07-17-2019, 03:24 PM | #1 |
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Seeking advice
Hello, I want to buy my first e-reader so for the past days I've been reading and watching reviews to get an idea of what the market offers.
It is my intent to use some electronic money on the purchase, which limits the stores and thus the choices I have; the best suited among the available for the price range I'm aiming for are: -Kindle Paperwhite 4 -Pocketbook Touch HD 3 -Onyx Poke -Inkbook Prime HD So, unfortunately, Kobo is not an option. Among the aforementioned, it seems Inkbook is the one behind, but it would be best to first state what am I looking for. My priorities are speed, compatibility (the more files it can read, the better), customization (of fonts, lightning to avoid eye hurting and such), a good thesaurus, physical buttons, a clean UI and the ability to decently read all-text PDF. Text to speech, sound playing in general, "social" features and internet browsing are of no interest to me. I guess my main issues against the Paperwhite are the preinstalled store and the inability to read epub, but people say the Calibre conversion works flawlessly -however, I'm concerned there may be problems with formatting and such. The XRay feature looks very cool, though. Is that sort of thing exclusive to Kindle? Does it work properly with all books? According to what I've read, Onyx Poke would be the best of the lot, but it's the most expensive and I ain't sure the price difference is really worth it; I mean, any of these e-readers should get the job done, right? I just can't imagine how different the experience can be. The Touch HD 3 seems like a good middle ground, but perhaps the Paperwhite 4 is superior and my bias against the closedness of Kindle, which I shouldn't even care about since it's not like I would tweak the device in any way, is distorting my judgement. After all, I've no experience whatsoever with e-readers so, please, could anyone weight in? |
07-18-2019, 07:17 AM | #2 |
Grand Sorcerer
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The X-ray doesn't work with sideloaded books. Otherwise, epubs convert to azw3 just fine. Of course, if the original file is poorly formatted, the result will be poor as well, but that's to be expected.
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07-18-2019, 07:55 AM | #3 |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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The Kindle comes with excellent dictionaries. I don't think it has a thesaurus built-in. Physical buttons are also absent.
The Kindle won't reflow PDFs, so the limiting factor is the page size defined in the PDF. (E.g. A4 PDFs will not display well.) However, for text-only PDFs you can get reasonable results by getting calibre or Amazon to convert to Kindle format. |
07-20-2019, 02:27 AM | #4 | |
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Quote:
Moreover, the inbuilt reader of Touch HD 3 opens all the various formats and the additional reading programs do not add new formats, only some convenient viewing options. Whereas Kindle intentionally restricts formats, forcing you to convert files, thus at least doubling the size of your whole library. Not to mention that converting files is a major tweaking, which is something you said you were not likely to want to do. Do you have Calibre right now to try out how easy it would be for you? I have it on my computer and I have not touched it for the last twelve months because I find it overwhelming, confusing, and unnecessary. The options with Kindles are: Either convert your e-library or jailbreak the device to install more reading programs that can handle all the necessary formats. Then there is also this point of consideration: Where do you get your e-books from? If you buy them from Amazon, then Kindle is the way to go. If you buy them from anywhere else or you grab free ones from wherever you can, anything but a Kindle is the way to go. Edit: And if you read pdf files, then you will soon find a 6" screen too small. And with any more complicated pdf files, dictionaries and the like will not work. The way I do research is to keep my ereader and smartphone side by side, checking dictionaries and taking notes in the smartphone. Last edited by mobama; 07-20-2019 at 02:31 AM. |
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07-20-2019, 05:52 AM | #5 | |
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Why, as an expert reader, am I suppose to care about what most other people highlighted in a book ? I highlight what I want highlighted plain and simple. You may disagree with what I just said but that is how I see it or my opinion (2 cents) Last edited by Raphi'Elohim; 07-20-2019 at 05:58 AM. |
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07-20-2019, 07:17 AM | #6 | |
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07-20-2019, 07:56 AM | #7 | |
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07-20-2019, 08:34 AM | #8 | |
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07-20-2019, 03:08 PM | #9 |
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07-20-2019, 04:23 PM | #10 |
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Just my opinion... I only have experience with the Kindle paperwhite 4, and touch hd 3. So I cannot comment if the other two on your list would fit your needs better. Between the two, keeping in mind your list of needs/wishes, I think the Touch HD 3 fits your requirements better than a Kindle Paperwhite
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07-21-2019, 07:53 AM | #11 | ||||
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07-21-2019, 08:32 AM | #12 |
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Note that if you decide to go for a Paperwhite and you're going to sideload your books, convert to azw3, not mobi. Azw3 is a modern format and supports custom fonts and font weight adjustment, among other things. With mobi you can't use even the boldness slider and the formatting is a bit lacking.
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07-21-2019, 12:07 PM | #13 | |
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It's easy enough to toggle the option off if you don't like it. |
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07-22-2019, 03:30 PM | #14 |
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07-22-2019, 03:38 PM | #15 |
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