Seeking advice

[Abhuman]

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?

[Sirtel]

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.

[pdurrant]

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.

[mobama]

Originally Posted by Abhuman

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.

The difference is that you do not even have to tweak Touch HD 3 to be able to install the most common additional reading programs Coolreader and Koreader. The installation is just a matter of connecting the device to the computer and then unpacking a folder on the device to the right place.

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.

[Raphi'Elohim]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

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.

I owned a few kindles but I was living in New York City , at the time, so lost them or had them stolen or whatever. X-Ray is like a feature for people who need training wheels and who cannot read at the highschool or college level, yet. Either that or people are being lazy and want it done for them. Sometimes I feel Amazon panders to the lazy. Anyway, a Part of Analytical and Syntopical reading is X-raying the skeleton of a book yourself. I forget if passages showing that most people highlighted was a part of X-raying but that is, again, for people who need training-wheels and don't trust their own quoting ability. I don't miss the features with my Nook.

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)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

I owned a few kindles but I was living in New York City , at the time, so lost them or had them stolen or whatever. X-Ray is like a feature for people who need training wheels and who cannot read at the highschool or college level, yet. Either that or people are being lazy and want it done for them. Sometimes I feel Amazon panders to the lazy. Anyway, a Part of Analytical and Syntopical reading is X-raying the skeleton of a book yourself. I forget if passages showing that most people highlighted was a part of X-raying but that is, again, for people who need training-wheels and don't trust their own quoting ability. I don't miss the features with my Nook.

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)

Personally I couldn't care less about X-ray, Popular Highlights, Word Wise, Vocabulary Builder and other stuff like that. Never used them. But many people do.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

I owned a few kindles but I was living in New York City , at the time, so lost them or had them stolen or whatever.

So something about New York made you careless and devoid of responsibility? Was it the water? And other than the ones the city took from you through theft or loss, whatever is the whatever that took the others?

[Deskisamess]

Why, as an expert reader, am I suppose to care about what most other people highlighted in a book ?

From where did you get this title? It is rare to run across anyone who still has it, most of us stumble and drool too much to even be considered.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Why, as an expert reader, am I suppose to care about what most other people highlighted in a book?

Yeah, that was a real head scratcher for me as well when I saw it touted.

[slkissinger]

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

[Abhuman]

Originally Posted by mobama

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.

Actually, I tried the program and converted an epub into mobi when I started considering the PW4 to ponder how complex the thing was and I found it to be extremely simple -just load the file in Calibre, choose the output format and name and wait til it gets the job done.

Originally Posted by mobama

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.

So there's no way to resize PDF within the device to fit the screen? I'm talking about text only, not comics and such.

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

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.

Probably it's because I ain't an expert reader, but I thought it could be useful when vaguely recollecting a quote and its context but not its exact form and place (in a book read ere owning an e-reader thus not having any highlight of mine) or even when resuming the reading of a novel after a lengthy interruption in order to refresh the memory on the characters. Not that it's something essential, but it seems a nice thing to have.

Originally Posted by slkissinger

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

Great, for currently those two are the main contenders. I've read the Touch HD 3 has issues handling PDF while the PW4 would be superior in this regard; also, exploring the Pocketbook section of this very forum I was concerned when I saw people complaining about the screen freezing. Could you please go into your experience with the device with some detail? Besides the format nuisance, what do you find lacking in PW4?

[Sirtel]

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.

[Deskisamess]

Probably it's because I ain't an expert reader, but I thought it could be useful when vaguely recollecting a quote and its context but not its exact form and place

I think popular highlights have their place. For me, they are the same as if I was in a book club discussing favorite quotes and passages of the book. It may make me stop and reread that portion to make sure I didn't miss something, or to give more consideration to a statement.

It's easy enough to toggle the option off if you don't like it.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Why, as an expert reader...

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

From where did you get this title? It is rare to run across anyone who still has it, most of us stumble and drool too much to even be considered.

I'm guessing he met the wizard.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Personally I couldn't care less about X-ray, Popular Highlights, Word Wise, Vocabulary Builder and other stuff like that. Never used them. ...

Same here. But I do like dictionary that comes with the Kindle (same one that used to come with the Sonys).