first get them.

Does the battery last long? It seems to run down faster than Kobo or Kindle, but compared to the Sony T1 that I had, all of them run down faster than that machine! I easily got two months out of it without recharging. But again, I have never understood the angst over this, if it needs recharging I simply plug it in. But you can easily get a whole day out of it especially if you keep wifi off. As far as ghosting goes, I haven't noticed any, but I have it set to refresh with every page turn.

So long as you do your research so that you know exactly what you are getting when you buy a Boox, you shouldn't be disappointed. I know I'm not. I have an excellent e-reader that will load any book I want onto it from any store I get them from. It also sideloads any books you may have bought years ago from stores that no longer exist from your computer.

I value having flexibility and choice rather than being locked into only one option. The Boox allows me this freedom.

I am very happy with my Boox Go 7 Black B&W Tablet for reading books.

Thanks for your detailed review! How do you find the user experience in relation to the H2O? As I alluded to in my original post, one of my big annoyances with the H2O is that while it is great that it has the overdrive functionality, the integration is clunky at best. It won't always show books that I have checked out, and sometimes the available catalog doesn't match what I see when I search on Libby or the library's site. Also, how do you find the UI in general? I've found the H2O's UI to be functional, but cumbersome and slow. Once I have a book open, it's fine but getting there is not the most streamlined experience.

Any thoughts on the ergonomics/form factor of the devices? I've been pretty happy with the ergonomics of the H2O, and I've seen at least one reviewer mention that the angled edge of the H2O was a design feature he missed. How about the build quality? My H2O has always been fine, but it was admittedly cheaper feeling than my old Oasis. Do you feel like the Go 7 is really that much more fragile that you wouldn't travel with it?

I do like the idea of the openness of Android. I like Calibre and use it a lot, as I'm sure most of us here do. But, I also like options. For instance, when I read on a tablet, I really liked the Moon+ app.

[cfrizz]

I did a small comparison between the two readers. I love all the options on the Boox especially being able to choose a bold font. I don't use the library feature so I can't speak to that. I use the Boox own reader Neo and it seems to work just fine

You are right the Kobo UI is functional, but then it doesn't have to be fancy since it is just a reader, and it is slower than the Boox. The Boox UI again has lots to explore and I basically just touch icons to see what it will do until I know which icon does the thing I want it to do.

Now as for the ergonomics I have both protected in cases, and the Kobo edge gives it the edge because it makes it easier to pick up. I might have to find a different case for my Boox. The Boox is smaller than the Kobo, but possibly just a tad heavier due to the glass screen but it is still comfortable to hold. The build quality of the Boox is excellent and the screen is outstanding. Probably because it is glass and not plastic. As you know glass breaks very easily, so no I wouldn't travel with it because of that. I'm pretty confident that my Kobo could survive a fall, and I'm not too worried about it breaking in my backpack. I can't say I have the same confidence in the Boox because of the glass screen. and at 250.00, it's not something I would just put at risk for breakage. The white Boox screen is plastic.

The Boox will shut itself off a lot sooner than any other reader. If it stays on for two days without being used, I'd be surprised. But that will also help with the battery life.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I love all the options on the Boox especially being able to choose a bold font.

??? You can change the font weight on a Kobo until it's as bold as you want. And you can sideload other fonts too.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

??? You can change the font weight on a Kobo until it's as bold as you want. And you can sideload other fonts too.

Thanks for telling me about the font weight, I didn't know that is what it meant. They should simply add in a bold option.

As for sideloading anything other than books, I know nothing about doing that, nor do I really want to. Kobo should give us more options.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

The Boox will shut itself off a lot sooner than any other reader. If it stays on for two days without being used, I’d be surprised. But that will also help with the battery life.

If I recall correctly, there’s a menu option to choose shut off time. I have the colour gen II but apart from the colour, it should be pretty much identical to the Go 7 BW.

I know I set mine to shut down (instead of sleep/standby) after 2 days of inactivity when I first got mine, but there were also other options.

With Android devices, at least the Boox, it absolutely does help with battery life though to have it shut down instead of standby when you know you won’t be using it for more than a day, so when I’ve just picked mine up to check something or do an update but don’t plan to read, I shut it down manually.

(I still read all downloadable books on my 2017 Kindle Oasis as I find I prefer the BW screen and simplicity of a dedicated reader, but as I’m too poor to keep buying Estonian ebooks and I got a subscription for my mother that I can share, I needed something that could use the subscription service’s app. So I currently just use the Boox when I want to use that app, and haven’t actually read a single book on it outside that - but I did check out NeoReader when I got it and it seems like a really nice reader, actually. If my Oasis dies before Kobo or PocketBook come out with a new 7-8’’ BW device with buttons, I can see myself using the Boox as my main reader at least temporarily, as it’s a lovely device really in most ways.)

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I did a small comparison between the two readers. I love all the options on the Boox especially being able to choose a bold font. I don't use the library feature so I can't speak to that. I use the Boox own reader Neo and it seems to work just fine

You are right the Kobo UI is functional, but then it doesn't have to be fancy since it is just a reader, and it is slower than the Boox. The Boox UI again has lots to explore and I basically just touch icons to see what it will do until I know which icon does the thing I want it to do.

Now as for the ergonomics I have both protected in cases, and the Kobo edge gives it the edge because it makes it easier to pick up. I might have to find a different case for my Boox. The Boox is smaller than the Kobo, but possibly just a tad heavier due to the glass screen but it is still comfortable to hold. The build quality of the Boox is excellent and the screen is outstanding. Probably because it is glass and not plastic. As you know glass breaks very easily, so no I wouldn't travel with it because of that. I'm pretty confident that my Kobo could survive a fall, and I'm not too worried about it breaking in my backpack. I can't say I have the same confidence in the Boox because of the glass screen. and at 250.00, it's not something I would just put at risk for breakage. The white Boox screen is plastic.

The Boox will shut itself off a lot sooner than any other reader. If it stays on for two days without being used, I'd be surprised. But that will also help with the battery life.

Neo Reader is pretty flawed for ePubs IMO. At least the versions on my older readers (perhaps the latest ones are better). It's OK at English/Latin character languages but with some books it can be really bad at certain settings, it's not hard to get things like having sentences overlap one another. And it's not great at Japanese. I found I constantly had to fiddle to get something I like. Kobo's is much more usable out of the box and I generally only have to change font size, if that. For PDFs NeoReader is great though.

You can change how quickly the Boox devices turn off in the power settings. I set mine to auto-shutoff after a day. I think the default was 5 or 10 minutes which is far too short.

The new Kobos are pretty zippy. The old ones were definitely sluggish but my Libra Colour feels fast and comparable to my Boox devices.

[JSWolf]

@cfrizz, would you mind editing your review of the Boox to fix the inaccuracy about Kobo being tied to Kobo's store? Kobo Readers are not tied to Kobo's store.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I did a small comparison between the two readers. I love all the options on the Boox especially being able to choose a bold font. I don't use the library feature so I can't speak to that. I use the Boox own reader Neo and it seems to work just fine

When you say choose a bold font, are you choosing the bold variant or are you able to up the weight like you can with Kobo?

If you are choosing the bold variant, then you lose the ability to discern non-bold and bold. Also, the font could therefore be too much.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you say choose a bold font, are you choosing the bold variant or are you able to up the weight like you can with Kobo?

If you are choosing the bold variant, then you lose the ability to discern non-bold and bold. Also, the font could therefore be too much.

It means I press the Bold button and it changes the print to a bold font, simple as that.

As far as it being too much, that is up to the individual reader.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

It means I press the Bold button and it changes the print to a bold font, simple as that.

As far as it being too much, that is up to the individual reader.

No way would I want that. I much prefer incremental bolding like Kobo offers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

It means I press the Bold button and it changes the print to a bold font, simple as that.

As far as it being too much, that is up to the individual reader.

When you select bold, can you see the difference between the regular version and the bold version?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No way would I want that. I much prefer incremental bolding like Kobo offers.

I prefer Kobo's way of doing it as well. I get to choose what works for me instead of just on or off.

[Yapyap]

That “Bold” up there is just a preset that Boox NeoReader offers.

I took some quick snaps of the Style tab on mine - specifically the “Original” (where I can choose font, font size etc) and that has a More Settings button, and then two examples where the weight (“Bold”) is set at 0 and one where it’s set at 8, which will hopefully show some difference on the pictures. The weight can be set to quite thick but there are many gradations so it’s easy enough to pick a suitable weight.



(The lighting is quite random right now and I haven’t edited the pictures at all apart from crop and resize. And mine is the colour one so the actual look depends a fair bit on both the ambient lighting and the front light. But basically as you can see, NeoReader does offer a fair amount of settings to adjust and customise.)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

That “Bold” up there is just a preset that Boox NeoReader offers.

I took some quick snaps of the Style tab on mine - specifically the “Original” (where I can choose font, font size etc) and that has a More Settings button, and then two examples where the weight (“Bold”) is set at 0 and one where it’s set at 8, which will hopefully show some difference on the pictures. The weight can be set to quite thick but there are many gradations so it’s easy enough to pick a suitable weight.

Attachment 220489 Attachment 220490 Attachment 220491

(The lighting is quite random right now and I haven’t edited the pictures at all apart from crop and resize. And mine is the colour one so the actual look depends a fair bit on both the ambient lighting and the front light. But basically as you can see, NeoReader does offer a fair amount of settings to adjust and customise.)

Thank you, that's much better.

Might even get one, if Kobo won't release anything interesting.