04-23-2013, 01:28 PM | #16 | |
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04-23-2013, 01:50 PM | #17 |
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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 |
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04-23-2013, 02:01 PM | #18 | |
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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. |
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04-23-2013, 03:34 PM | #19 | |
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But it's been a while, and maybe I'll have more patience this time. |
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04-23-2013, 04:05 PM | #20 |
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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.
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04-23-2013, 05:25 PM | #21 |
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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.
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04-23-2013, 05:43 PM | #22 |
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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.
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04-23-2013, 06:14 PM | #23 |
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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.... |
04-23-2013, 06:23 PM | #24 | ||
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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. |
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04-23-2013, 09:07 PM | #25 | |
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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". |
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04-23-2013, 09:39 PM | #26 | |
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I just checked the book I'm reading at the moment - there are 30 lines of text on the screen, not 18. |
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04-23-2013, 10:47 PM | #27 |
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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. |
04-23-2013, 11:02 PM | #28 |
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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. |
04-24-2013, 04:55 AM | #29 | ||
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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. Quote:
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. Last edited by Katsunami; 04-24-2013 at 05:07 AM. |
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04-25-2013, 03:02 PM | #30 | |
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