Is the ereader dead?

[gimble]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

That said, I can easily get 10+ hours of reading on a 7.9" iPad mini 4 which honestly doesn't seem to be much lower than what I get with the Paperwhite 3.

That depends on a number of factors. Eink consumes power only during screen transitions, but if you turn on wifi/3G that will constantly drain the battery.

When wifi is turned off (airplane mode), my kindle lets me get through 3-5 full length books (150K+ words per book) with a single charge. The same on a typical tablet will require at least two charges per book, even with brightness turned down, night mode, wifi off and battery conservation mode.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by pittendrigh

Most in this thread are missing the embedded video point. Video will become increasingly important as book reading habits evolve. Are you reading about Bonobos on the Congo River? A few well-placed video clips would be attractive to me. Embedded video is too big to download and store on a dedicated device. They will need to work more like browsers where video is streamed and not stored.

Dedicated devices as they are do their best to mimic the paper technology experience--which shackles the technology as a whole. Ebooks are more powerful than paper. If and only if they act like browsers.

If most in this thread are like me, I have absolutely zero interest in embedded videos popping up in books I read. If I really want to check out the Bonobos on the Congo River, my time would be better spent researching it from my PC and getting much more information about it than a random video clip from an author.

For me, the experience of reading a book consisting of only text will never leave me with the feeling that it's been shackled in any way. And reading a book of pure text is what I enjoy, I really don't feel it was a lesser experience because it didn't have color pictures and videos in it. I'd actually feel the videos were an intrusion on my reading time.

So in my instance, the dedicated ereader suits me perfectly and I wouldn't want anything more from it then easy readability, front lighting and long battery life. I wouldn't even care if it had wifi or not as I sideload all my book purchases.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by gimble

That depends on a number of factors. Eink consumes power only during screen transitions, but if you turn on wifi/3G that will constantly drain the battery.

When wifi is turned off (airplane mode), my kindle lets me get through 3-5 full length books (150K+ words per book) with a single charge. The same on a typical tablet will require at least two charges per book, even with brightness turned down, night mode, wifi off and battery conservation mode.

My point was the iPad has excellent battery life unlike most tablets.

I can easily finish HP5 Order of the Phoenix (250K words?) on the iPad and still have 50% battery remaining. Granted, I do read at minimum brightness (sometimes with extra dimming enabled) but that's because I find the display too bright. No other power saving options.

On the PW3, I often read at 4-6 brightness level with wifi disabled, font Bookerly at size 5. That front light is a constant drain on battery, too.

The iPad may use more power than the Kindle but it also has a much bigger battery to offset that increased power consumption.

Kindle Paperwhite 3: 1420 mAh
iPad mini 4: 5124 mAh
iPad 6th gen: 8820 mAh

Again, from my experience, the iPad lasts almost as long as my PW3 for ebook reading.

[gimble]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Again, from my experience, the iPad lasts almost as long as my PW3 for ebook reading.

My experience with kindle voyage is that I get at least 60+ hours of reading per charge, which would not be possible on any tablet.

Sounds like there is a bit of variance in actual battery capacities then, or maybe different firmware versions. Too bad that it isn't really possible to get battery diagnostics on kindles, while I can do so with my android eink devices.

Maybe amazon is getting away with it based on vague advertised claims, with no reviewers actually testing battery life systematically.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by gimble

My experience with kindle voyage is that I get at least 60+ hours of reading per charge, which would not be possible on any tablet.

Sounds like there is a bit of variance in actual battery capacities then, or maybe different firmware versions. Too bad that it isn't really possible to get battery diagnostics on kindles, while I can do so with my android eink devices.

Maybe amazon is getting away with it based on vague advertised claims, with no reviewers actually testing battery life systematically.

Yeah, I'm getting nowhere near 60 hours of reading on my PW3. I don't think I'm even getting 20 hours.

Mind, I get around 16-17 hours of onscreen time on the iPad 5th gen which is extremely good for a tablet. That's roughly 3-5 books for me depending on length.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Yeah, I'm getting nowhere near 60 hours of reading on my PW3. I don't think I'm even getting 20 hours.

Mind, I get around 16-17 hours of onscreen time on the iPad 5th gen which is extremely good for a tablet. That's roughly 3-5 books for me depending on length.

I was just trying to guess whether my KP3 had 20 hours of battery. 60 hours would have been a luxury.

[gimble]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I was just trying to guess whether my KP3 had 20 hours of battery. 60 hours would have been a luxury.

There are several factors to be considered in addition to reading time and word count. For eg: I turn off the front light completely during daytime and set it to minimal levels during evenings. I also use either the second or third smallest font size - dislike turning pages too frequently.

[pwalker8]

I use my paperwhite as my backpacking ebook reader. It's advantages are it's very light and holds a charge for a very long time when not in use. When backpacking, I read maybe an hour a day at night, so actual read time isn't a big issue for me.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Yeah, I'm getting nowhere near 60 hours of reading on my PW3. I don't think I'm even getting 20 hours.

With an e-reader, using "hours" to count battery time isn't accurate. If you turn the front-light and WIFI off, the device only uses power to stay awake and when turning a page. An e-reader can potentially go months on a single charge.

Therefore, if you have a person who turns off the front-light and WIFI and then reads very, very slowly, he or she can indeed get 60 hours or more reading time.

In the past, with the KPW1 (when it was new) reading time was so long that I never charged it, apart from the time it was connected to a computer to add new books. I left it there for some time after adding the books, and it was either fully charged, or full enough to last until the next addition. I think I've seen the "Your battery is almost empty" maybe twice in the almost 5 years I've used my KPW1.

The KA1 has a decent reading time, but it can't go as long as the KPW1. It's understandable, as the screen is larger (draws more power while turning pages), it has more LED's, and it's thinner, so it could be the battery isn't that much more powerful than the KPW1's, if it even is at all.

[gimble]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

With an e-reader, using "hours" to count battery time isn't accurate. If you turn the front-light and WIFI off, the device only uses power to stay awake and when turning a page. An e-reader can potentially go months on a single charge.

Agreed. I would add that number of "hours" only matters in the context of comparison with regular tablets AND the specific content that is being read.

For easy reads like Harry Potter novels, where people can zip through the pages there may actually be very little difference in terms of "books per battery charge" between an ereader and a tablet. For heavier content (like for example, a Stephen Hawking book), the reading speed tends to be a lot slower, and the power consumption advantage of ereaders become more apparent.

[ottdmk]

I almost never specifically charge my H2O. Usually after using it for a few weeks I'll add some books before bedtime and leave it plugged in overnight. Man I love that gizmo.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

I almost never specifically charge my H2O. Usually after using it for a few weeks I'll add some books before bedtime and leave it plugged in overnight. Man I love that gizmo.

Same with me and my Aura (well, all my e-ink readers, really).

[azayn]

There's some truth to the article. With social media, Netflix, and other mediums competing for attention, people simply have less time to read nowadays. Casual readers who were unlikely to buy a Kindle type device anyways, will just read on their smartphones and tablets. But dedicated readers will always be around and its this crowd, no matter how small they may be, for whom e-readers were intended.

I do think e-readers, if designed and marketed properly, could make inroads with the public. Kobo will have an opportunity to do so with their new partnership with Walmart. A $50 or so tablet with a 5-6" screen would be a big hit.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by azayn

There's some truth to the article. With social media, Netflix, and other mediums competing for attention, people simply have less time to read nowadays.

People *choose* to read less. There is no obligation to either use social media or watch TV. I don't; I have no social media accounts, and I only use my TV for watching Blu-Ray movies and to see the image from the dedicated music computer connected to the audio system.

[gimble]

A lot of these assertions like "the ereader is dead" are predicated upon claims that "ereader sales are going down" and "ebook sales are going down".

If you consider that all manufacturers use the same supplier for e-ink panels, then looking at the financials of that company (E-ink Holdings) should actually give a sense of what is happening in the market. See their financial reports here -> http://www.ir-cloud.com/taiwan/8069/...s.php?t=annual

Their annual revenue is steadily increasing since they hit the bottom in 2013-2014 indicating that the market is not exactly "dying off".

Regarding the claim that "ebook sales going down". Now, this one is a bit murkier. The issue here is many of these reports do not count alternative revenue streams for ebooks like the kindle unlimited platform. See this for how the revenue stream from kindle unlimited is growing each month -> https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url

The data is based on Amazon's own blog, where they release this information each month -> https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/artic...language=en_US

The publishers chose to assert control over amazon to jack up ebook prices. Amazon responded by creating a revenue stream that excludes many big publishers and is actively taking their market share through this platform.

The bottom line is that while the ereader and ebook market isn't growing as it used to, it is not exactly dying either. There is also a lot more accessible entertainment alternatives for consumers choosing to spend their money these days compared to even ten years back, and the net effect is increased competition to fill their "free time".