Colour ereader recommendations

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by cellaris

AlReaderX has now reached an optimal level of development. The Google Play version is out of date.

If it has indeed reached that level, why doesn't the author update what's on Google Play?

[Arconte]

Originally Posted by Krytes

In case anyone's interested, I ended up with a Boox Tab Mini C and love it.

You bought the correct eReader, or better said, tablet. It is finally a eInk tablet, and the reason for the developing of all these years. To read with it is only one of the few things you can do with it. At the end we got an eInk device fast enough to use it for almost everything and to trust it for fast note taking.

I am sure you are using for more things than you imagined. Just need a 12 or 13 android version and a sligthly more power, and a frontal camera for online meetings, and that's it (we don't need 4k and 16million of colours for work meetings)

[JSWolf]

If you want a color Reader, I can recommend the Pocketbook Inkpad Color 3.

https://pocketbookstore.com/en-gb/pr...inkpad-color-3

[chrisridd]

It would be interesting to see a comparison of multiple Kaleido 3 devices, now that several are available. Although they might share some baseline hardware, the other screen layers will be different and they will also be driving the screens very differently. BigMe claim to have significantly reduced ghosting in their units in a firmware update, for example.

[Quoth]

They will all have the same basic panels from eink Corp
Speed (Fastest is 55ms vs 0.3ms to 3ms for LCD) is fastest at poorer levels.
They will not vary much in brightness in ambient light, i.e. much dimmer than mono.

Some have poorer to use top layers. Polished glass is worst.
See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...81#post4399981

Kaleido 3 screens are exclusive to eink corp. The actual ARM cpu based motherboard can be wildly different.

Reduced (or no ghosting) and most levels of drive is at the slowest update speed.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by Quoth

They will all have the same basic panels from eink Corp
Speed (Fastest is 55ms vs 0.3ms to 3ms for LCD) is fastest at poorer levels.
They will not vary much in brightness in ambient light, i.e. much dimmer than mono.

Some have poorer to use top layers. Polished glass is worst.
See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...81#post4399981

Kaleido 3 screens are exclusive to eink corp. The actual ARM cpu based motherboard can be wildly different.

Reduced (or no ghosting) and most levels of drive is at the slowest update speed.

Yes that's exactly my point. Different devices and manufacturers have made different trade offs, and having some kind of head to head comparison will reveal differences that a single device review would not.

[Quoth]

It will be minor, not an order of magnitude, nor significant unless the maker has used a too cheap or obsolete motherboard/CPU design. The basic drawback is that they are color eink. I used to think it was a worthwhile niche for coloured comics. The mono eink is absolutely worthwhile on 4.7″ to 8″ devices to read novels.

[Krytes]

Originally Posted by Arconte

I am sure you are using for more things than you imagined.

Not really - I bought it for reading coloured-text books, and that plus a third-party dictionary is what I use it for.

[Krytes]

Originally Posted by cellaris

AlReaderX has now reached an optimal level of development. The Google Play version is out of date.

How different is the colour handling on the updated version? The Google Play version allows the user to set text colours from within the app, but there's no option in "CSS & Book Properties" to respect CSS colours baked into an epub. My text has different colours for individual characters, so a blanket 'text colour' setting in the app won't be good enough.

[Krytes]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

What app do you read with on your Tab Mini Cs - Neoreader?

I use NeoReader or Lithium for Chinese books, and usually MoonReader+ for English books.

NeoReader has the most customization options by far, and a long-tap on a character not only jumps directly to the definition in Pleco, it also searches intelligently by word and not just character (so long-tapping 跳 in 暴跳如雷 will take you directly to the entry for 暴跳如雷 and not for 跳 without you needing to highlight the phrase manually). The only disadvantages of NeoReader for me are that images show up rather small by default (you can long-tap to jump to the full-size image), and the 'tap to display pinyin' javascript doesn't work.


"Tap to display pinyin" does work on Lithium, and you can also do long-press dictionary lookup with Pleco, although not as seamlessly (it's an extra click to choose the dictionary, and if you want to look up a phrase you need to manually highlight the entire phrase). The main problem with Lithium for me is that you're restricted to a few default fonts, none of which look especially great in Chinese.


Moon+ Reader just... fails terribly on my Chinese epubs, not respecting text colour or hiding pinyin. It's fine for English though.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Krytes

Moon+ Reader just... fails terribly on my Chinese epubs, not respecting text colour or hiding pinyin. It's fine for English though.
Attachment 206551

7-8 years back when I played with Moon+. I had to dig into Moon+ reader's setup to uncheck "Disable CSS styles" and enable "Show Preview with publisher formatting".

Doing this displayed the book using the publisher stylesheet but also messed with using fonts, permitted only vertical scrolling, etc.

This situation, hopefully, has improved since the last time I played with Moon+.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Krytes

How different is the colour handling on the updated version? The Google Play version allows the user to set text colours from within the app, but there's no option in "CSS & Book Properties" to respect CSS colours baked into an epub. My text has different colours for individual characters, so a blanket 'text colour' setting in the app won't be good enough.

The most recent universal versions incorporate CSS colour support. In theory, it should work on tablets and smartphones (although I don't have a book of your specifications to check). The problem is that Onyx e-readers are detected as e-ink devices and have more limited colour options even if you use the universal version of AlReaderX. I don't know if other brands have this problem (someone with a Bigme device might be able to tell us).

[Krytes]

Interesting, might be worth a try if they change their approach for e-ink devices.