My experience with the Kindle Oasis 2 and the Kobo Aura One

[Pjama]

Pros and cons of Kindle Oasis 2017

Pros for me (I’m a translator)
- Excellent dictionaries for English uk, us and French, French to English, built-in translation service, built-in wikipedia.
- Vocabulary words, really great for language learning.
- Overall smoothness of use and relative ease of accessing books via the cloud and collections.
- Nice screen size.
- Can read comics such as Calvin and Hobbes, which look fabulous, and the other kindles can’t do this. (I tried to download the same book to my Voyage (when I still had my Voyage, and it wasn’t permitted).
- GOLD.
- Waterproof, finally.
- 7 inches, finally.

Cons
- For me, appalling battery life of two days.
- Angular shape, which is just a leetle too large for my hand for comfort (I know a lot of people get cross when others voice this opinion, but, it’s my experience that it is too sharp and the buttons never seem to be quite in the right place. I miss the smooth, silky feel of the back of the Voyage, but I don’t miss the haptic buttons at all).
- Hefty price, for two days reading, seems ridiculous. I have my little lipstick-sized charger in my purse, but I would prefer the reader to just last a little longer really). I sort of regret trading in my Kindle 4 (the one with the buttons). It was very basic, low-res, no lights, no touch, and the battery lasted eons, book after book. No frills, but lots of reading. I was thinking of getting the new Basic, but I see they have made it quite a bit bigger, and added touch (thereby adding a layer of fuzziness, I assume).


I used to have a Kobo Aura One:

Pros
- it really looked like an actual hardback book, the way the font was spaced and arranged. I can’t explain why, it just looked like a replica book.
- in addition to the beautiful display were, at the time I purchased it, it was only available from Canada, and the exchange rate made it comparatively cheap.
- 7.8 inches, more like a hardback size page.

Cons
- It felt a bit cheap, actually, coming from the Voyage, almost a hollow feel, and the back did not feel premium. (I loved the smoothness of the back of the Voyage, I used to enjoy stroking it as I read, weird. ).

In the end, I sold it on here, as I really missed the Kindle ecosystem, and the Kobo rewards and badges, which I was pathetically excited about, never measured my reading time or number of books read accurately, so I ended up stopping looking at them.


I’m not sure why with the KAO2 I actually thought this was going to be IT, the reader I had been searching for all my life, and that would finally bring me peace, and just pure reading enjoyment. I realize that was dumb, and that no one reader out there is going to meet my requirements.

I asked Amazon for help with my battery last week, but have hit a brick wall with them where they send me the following request, and each time I send the requested files, they wait a day, then send me the same request, after promising to investigate my case (I have a case Id number, etc., I’m in the system, just going round in a loop between chat, and mail etc.) :

“We've heard back from our Technical Team and this is what they asked us to get from you :

Would request you to charge the device to 100% and then use it until it's 10% or less and then we can pull up the logs and will investigate further on this.

We'll be waiting for your response.

Thank you for your co operation and support on this.”

So, now I don’t know if I should just cut to the chase and ask for a replacement, or switch back to Kobo. I wish I could just settle on a device and be happy with it. I pretty much am happy with the KAO2 apart from the battery life - it’s just that I expected to be blown away by the Oasis, made complete by it. And I wasn’t.

[Pjama]

Sorry for such a long post! I’ve probably broken forum rules of etiquette. Let me know and I’ll break it up.

Anyway, another pro of the amazon ecosystem for me is that I can get my Paris Match subscription on it, and newspapers, lots of magazines etc. So I need to stay in this good ecosystem.

[LDB]

I wrote this for a friend's blog and will include it here as well.


I splurged and bought a Kobo Aura One, hereafter A. I say splurged because this is the larger model they sell and thus also more expensive. I’ve had it for two days so I’m just getting used to it, comparing it to my Kindle Oasis 2, hereafter O.

The A has a more neutral white light to the screen, at least to my eye, while the O is very slightly toward the red side of the spectrum, very slightly.

The O is more even corner to corner but that is only because there is a very small margin around the border of the A that has slight shadowing. It doesn’t affect the text, it’s just there if you look very closely specifically for it.

The A shows more text per screen, maybe 10% more. I can’t get an exact comparison because they handle margins etc. slightly differently. The A also has a more book like rectangular, tall page as opposed to the almost perfectly square O page. That’s a point to the A for me. The actual display area of the A is about 0.4 inch wider and 0.7 inch taller than the O, based on best eyeball guess.

They are similar in weight, the A being slightly heavier but probably measured only in grams difference and worth it for the added screen space.

The A seems to be a little more sensitive to touch for page turns than the O. I sometimes, more than I’d like, have to touch the O twice to get the page to turn and once in a while it will only turn by pressing the button.

Calibre is a whole new universe to me and I know nothing about it yet. I’m getting by with links from Bookbub etc. emails to populate the A. I’m sure in time I’ll get used to it and they tell me I’ll be able to convert and load my O books into the A.

I really like it so far. I don’t think it will completely kick the O to the curb but it’s going to definitely steal a good bit of face time.

[vrf]

ignore

[vrf]

Originally Posted by LDB

The A also has a more book like rectangular, tall page as opposed to the almost perfectly square O page.

You mean the device, I'd guess, not the page. The aspect ratios for these two devices is really pretty close. (Oasis has a near square device shape, but the page itself is rectangular.)

[LDB]

The device definitely but also the page to a lesser degree. The A page dimensions are a bit more rectangular than the O page.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by LDB

The device definitely but also the page to a lesser degree. The A page dimensions are a bit more rectangular than the O page.

They both have 4:3 aspect ratio for the screen.

[LDB]

The dimensions of the actual screen area are, according to our tailor's tape measure:

A 4 11/16 x 6 1/4

O 4 3/16 x 5 9/16

That's border to border and they do have a side margin, about 1/4 inch on the O and no more than 1/8 at most on the A. The top and bottom margins are about 7/16 on the A and about 5/16 on the O.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Pjama

Cons
- For me, appalling battery life of two days.
- Angular shape, which is just a leetle too large for my hand for comfort (I know a lot of people get cross when others voice this opinion, but, it’s my experience that it is too sharp and the buttons never seem to be quite in the right place. I miss the smooth, silky feel of the back of the Voyage, but I don’t miss the haptic buttons at all).
- Hefty price, for two days reading, seems ridiculous. I have my little lipstick-sized charger in my purse, but I would prefer the reader to just last a little longer really). I sort of regret trading in my Kindle 4 (the one with the buttons). It was very basic, low-res, no lights, no touch, and the battery lasted eons, book after book. No frills, but lots of reading]

[So, now I don’t know if I should just cut to the chase and ask for a replacement, or switch back to Kobo. I wish I could just settle on a device and be happy with it. I pretty much am happy with the KAO2 apart from the battery life - it’s just that I expected to be blown away by the Oasis, made complete by it. And I wasn’t.

The Oasis 2 has poor battery life. It’s a known fact. You could ask for a replacement but the new one might be the same.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Pjama

Pros and cons of Kindle Oasis 2017

Pros for me (I’m a translator)
- Excellent dictionaries for English uk, us and French, French to English, built-in translation service, built-in wikipedia.
- Vocabulary words, really great for language learning.
- Overall smoothness of use and relative ease of accessing books via the cloud and collections.
- Nice screen size.
- Can read comics such as Calvin and Hobbes, which look fabulous, and the other kindles can’t do this. (I tried to download the same book to my Voyage (when I still had my Voyage, and it wasn’t permitted).
- GOLD.
- Waterproof, finally.
- 7 inches, finally.

Cons
- For me, appalling battery life of two days.
- Angular shape, which is just a leetle too large for my hand for comfort (I know a lot of people get cross when others voice this opinion, but, it’s my experience that it is too sharp and the buttons never seem to be quite in the right place. I miss the smooth, silky feel of the back of the Voyage, but I don’t miss the haptic buttons at all).
- Hefty price, for two days reading, seems ridiculous. I have my little lipstick-sized charger in my purse, but I would prefer the reader to just last a little longer really). I sort of regret trading in my Kindle 4 (the one with the buttons). It was very basic, low-res, no lights, no touch, and the battery lasted eons, book after book. No frills, but lots of reading. I was thinking of getting the new Basic, but I see they have made it quite a bit bigger, and added touch (thereby adding a layer of fuzziness, I assume).


I used to have a Kobo Aura One:

Pros
- it really looked like an actual hardback book, the way the font was spaced and arranged. I can’t explain why, it just looked like a replica book.
- in addition to the beautiful display were, at the time I purchased it, it was only available from Canada, and the exchange rate made it comparatively cheap.
- 7.8 inches, more like a hardback size page.

Cons
- It felt a bit cheap, actually, coming from the Voyage, almost a hollow feel, and the back did not feel premium. (I loved the smoothness of the back of the Voyage, I used to enjoy stroking it as I read, weird. ).

In the end, I sold it on here, as I really missed the Kindle ecosystem, and the Kobo rewards and badges, which I was pathetically excited about, never measured my reading time or number of books read accurately, so I ended up stopping looking at them.


I’m not sure why with the KAO2 I actually thought this was going to be IT, the reader I had been searching for all my life, and that would finally bring me peace, and just pure reading enjoyment. I realize that was dumb, and that no one reader out there is going to meet my requirements.

I asked Amazon for help with my battery last week, but have hit a brick wall with them where they send me the following request, and each time I send the requested files, they wait a day, then send me the same request, after promising to investigate my case (I have a case Id number, etc., I’m in the system, just going round in a loop between chat, and mail etc.) :

“We've heard back from our Technical Team and this is what they asked us to get from you :

Would request you to charge the device to 100% and then use it until it's 10% or less and then we can pull up the logs and will investigate further on this.

We'll be waiting for your response.

Thank you for your co operation and support on this.”

So, now I don’t know if I should just cut to the chase and ask for a replacement, or switch back to Kobo. I wish I could just settle on a device and be happy with it. I pretty much am happy with the KAO2 apart from the battery life - it’s just that I expected to be blown away by the Oasis, made complete by it. And I wasn’t.

Notice how much of the description is about how the Kindle works. The dictionaries were an example but not the only one. A few nights ago I looked up a new word, epicurious, and it wasn't in the dictionary but a Wikipedia article popped up and told me who originated the word and why.

The Kobo is shaped like a book. That is precious. But, nothing about how it works, functions, what it does for you, that distinguishes it in a positive way from the Kindle.

Battery life. My Kindle never runs dry. I have Paperwhite Kindles and you can buy two for the price of one Oasis 2. The battery life in days is meaningless. I have a flashlight for emergencies that goes months without needing new batteries. I can read a 500 page novel on either of my Paperwhites without charging the battery. That's what matters to me. Of course, with the lovely synching, if I do screw up and forget to charge I can pick up my other Paperwhite, remember two for the price of one, and continue reading w/o a pause.

Kindle is, for me, about reading and about the availability of what I want to read at a price I'm willing to pay.

I would love to hear what the Kobo does that is superior to the Kindle. I will mention that looking at comic books isn't a biggie for me.

[Pjama]

That is because, I think for me, it is all about the ecosystem. There was nothing to say about the Kobo ecosystem.

I forgot the comfort light, though, which I did find very pleasant for bedtime reading. I sometimes use the inverted text on the kindle, but it’s not as easy on the eye as the comfort light. This is not really an issue for me.

Originally Posted by Josieb1

The Oasis 2 has poor battery life. It’s a known fact. You could ask for a replacement but the new one might be the same.

It’s true, and I’ll probably just stay with the one I have.

[Pjama]

Originally Posted by patrickt

.

Battery life. My Kindle never runs dry. I have Paperwhite Kindles and you can buy two for the price of one Oasis 2. The battery life in days is meaningless. I have a flashlight for emergencies that goes months without needing new batteries. I can read a 500 page novel on either of my Paperwhites without charging the battery. That's what matters to me. Of course, with the lovely synching, if I do screw up and forget to charge I can pick up my other Paperwhite, remember two for the price of one, and continue reading w/o a pause.

I’m hoping a more streamlined Paperwhite will be announced soon, and I may get this for traveling. I had the first one, when they had the rough texture on the screen. I think what kills the Oasis battery life is the ten million LEDs (which do produce excellent, even lighting, I admit), so I hope they don’t add too many lights to the next Paperwhite.

I would love for someone to create a cover with an extra battery, similar to the ones you get for iPhones. But I know the Kindle Oasis is too niche a market for that to be viable.

[Pjama]

Since 2010 I've had a kindle 2, kindle 4, Paperwhite, DX, Voyage, Kobo Aura One, and finally this Oasis. They have all been very good readers in their way, and I could have stuck with just one of them really (apart from the K2, which was a little washed out/pale) instead of always being tempted to 'upgrade.'

Fortunately, this is the only tech item I do this for - I keep my phones, TVs, tablets and computers for years. Ereaders are my weakness.

[Atunah]

Originally Posted by Pjama

I sort of regret trading in my Kindle 4 (the one with the buttons). It was very basic, low-res, no lights, no touch, and the battery lasted eons, book after book. No frills, but lots of reading. I was thinking of getting the new Basic, but I see they have made it quite a bit bigger, and added touch (thereby adding a layer of fuzziness, I assume).

Just wanting to say that I own both the old basic with buttons and the new one without. There is no layer on the new one, it uses different touch. IR? Is that what it is called? Beams from the side, not on the screen. So the screen looks pretty much like the button basic. I agree though on the button basic, it looks great, has fantastic actual buttons and goes for long. I use them during bright days as my eyes do need the light later in the evening and night. I bought the new basic because it was cheap and I didn't want to wear out my button basic as I can never get another one. . I wish they'd left the buttons on the new one. Oh well.

[bozza111]

How do you get the additional French dictionaries?

I only got UK and US English as well as German.
Any chance to download French? Is it free?