Kobo Aura One for pdf's

[RobertJSawyer]

I love E Ink devices for reading ebooks (ePub / Kindle), but they aren't the best solution for PDFs, in my view. First, of course, you're dealing with a reduced-size display, even with the Kobo Aura One; second, many PDFs have color illustrations or text, which will be seen only as grayscale; third, the screen refresh isn't spritely enough on E Ink devices.

The best PDF reader out there, although it costs a lot, is the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which will show you a US letter-sized or European A4 page FULL SIZE (not reduced), in color, and with lightning fast page turns and zooming in and out.

http://www.apple.com/ca/ipad-pro/

[filmo]

Why is Apple I Pad Pro the best tablet for reading PDFs ?

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by filmo

Why is Apple I Pad Pro the best tablet for reading PDFs ?

On the one hand, iPad Pro's screen dimensions can display an entire A4 or US Letter page without resizing. And the processors Apple use are among the fastest in their class.

On the other hand, Apple's pen input is inferior to Microsoft's so if you're doing sketches or annotations or taking notes then Surface Pro 4 is the superior device.

But then, neither iPad Pro nor Surface Pro 4 are any good for general reading. They're too heavy, too bulky to hold in hands for any length of time.

[lensmann]

Originally Posted by feebsjee

I was all set to buy an N96 for pdf's but then I found many posts by academics or people who also like me need to read pdf's whereby they say that the Aura One is the best pdf solution (although flawed) and I am trying to understand what it is about the Aura one that they found to be better

I'm one of those academics. In my view, neither's inherently better. Both are sufficiently flawed to be rather irritating. The question is which one's flaws irritate you less. That's a very subjective question. I found the N96 marginally less irritating, but bought the Kobo Aura One simply because I don't think the N96 is good value for money at twice the cost of the Aura One (given the issues from which it, too, suffers and the very marginal improvement over the Aura One).

The Kobo Aura One's main issues out-of-the-box are:

• It is slow. I use it to read academic PDFs. Because of the field in which I work, some of these are purely text-based PDFs, while others have graphs, and still others have hi-resolution imagery. Page turns on a text-based PDF take a second or two per page (and after a few pages, you really start noticing the lags). PDFs with images take longer. I've had it take over two minutes when it's dealing with very complex images.
• Kobo's implementation of Adobe's RMSDK doesn't support text reflow. That means that you'll need to rely on zooming and panning when you magnify the PDF (which you'll need to do fairly often).
• Zooming and panning are sub-par. There are e-readers out there which automatically crop out margins. The Kobo doesn't do that, and it won't even preserve your centring when you turn the page. It'll start displaying the page on the top left-side margin.
• PDF handling has gotten worse with firmware upgrades, not better. It probably won't degrade significantly from where it currently stands, but it's very unlikely that it will improve.

The huge advantage the Aura One has is that you can fix most of these issues by installing Koreader on your reader. I have it on my Aura HD, but haven't managed to install it on my Aura One as yet. Installing it is a hack, however, with the level of fiddliness you'd expect to go with a hack.

The N96's built-in PDF reader is much better, and is free of most of these issues, and because it runs Android there are better ones available on the Play Store. The bigger screen size also makes a real difference. However:

• Its screen is noticeably worse, at least to me, both in terms of technology (Pearl as opposed to the Carta screen in the Aura One) and resolution. I found it obviously blockier and less pleasant than the Aura One's. Not everyone feels thsi way, however, so it may not be an issue for you.
• Text-based PDFs are much faster. When it comes to graphics, it isn't as slow as the Aura One, but it isn't much faster.
• Android works OK on e-readers, but it's not really designed for them. I've had problems with apps crashing, and losing annotations. This doesn't happen on the Kobo, and was a deal-breaker for me.
• Library management is not good - virtually non-existent, in fact.

The question you should ask yourself is which of these sets of flaws you can live with. I went for the Aura One, but only because I will install Koreader to fix its flaws. Your preferences may be different.

[pluma]

Originally Posted by feebsjee

I am currently undecided between this device and the Onyx Boox N96

thanks very much for your time

hallo,

If you got the cash for a Onyx Book N96, I'd say go for it. When it comes to pdfs size 'matters', the bigger the better. For the following reasons.

1. The vast content of pdfs have been created with A4 dimensions. The Aura ONE 7.6" still doesn't cut it. Sure if you've got the skills you could re-format them all to a pdf smaller size.

2. What you want is a reader with the least interruption and Aura ONE at current size there's a lot of zooming and panning with standard pdfs. This operation causes the display to refresh very slow a process which the text seems to suffer from epylepsy fit. That alone will turn blind anybody with 20/20 eyesight.

3. If you want to take care of you eyes, again, without heavy pdf customization you're left with a tiny content, even when it's zoomed in you're left with little content on the page forcing you to do the slow scrolling.

4. Depending on the content of you pdfs, if they are of a technical nature with math, graphs, tables and such Aura ONE 7.8" still not enough. I am telling you after having compared content of various physical books with the device and its dimensions aren't optimal.

Don't get me wrong I love the device, and I got good looking pdf's only after heavy and painful editing.

According with your two requiremnts, pdf and eyesight I wouldn't hesitate any further and grab the Onyx N96 if you prefer a smooth reading experience without tinkering. One thing I do reccomend is to TRIM the borders of pdfs. I've noticed that with less white border the device doesn't sped many cpu cycles calculating distances, cm and such.

lastly 6" devices need to die already!

peace

[lensmann]

To follow up on my last post, here is a review of the M96 (the N96's predecessor) by an academic who uses it to read PDFs:

http://academic.bancey.com/review-of...r-one-year-on/

The N96 is available in a version that supports finger-touch, so that bit of his review doesn't apply, but the rest is pretty accurate. I found that the bad outweighed the good; the author of that blog felt otherwise. If you get the chance, try both out before deciding what works best for you.

[adrians]

Originally Posted by lensmann

The huge advantage the Aura One has is that you can fix most of these issues by installing Koreader on your reader. I have it on my Aura HD, but haven't managed to install it on my Aura One as yet.

Let me know if you need some help with installing the latest KOReader (+ KSM) on your KA1. I've got it working on mine and isolated the few steps in order to deal with scattered documentation that can make it more confusing than it needs to be.

Cheers

[pluma]

Originally Posted by adrians

Let me know if you need some help with installing the latest KOReader (+ KSM) on your KA1. I've got it working on mine and isolated the few steps in order to deal with scattered documentation that can make it more confusing than it needs to be.

Cheers

I do need help with the latest firmware. I manage to install it in the first firmware version on KA1 but no not really god because I never got the tile to work properly, instead I ended up with a bunch of images all over the place that show up as individual books.

Is it possible to use koreader with the latest firmware??

danke.

[Braid]

One of the things I really dislike about Koreader+KSM is the process of connecting to a computer. You have to go to the home screen and then into a submenu and then you have to press "enable" to connect and then "disable" to disconnect when you're done, and the buttons are so small it can be hard to tell what you have pressed.

I would love it if there was a better designed version of Koreader and Kobo Start Menu so that items in lists and menus were more ergonomic and button-like.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Braid

and the buttons are so small it can be hard to tell what you have pressed.

The height of the "buttons" of KSM depends on the font size, which is configurable.

[Braid]

Yeah, I wasn't sure to call them "buttons" or "list entries". What is normal?

[344a]

I have seen a youtube showing One working with a pdf. The performance was awful. You should check that out before you make your decision.

[Dodman]

I didn't buy my Kobo Aura One for PDF reading. I was quite happy to do that on my iPad. However, I do have a number of PDF books, and out of curiosity I tried them out on the Kobo. As a standard PDF, I found it a waste of time. Converted to an epub via Calibre, it was even worse.

However, I came across a program called K2PDF

http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/

which does a different sort of conversion, to a resized PDF. I chose the Kobo Aura output and it is immaculate. Exactly like reading an epub, but in PDF format. This is for a book with occasional illustrations. I don't know what it would be like for more complex PDFs.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Dodman

I didn't buy my Kobo Aura One for PDF reading. I was quite happy to do that on my iPad. However, I do have a number of PDF books, and out of curiosity I tried them out on the Kobo. As a standard PDF, I found it a waste of time. Converted to an epub via Calibre, it was even worse.

PDF distillation is a destructive process. Adobe never intended it to be reversible. As such, any conversion from PDF is going to be difficult. Results will vary from PDF to PDF, and different files will need different options to get some some value of "best" results regardless of the conversion tools you use.

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by Dodman

I didn't buy my Kobo Aura One for PDF reading. I was quite happy to do that on my iPad. However, I do have a number of PDF books, and out of curiosity I tried them out on the Kobo. As a standard PDF, I found it a waste of time. Converted to an epub via Calibre, it was even worse.

However, I came across a program called K2PDF

http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/

which does a different sort of conversion, to a resized PDF. I chose the Kobo Aura output and it is immaculate. Exactly like reading an epub, but in PDF format. This is for a book with occasional illustrations. I don't know what it would be like for more complex PDFs.

If one can find affordable used Kobo Aura One it is still a very good pdf, djvu, comic e-reader, but only after the installation of Koreader app thereon, Koreader also uses k2pdfopt's reflow mode.

https://youtu.be/i2oSOeAnD10