Old sluggish Clara HD

[Desertway]

I just noticed something unexpected. The worst of the sluggishness was using menus within the book, changing font size primarily, which I do often. The lag was nuts. I changed the font from Charis 7 semi-bold to Charink6 and the response time was, if not snappy, less painful.

(Semi-bold was my default because my vision is lousy. With Charink6 I have to use the heaviest weight on Kobo's slider - no wiggle room. I tried Charink extra weight, but that was too much).

[Apollyon202]

What can also slow down the kobo are the books themselves. Use kepub instead of epub if you haven't done that already, big sized books with lots of megabytes possibly because of the huge resolution book covers etc.

What I always do, is to make sure I don't have 4K book covers, also make them greyscale with covergen, so less pressure for the weak CPU.

[Desertway]

Thanks. I'm using kepub because I need the increased formatting options. I tried converting kepub in Calibre and in Kepubify. Calibre resulted in better speed. The book size is 1.1mb. It is a little bigger than the last book I read, and a hair slower.

[xyclonei]

I've replaced the SD card in mine to a faster variant and that seemed to have helped with speeding things up a bit. On the stock reader, KEPUB is the way to go as EPUBs are really slow due to a different renderer being used.

I've also noticed that certain fonts or books (I assume there's some weird CSS or HTML in them?) seem to bog down the reader. Once I get rid of the offending party, it's back to its usual self.

I also do occasionally vacuum KoboReader.sqlite and convert book covers to grayscale with Covergen, but perhaps the impact of that on device speed is a placebo?

[Aleron Ives]

Converting the covers shouldn't matter at all. Kobo already processes cover images to generate thumbnails when you import books. Malformed books, on the other hand, can definitely cause problems.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by xyclonei

... On the stock reader, KEPUB is the way to go as EPUBs are really slow due to a different renderer being used.

I wish Kobo would upgrade their ePub reading experience. I don't like KePubs because the page numbers change with changes to margins or font/font size. I guess this is one reason why I prefer my PocketBooks, they're using a newer "ePub renderer/engine(?)." (Can't currently come up with the right name.)

[Quoth]

I find epub on Kobo fast enough (Touch ver C, Aura H2O original, Nia, Libra H2O, Libra 2, Sage, Elipsa). I don't like some aspects of kepub.

Yes, the regular epub on Kobo is using an old Adobe ADE.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I find epub on Kobo fast enough (Touch ver C, Aura H2O original, Nia, Libra H2O, Libra 2, Sage, Elipsa). I don't like some aspects of kepub.

Yes, the regular epub on Kobo is using an old Adobe ADE.

ePub on Kobo is fast enough for me also. Some people must read a lot faster than I do.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rcentros

ePub on Kobo is fast enough for me also. Some people must read a lot faster than I do.

It's not reading per se that's slow, it's navigation - searching, dictionary look-ups, changing font size etc. If you never do those things, you won't notice the slowness.

I don't change the font size, but I do use both searching and dictionary.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

It's not reading per se that's slow, it's navigation - searching, dictionary look-ups, changing font size etc. If you never do those things, you won't notice the slowness.

I don't change the font size, but I do use both searching and dictionary.

I mostly read on my PocketBook now (got rid of most of my Kobos). But I did have to "downdate" my Aura HD because the newer firmware releases made it very slow. It works well enough on the older firmware.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I mostly read on my PocketBook now (got rid of most of my Kobos). But I did have to "downdate" my Aura HD because the newer firmware releases made it very slow. It works well enough on the older firmware.

Yes, it works, but compared to the Sage and modern Kindles (and even the 2019 Oasis) it's considerably slower.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yes, it works, but compared to the Sage and modern Kindles (and even the 2019 Oasis) it's considerably slower.

For me anyhow, Kindles were almost always a little smoother (and faster) than their competition. But they had other drawbacks that made me prefer the ePub eReaders.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Desertway

Thanks everyone. I probably won't open to the device - I'm a danger to myself and others when I tinker with hardware, even simple jobs. But maybe I will jump back on the firmware. Appreciate all the help.

Maybe it's the memory card needing replace instead of a problem with the firmware.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Desertway

I just noticed something unexpected. The worst of the sluggishness was using menus within the book, changing font size primarily, which I do often. The lag was nuts. I changed the font from Charis 7 semi-bold to Charink6 and the response time was, if not snappy, less painful.

(Semi-bold was my default because my vision is lousy. With Charink6 I have to use the heaviest weight on Kobo's slider - no wiggle room. I tried Charink extra weight, but that was too much).

Try ChareInk7SPW (ChareInk7SP with added weight). Maybe it will have more weight then ChareInk7 Semi-Bold.

Go here to grab the new ChareInk7SP and/or ChareInk7SPW.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

[Desertway]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Try ChareInk7SPW (ChareInk7SP with added weight). Maybe it will have more weight then ChareInk7 Semi-Bold.

Go here to grab the new ChareInk7SP and/or ChareInk7SPW.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=184056

Thanks!