To Glow or Not to Glow?

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by DuskyRose

I do think it just depends on the location and the reader. Sometimes you just have to use it for a while to tell how it'll work out for you.

The problem I have with both the Paperwhite and the Nook Glowlight is that when I get the light comforatable, the fonts are washed out. The 'black' fonts end up looking like a transparent blue.

I end up working harder to read than with just an eInk screen and a book light.

I've tried various light settings and contrasts, and nothing has helped the fonts getting transparent.

I'm finding I'll read one book on the lighted models, then go to reading the rest of a series on the regular Sony's.

Yet the lit screens are still much more comfortable than the backlit tablet screens. I only use those as a last resort.

But it's taken a lot of testing to realize what the problems are for me.

Have you tried adding a custom font to your Paperwhite? There are several members here who have generously provided their customized fonts that have added weight resulting in a much better reading experience. It also is a huge improvement if one prefers a higher light setting.

[rwillmer]

I've got a Kindle PaperWhite and a Kobo Glo; I wouldn't contemplate buying either kind without the light option now.

There's two main occasions when the light comes in so useful.

1) It's great to be able to read in bed with the main light off.

2) If you're travelling, it seems to happen frequently that the surrounding light just isn't strong enough or is pointing in the wrong direction.

My only comment would be that I'd like the lightest light option on both to be lighter. But that really is nitpicking.

Rachel

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Back-light: In a back-lit device, the lights are built into the screen, and they're behind it. They light it from inside to outside. Therefore, the screen does not reflect any light, as a front-lit screen or a book page would; the screen itself emits the light. In a back-lit device, the screen *is* the light source.

Except that this is not how backlighting or frontlighting works, at least as implemented in modern LED-backlit LCDs and LED-frontlit eink displays.

LCD: The light source is in the bezel, and projects into a substrate layer that lights up behind the LCD panel via reflection of the LED light. This provides a more or less uniform brightness (on poor-quality displays you can often see light bleeding from the bezel where the LEDs are mounted, or have hotspots and dark spots). LCDs the light this way because they're transparent, and are basically just tiny little color filters.

Eink: The light source is in the bezel, and projects into a substrate layer that lights up in front of the eink panel via reflection of the LED light, in almost exactly the same way as with an LCD. In the case of eink, the substrate must be in front of the panel because eink is opaque. Putting a light behind it would be pointless.

In either case, you're not looking directly at the light. You're looking at light that has been reflected multiple times (compare this to old CRT displays, modern plasma displays, or AMOLED displays, where each pixel directly emits light as opposed to filtering reflected light). Not that it matters, because that makes absolutely no difference. Don't believe me? Okay, go grab a flashlight and a mirror. Turn on the flashlight and look directly at it. Blind, right? Once your vision returns and the pink and green blobs subside, point the flashlight at the mirror and look directly at its reflection. It still blinds you. Reflecting light does not give it any sort of magic properties.

What really makes reading more comfortable is the size and shape of pixels, not the type of light that you're using. A piece of paper printed on an inkjet printer has round "pixels" and anywhere from 300 to 600 of them per inch. On most average desktop and laptop monitors, pixels are square and there's only around 100 of them per inch. The bare minimum for comfortable reading is around 150-160 square pixels per inch (fewer if the pixels are non-uniform, like on eink, since that naturally creates smoother letter shapes). Modern mobile devices (phones, tablets) are mostly above 200ppi these days, some reaching well over 400ppi. Eink devices are also increasing (the Nook Glow's 6" 600x800 screen has 167 ppi, while the Kindle Paperwhite's 6" 768x1024 screen has 213ppi).

TL;DR: Pixel density is much more important than lighting method.

[DuskyRose]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Have you tried adding a custom font to your Paperwhite? There are several members here who have generously provided their customized fonts that have added weight resulting in a much better reading experience. It also is a huge improvement if one prefers a higher light setting.

I'll need to re-look at that. I tried it once, but got confused at the instructions and the Paperwhite didn't recognize any of the new fonts. I just gave up after a while, realizing the problem was probably me.

But it's been a while, and maybe I'll have more patience this time.

[BeccaPrice]

I tried the use_alt_fonts trick with my paperwhite, and used some of the extra fonts that people on the other thread were offering, and it's made a world of difference. the new fonts make the paperwhite much more usable, and I loved it before.

[discopig]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I tried the use_alt_fonts trick with my paperwhite, and used some of the extra fonts that people on the other thread were offering, and it's made a world of difference. the new fonts make the paperwhite much more usable, and I loved it before.

What fonts are you using, out of curiosity? I'm still using default fonts but have read in a few posts that alt fonts are much much better.

[BeccaPrice]

I'm using a darkened version of Amasis XL. Sometimes I look at Gentium Book XL, or Caecillia, but I prefer Amasis. It's got the line spacing I like - but then, I like a bit more line spacing between lines than many do.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

<snip>

While it's surprising that the Sony fits that much text on a 5 inch screen, I think it would feel too cramped for me, and the device would feel too small.

The Kobo wastes line spacing. (Maybe it's because the CSS is set to a certain line spacing, which prevents the kobo from going lower). Also, the Kobo wastes a complete line on the bottom; maybe even two, if you'd take out the page numbers. 18 lines of text is just not much, and the number of characters per line is also not much.

I'd have to count what the Kindle Paperwhite can do with my DejaVu Fat font, when set to my preferred size and linespacing....

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by toddos

Except that this is not how backlighting or frontlighting works, at least as implemented in modern LED-backlit LCDs and LED-frontlit eink displays.

Could be, that there are better methods to light LCD-displays nowadays, compared to what I was describing, and that back-light and front-light are converging on one another.

TL;DR: Pixel density is much more important than lighting method.

Maybe it is for you, but not for me. I've got a tablet that has about the same pixels per inch as my Kindle, but I'd rather read on the Kindle.

I can set the Kindle's light in such a way that it just brightens the display, without making the reader look illuminated. This is because the Kindle also uses the ambient light, which the tablet doesn't. The tablet always has to be set brighter than the environment, or it's impossible to see anything.

This difference makes that I vastly prefer the Kindle for long time reading.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Maybe it is for you, but not for me. I've got a tablet that has about the same pixels per inch as my Kindle, but I'd rather read on the Kindle.

It's not just me (and here is an analysis of the study).

That study has been posted and hashed over and debated many times on MR, but the end result is that in a clinical study backlit LCD reading and unlit eink reading showed no remarkable difference in eyestrain or fatigue that could be directly attributed to the type of screen used. Note that the study used the original iPad, with its 132ppi low-res screen. I would expect a repeat study with a retina iPad and KPW to be equally inconclusive.

I'm not saying you're wrong for preferring to read on your Kindle. That's a perfectly legitimate choice for you to make. Just stop justifying it with quack "science".

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The Kobo wastes line spacing. (Maybe it's because the CSS is set to a certain line spacing, which prevents the kobo from going lower). Also, the Kobo wastes a complete line on the bottom; maybe even two, if you'd take out the page numbers. 18 lines of text is just not much, and the number of characters per line is also not much.

I'm not sure where you got this idea - maybe from a particular set of reviewers who don't know what they're talking about? The line spacing can squish all the way up, unless you choose to read an ebook that forces otherwise. The cm at the bottom is, at least on the Glo, useful so that the minor LED headlamping doesn't project into the text.

I just checked the book I'm reading at the moment - there are 30 lines of text on the screen, not 18.

[Ripplinger]

That probably came from the comparison I did on Page 1 which was at a font size I can read without my reading glasses. You're of course using a much smaller font size to get 30 lines of text. I showed the same font size on the 5" Sony held almost as much text as the 6" Kobo, both using the same size font.

The point was that the Sony allows you more customization of the font layout, including even tighter line spacing as the image showed, than the Kobo, which basically allows just as much text on the 5" screen as is on the Kobo 6" screen. Even if I reduced the font on both readers, they'd still fit about the same text on them.

[davidfor]

The minimum line spacing that can be set on the Kobos is 1.3. But, it respects whatever is set in the book. If the CSS in the book uses a smaller line spacing it will be used correctly. For me, 1.3 is about right, but I think it should have been the middle of the choices, not the smallest.

From Ripplinger's photo, the Sony looks to have a line spacing of 1.0 or 1.1 and the Kobo is set to the 1.3.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm not sure where you got this idea - maybe from a particular set of reviewers who don't know what they're talking about? The line spacing can squish all the way up, unless you choose to read an ebook that forces otherwise. The cm at the bottom is, at least on the Glo, useful so that the minor LED headlamping doesn't project into the text.

I just checked the book I'm reading at the moment - there are 30 lines of text on the screen, not 18.

I got that idea from the screenshot posted by Ripplinger above. He says that the 5 inch Sony displays about as much text as the 6 inch Kobo. Therefore, I would assume that he had set the Kobo to the smallest line spacing it could go. In that screenshot, the Kobo displays 18 lines of text, and the line spacing is much wider than on the Sony. If I see this correctly, the font used on the Kobo is also wider.

30 lines is about right. The Kindle Paperwhite using DejaVu Serif Fat displays 28-32 lines, when using fontsize 4 or 3. Which one I use depends on the original font size of the book.

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

That probably came from the comparison I did on Page 1 which was at a font size I can read without my reading glasses. You're of course using a much smaller font size to get 30 lines of text. I showed the same font size on the 5" Sony held almost as much text as the 6" Kobo, both using the same size font.

The point was that the Sony allows you more customization of the font layout, including even tighter line spacing as the image showed, than the Kobo, which basically allows just as much text on the 5" screen as is on the Kobo 6" screen. Even if I reduced the font on both readers, they'd still fit about the same text on them.

But why is the line spacing on the Kobo so wide in your case? Meeera states above that she can fit 30 lines of text onto the 6 inch screen. I can fit 28-32 on the Kindle, depending on the font size selection and the original font size in the book itself. Is the book you are reading forcing a minimum line spacing, by setting the line spacing to 150% or something? (You'd need to check the CSS, as you can't see it anywhere else.)

Fitting the same number of characters on one screen that you'd normally see in a mass market paperback (which is around 2400, in my Del Rey and Random House paperbacks I've counted), without making the fonts smaller, would be THE improvement for me. If the Aura HD can do this, then I'd (re)consider it. Otherwise, it's too small an improvement to consider replacing my still very new Paperwhite.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

The size of the Kobo really isn't much larger than the Sony. But as far as 5" screen vs 6" screen, because of the superior flexibility of fonts and sizes on the Sony with PRS+ installed, just about the same amount of text fits on both screens when using the same font size with my preferred settings on the Sony. I've put brackets around the text in the photo so you can easily see what the Sony shows vs what the Kobo shows on the bigger 6" screen (it will show a nice size comparison too, the Sony reader is in the Sony non-lighted cover). The Kobo settings have line spacing set to the lowest setting possible and using the Malabar font, which was the closest to the LexiaDaMa font on the Sony. Screen appears a bit darker on the Sony because the light source is coming from the right (there's a bit of glare that seems to fade the upper right corner of the Kobo, but that's the light source only, not the screen). The screen is actually a bit lighter than the Kobo, and I have other Sonys that are quite a bit lighter.

Ripplinger - I really like that font you have on your Sony. How did you get this on there? I have PRS+ on both of my 350's, but I don't see any place that I can change the font