Pocketbook Inkpad 3 vs Kobo Aura One

[martienne]

I'd be very interested to hear which one you'd go for between these, and why.

My feature preference list:

• Large screen, 8 -10 inches
• Supports epub and djvu
• Able to highlight or scribble in books
• Built in light source
• No flickering when turning pages
• Crisp white and black - i.e. proper contrast. Not pale grey and dark grey...
• Prefer touch screen but it's not a must-have.
• As light as possible.
• Nice UI, stable and convenient...
• My Ebook library is in Calibre

[mobama]

I have Pocketbook Inkpad 2 which has a 8" screen, but a bit older software. I also have Touch HD, which has a 6" screen, but its software is as new as in Inkpad 3, the newest Pocketbook.

I have never had a Kobo thus far, but everything I have heard about it tells me that the pdf reading experience is very bad on Kobo. If you read pdf files, Pocketbook is a better pick in terms of software (particularly the inbuilt reader app).

In terms of hardware, there should be no notable difference between Pocketbook Inkpad 3 and Kobo Aura One, except that Pocketbook comes with buttons, page turn keys. I like page turn keys very much. On Kobo you have to rely entirely on the touchscreen.

Another notable difference between the two is that Pocketbook's cover is about three times cheaper. I consider the cover an absolute necessity, particularly on bigger ereaders. (The good thing with Onyxes is that covers are included in the price, a minor point but worth considering).

If you still buy a Kobo Aura One (because why not, it's water resistant after all, and that might come in handy), then here's how to make it usable with pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2oSOeAnD10

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by mobama

...

If you still buy a Kobo Aura One (because why not, it's water resistant after all, and that might come in handy), then here's how to make it usable with pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2oSOeAnD10

Not just usable, though, installing Koreader app thereon shall make it the best 8" e-ink pdf reader at the moment for many users (e.g. those who don't miss the lack of the scribbling much), which can easily show every A4 or A5 sized pdf in the print or reflow mode, reflowing even images (scanned pdfs without an ocr layer) that then can be highlighted, and if we want, performing ocr on those reflowed images as we read, to use it with dictionaries.

It uses K2pdfopt' engine for the reflow of the scanned pdf images.

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

Original covers at about 50 euros are pretty expensive, but there are nice 10-20 euros covers available on the net.

[mobama]

Originally Posted by Marinolino

Not just usable, though, installing Koreader app thereon shall make it the best 8" e-ink pdf reader at the moment for many users (e.g. those who don't miss the lack of the scribbling much), which can easily show every A4 or A5 sized pdf in the print or reflow mode, reflowing even images (scanned pdfs without an ocr layer) that then can be highlighted, and if we want, performing ocr on those reflowed images as we read, to use it with dictionaries.

I just acquired a Kobo H2O. Comparing it to Pocketbook, well, any Pocketbook with the same or similar hardware wins, because Pocketbook's software is much better.

Software-wise, I can now say from experience that the only good thing about Kobo is Koreader. Koreader works on it like a charm. Which is nice.

On Pocketbook, Koreader does not work with equal charm, e.g. screensavers are glitchy, but everything that matters still works. And even without Koreader, Pocketbook is fully usable.

For example: To start up a Kobo, you evidently must first of all connect to wifi and log in/create a Rakuten account. In Pocketbook you can skip this step, go to the home screen and just start reading (it comes with some free books pre-stored on the drive). Much better first impression.

There is one important (important to me) missing feature in Koreader: It cannot do arbitrary columns when the pdf consists of, for example, old-time newspaper with five or more irregular columns, feuilletons and whatnot. Pocketbook's inbuilt reader can navigate those very well. If Koreader implements this, it could very well be the app to meet all the needs.

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by mobama

...
There is one important (important to me) missing feature in Koreader: It cannot do arbitrary columns when the pdf consists of, for example, old-time newspaper with five or more irregular columns, feuilletons and whatnot. Pocketbook's inbuilt reader can navigate those very well. If Koreader implements this, it could very well be the app to meet all the needs.

Yep, three-column, and four- or more column pdfs are currently problematic for original pdf reader, as well as Koreader and Plato reader.

Koreader should not really have those problems because k2pdfopt has got 4-column modes and Koreader in my Kindle DX has got all the necessary additional zooming options, so, it would probably be a trivial thing just to change its default setting from 2 to 4 columns.

In the meantime those who have got a lot of these 3-4-5 column documents can quickly and easily crop those pdfs using free applications like Briss and k2pdfopt beforehand, and then transfer those cropped pdfs to Kobo or any other e-reader they own if they are not satisfied either with its cropping ability of multiple-column pdfs, the speed of page flipping thereafter, ability to use dictionaries, scribblings thereafter etc.

http://briss.sourceforge.net

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

e.g. Attached pdf is 3-column document cropped with Briss (I've just copied the same page several times to make it bigger document and it was a matter of seconds for Briss to crop it after I've selected the overlapping areas).

I've cropped it on purpose including the part of the next column, so that it is smaller text-width size in portraite mode (12 cm on Kobo Aura One) and as a kind of orientation during the reading/flipping.

We should use k2pdfopt in the case of documents with a variable layout i.e. 2, 3, 4 or 5 columns on different pages, instead of just uniform three or four throughout the whole document.

There could be problems with some complex newspapers and magazines though.

[mobama]

Originally Posted by Marinolino

There could be problems with some complex newspapers and magazines though.

Yes, these are exactly what I am talking about http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5610314.item

With these kinds of files, Onyx's and Pocketbook's inbuilt readers still outperform Koreader. Otherwise I use Koreader as much as I can and I like it very much.

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by mobama

Yes, these are exactly what I am talking about http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5610314.item

With these kinds of files, Onyx's and Pocketbook's inbuilt readers still outperform Koreader. Otherwise I use Koreader as much as I can and I like it very much.

Those who would still like to read such pretty big pdf page, but luckily, also pretty uniform 6-column newspaper pages, although their 8" or 10" reader is maybe not good enough for whatever the reason e.g. is slow at rendering the zoomed page for our liking, is too flickery etc., they should simply crop the 6-column pdf beforehand, e.g. by using pdf-scissors or k2pdfopt, because Briss app says that pdf page size (28 inch x 42 inch / 71 cm x 106 cm) is too big to handle.

https://sites.google.com/site/pdfscissors/

I've cropped it in pdfscissors using three overlapping rectangles, so that one pdf page contains two columns that can then easily and quickly be read and flipped through in Aura One's 16 cm landscape mode i.e. at agreeable 8 cm width per column.

We don't need to draw the cropping rectangle thrice but can use copy/paste instead for the last two rectangles.

Those who have Adobe Acrobat or any similar commercial pdf editor can do it there too, by cropping pdf separately three times (left, middle and right sides) and then combining those cropped pdfs thereafter, with pages combined together in a desired other.

Attachement: the first 6-column pdf page cropped into three parts using pdfscissors.

[mobama]

Thanks for the instructions, but when you fiddle with the file on the computer so much, don't you coincidentally read it in passing, so that it becomes pointless to transfer it to the ereader and read it again?

[Marinolino]

Originally Posted by mobama

Thanks for the instructions, but when you fiddle with the file on the computer so much, don't you coincidentally read it in passing, so that it becomes pointless to transfer it to the ereader and read it again?

Not really, because once we have loaded pdf file and have applied the cropping rectangles using graphical UI on the characteristic page(s) (usually takes less than a minute with some gained experience) or have applied the necessary commands for k2pdfopt, it is matter of seconds or minutes to crop 1000 page pdfs depending on the used application and pdf file, and with k2pdfopt we can do it in batch overnight for hundreds of similar files.

We don't do it page by page manually, but instead we just need to take a look into a dimension or layout of one characteristic single page or maybe couple of neighbouring odd & even pages (in the document with uniform pages), and program shall crop the rest accordingly while we can drink our coffee surfing the net.

When using Pdfscissors or Briss, I don't usually see any legible words except maybe bigger titles, because I'd usually use a zoomed-out stacked view instead of separate-page-view, and in stacked view all the pages are piled together illegibly like a pile of translucent superimposed pages would look like, only with visible contours, and I would simply draw the cropping rectangles over the white parts close to the dark contours knowing there is no text to be accidentally cut out this way i.e. all the dark text would be inside those boundaries.

Briss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfPWUf5y-s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkA-ibfnbrQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPAgwikymD8

Pdf-scissors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOzh1ixHLa8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGoQgSyEJAM