Aura Aura One disadvantages

[Dino84]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Of course there's no touch screen lock. If there was, you'd not be able to do anything with it. Buttons are going away. I have an H2O (no buttons) and I have no problem holding it without accidentally touching the screen.

I guess everybody is different. I would prefer an ereader with less features and more usability though. The Kindle Oasis buttons are stellar. The touch doesnt add anything vital except for menu navigation imo.
Annotations, markings, dictionary... I would gladly disable them all if I could, if it meant I could sweep my finger across the screen while reading. For me, less is more in this case.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dino84

I guess everybody is different. I would prefer an ereader with less features and more usability though. The Kindle Oasis buttons are stellar. The touch doesnt add anything vital except for menu navigation imo.
Annotations, markings, dictionary... I would gladly disable them all if I could, if it meant I could sweep my finger across the screen while reading. For me, less is more in this case.

You can sweep your finger across the screen (with a Kobo). You don't have to tap to change the page.

[Dino84]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can sweep your finger across the screen (with a Kobo). You don't have to tap to change the page.

I meant sweeping while reading, you know, like... 'feeling' the page.
Not turning the page. Or simply resting my thumb onto the screen in order to hold the device more naturally. Book-stuff, if you will

Sadly, no ereader manufacturer seem to value these things. Atleast not together with the comfort light which is another must-have of mine.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dino84

I meant sweeping while reading, you know, like... 'feeling' the page.
Not turning the page. Or simply resting my thumb onto the screen in order to hold the device more naturally. Book-stuff, if you will

Sadly, no ereader manufacturer seem to value these things. Atleast not together with the comfort light which is another must-have of mine.

I don't see this as something you'll ever get unless you buy a Reader with no touch screen.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Dino84

I meant sweeping while reading, you know, like... 'feeling' the page.
Not turning the page. Or simply resting my thumb onto the screen in order to hold the device more naturally. Book-stuff, if you will

Sadly, no ereader manufacturer seem to value these things. Atleast not together with the comfort light which is another must-have of mine.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't see this as something you'll ever get unless you buy a Reader with no touch screen.

I believe one the alternate reading apps (coolreader or koreader) have configurable tap zones/gui?

[Dino84]

Originally Posted by John F

I believe one the alternate reading apps (coolreader or koreader) have configurable tap zones/gui?

Thanks!
Do you know where I could get more info on how to install those?

Edit: I found some threads on it. It seems slightly complicated though and not something I have time to delve into at the moment. Anyway, appreciate it

[John F]

Originally Posted by Dino84

Thanks!
Do you know where I could get more info on how to install those?

Edit: I found some threads on it. It seems slightly complicated though and not something I have time to delve into at the moment. Anyway, appreciate it

Be sure to ask questions first. I'm going from memory, so I may be wrong.

Good luck.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Dino84

I guess everybody is different. I would prefer an ereader with less features and more usability though. The Kindle Oasis buttons are stellar. The touch doesnt add anything vital except for menu navigation imo.
Annotations, markings, dictionary... I would gladly disable them all if I could, if it meant I could sweep my finger across the screen while reading. For me, less is more in this case.

What are features and what is usability? The fact that you have a touchscreen means better usability for me, as I like to highlight. Naturally, my perfect reader has buttons and a touchscreen (and thus can have a way to turn off the touchscreen), but if I had to chose between a reader with only buttons or one with only a touchscreen, I'd go for the latter any day.

[Braid]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

What are features and what is usability? The fact that you have a touchscreen means better usability for me, as I like to highlight. Naturally, my perfect reader has buttons and a touchscreen (and thus can have a way to turn off the touchscreen), but if I had to chose between a reader with only buttons or one with only a touchscreen, I'd go for the latter any day.

The Voyage has no way to disable the touchscreen with its native firmware, unfortunately.

The features and usability of the Voyage are really strong. I find the touch-screen responds more accurately, and quicker, and the operating system also seems quicker to me, which is great for opening books, browsing, making highlights, and looking up words, and so on. I would say the Voyage has the edge over the H2O in this department, and even more so over the Aura One - my Aura One is considerably slower to respond, slower to turn pages and open books, less responsive to touch, and less accurate at receiving touch, than my Voyage.

I use my Voyage to read PDF files as well - providing they are single-column, mostly text (as opposed to diagrams), and digitally sourced. In landscape view, I find it a very comfortable experience - only slightly less convenient than reading a reflowable format ebook. The pages turn nice and quickly, and you can look up words and make highlights. The only downside is that each page is divided up into three sections, so you have to kind of "keep in mind" where you are in each sentence when you turn pages. This experience offered by the Voyage is far superior (in my opinion) to the PDF reading experience on my Kobo devices - on my Kobo devices I find the PDF reading experience unacceptable... I get so distracted trying to navigate between pages, that I might as well read on a computer or tablet, and therby give up the benefits of an e-ink reader. I make these comments purely based on my experiences. Some people (mostly Kobo aficionados, it would appear) seem bent on telling people that for PDF it's tablet-or-bust. I'm not sure whether they've actually tried reading a digital PDF on the Kindle Voyage. Maybe they have... who knows... but I have no trouble getting through books in this format. Anyway.

The main weakness of Kindle devices when compared with Kobo devices is the overall appearance and layout of text. Kobo devices, for some reason, just lay out text in a prettier way, in my opinion. The justification is more consistent. The use of hyphenation is much better - on my Kindle I quite frequently see words cut up in awkward, unnatural places, and words spaced miles apart in order to fill the line, whereas on my H2O and Aura One I very rarely see this. I also prefer the default fonts on my Kobo devices. Maybe these things are what Kindles sacrifice in order to turn pages and open books that little bit quicker.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by Braid

...on my Kobo devices I find the PDF reading experience unacceptable... I get so distracted trying to navigate between pages, that I might as well read on a computer or tablet, and therby give up the benefits of an e-ink reader. I make these comments purely based on my experiences. Some people (mostly Kobo aficionados, it would appear) seem bent on telling people that for PDF it's tablet-or-bust.

Quite agree with your take on reading PDFs on a Kobo straight out of the box. However, if you install koreader on your Kobo, it dramatically improves the experience, making it almost pleasurable in my opinion.

However, if you really want to enjoy reading PDFs, you might consider investing in a 13.3" ereader. I much prefer reading PDFs on my Onyx Max than on any of my tablets.

[Braid]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

Quite agree with your take on reading PDFs on a Kobo straight out of the box. However, if you install koreader on your Kobo, it dramatically improves the experience, making it almost pleasurable in my opinion.

Yeah, for a while I had Koreader installed on my H2O. I tried getting it installed on my Aura One but gave up after a few tries.

Koreader does provide a comfortable PDF reading experience, just as good as that on the Kindle. However, if you plan to keep reading your epubs using Nickel (the native Kobo firmware), then that means dual-booting, or in other words, using the reader with more than one operating system. That in itself detracts massively from the ease and enjoyability of browsing and switching between books that you are reading. And add to that the fact that Koreader+KSM is pretty ugly compared to Nickel. (No offense - I think the KSM+Koreader developers are doing an amazing job)

So it's true - Koreader is something to consider. It just adds a whole bunch of other stuff to be considered as well - installation processes, fonts, dictionaries, browsing experience and so on. For me it's much simpler to just read PDF on my Kindle.

[Dino84]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

What are features and what is usability? The fact that you have a touchscreen means better usability for me, as I like to highlight. Naturally, my perfect reader has buttons and a touchscreen (and thus can have a way to turn off the touchscreen), but if I had to chose between a reader with only buttons or one with only a touchscreen, I'd go for the latter any day.

Yes its subjective. Im only speaking for myself. Personally, I never highlighted in my years of e-reading. Not once I think. Ive used dictionary a few times.

But now with my new Kobo Aura One, Ive found that converting my books to pdf removes highlight feature altogether. With pdf I can even rest my thumb on the page without having to worry about unwanted input. Its simply, Next Page, Prev Page, or Menu.

KA1+pdf = win for me

[Braid]

Originally Posted by Dino84

Yes its subjective. Im only speaking for myself. Personally, I never highlighted in my years of e-reading. Not once I think. Ive used dictionary a few times.

But now with my new Kobo Aura One, Ive found that converting my books to pdf removes highlight feature altogether. With pdf I can even rest my thumb on the page without having to worry about unwanted input. Its simply, Next Page, Prev Page, or Menu.

KA1+pdf = win for me

That's pretty unusual... I've never heard of anyone voluntarily converting files to PDF. Oh well, if you like to read that way, sweet!

I'm the complete opposite with dictionary use. I think I have some sort of complex where I hate not knowing what a word means (and there seem to be lots of words I don't know). More than once while reading texts on paper, I have pressed my finger against the word on the page, expecting the dictionary definition to pop up, lol!

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by Braid

Koreader does provide a comfortable PDF reading experience, just as good as that on the Kindle. However, if you plan to keep reading your epubs using Nickel (the native Kobo firmware), then that means dual-booting, or in other words, using the reader with more than one operating system. That in itself detracts massively from the ease and enjoyability of browsing and switching between books that you are reading. And add to that the fact that Koreader+KSM is pretty ugly compared to Nickel. (No offense - I think the KSM+Koreader developers are doing an amazing job)

So it's true - Koreader is something to consider. It just adds a whole bunch of other stuff to be considered as well - installation processes, fonts, dictionaries, browsing experience and so on. For me it's much simpler to just read PDF on my Kindle.

I agree that Nickel offers a much more pleasant looking interface than Koreader. However, I haven't really played around with customizing Koreader. I really just use it for reading PDFs.

Switching between the two isn't much of an issue for me. It doesn't require booting up to make the switch each time. When it is in Koreader mode, I simply select "Nickel" from the menu when I want to read epubs. When I want to read PDFs, I select the Koreader tile from the homescreen. The switch is fast and painless. Like switching between books.

The only nuisance involves updates. Every time there is a new Kobo update, it seems that I have to reinstall Koreader after that. As I am not all that tech savvy, that involves relocating the thread where I found the installation instructions and refollowing them. (I really should just copy the information and links to downloads to a file on my computer.)

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Braid

I find the touch-screen responds more accurately, and quicker, and the operating system also seems quicker to me, which is great for opening books, browsing, making highlights, and looking up words, and so on. I would say the Voyage has the edge over the H2O in this department, and even more so over the Aura One - my Aura One is considerably slower to respond, slower to turn pages and open books, less responsive to touch, and less accurate at receiving touch, than my Voyage.

If speed is important to you, have you tried using calibre to send your epubs to the Kobo as kepubs? Kepub touch response and page-turning is faster than standard epub.