06-08-2017, 02:17 AM | #1 |
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Are PDFs on e-readers really that bad?
After seeing this repeated several times it seems abundantly clear that tablets are a better choice for PDFs.
However, KOreader seems like an impressive piece of software and the e-ink screen makes an enormous difference. Therefore, I want to find out in more detail exactly how painful it is for the user to go through PDFs on e-readers, so that I can decide whether the trade-off is worth it according to my personal preferences. I'd say I'm willing to tolerate some discomfort if I can have the paper-like screen. Unfortunately, I can't really gamble money on an e-reader and test it out myself because my budget is really limited, especially since the models with the larger screens are quite expensive. If you could tell me more about your personal experiences with PDFs on any e-reader using KOreader, I would be very grateful! |
06-08-2017, 09:29 AM | #2 |
Wizard
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PDFs vary greatly. Most are not meant as e-books, they are documents, pamphlets, brochures, manuals and for lazy academics, essays. They are made to be printed, not published. Many are just scanned pages, images. (In other words; they can often contain no words, just the image of a page of words.) KOReader's PDF reading program includes an OCR function that can detect the words on an image of a page and "reflow" them into something that can fit on your device's screen. Of course that is never going to look as good as the page displayed as a full screen image. KOReader includes some good auto cropping tools so you can often have quite readable PDF pages displayed, without reflow, on the larger devices. I find no problem reading US Army Field Manuals (FM) on my AuraHD.
Luck; Ken |
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06-08-2017, 11:52 AM | #3 |
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Also, with koreader you have option to manually crop pdf document.
All in all, koreader is the best you can have for reading pdfs. But, it is most important thing to know, pdfs aren't good format for ebooks. There always will be some problems with them compared to "real" ebook formats. On the other hand, if you have large screen with high resolutions (let's say KA1) and have koreader, you can have pretty comfortable experience with pdfs. And KA1 isn't that expensive (I must say, this is actually relative thing, how much money is too much). |
06-08-2017, 08:27 PM | #4 |
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Thanks for your replies! You've convinced me to try out the Aura One and install KOReader on it
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06-10-2017, 05:15 AM | #5 |
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Most PDF's are designed to be printed on 8.5"x11" paper.
The closer your e-screen is to that size, the easier the PDF will be to read. Features like autocrop let you remove all the blank space around the edge of the page so that what is left can be expanded, hopefully closer to its original intended size without actually getting a bigger screen. OCR and text reflow can be wonderful if they work, but they don't help at all when my page is one big diagram with embedded text, and are easily confused by multi-column text, especially when there are images and other irregularities between columns. |
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06-10-2017, 09:39 AM | #6 |
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I'm very much in the "PDFs are better on tablets" camp, I'm afraid. I read a lot of material in PDF format, and many years of doing so has convinced me that a large-screen tablet - the larger the better - is the best way to read such material. Not only do the file sizes tend to be large (I have many files that are >100MB, which doesn't go very far on an eInk device with 4GB or so of storage) but displaying them can be CPU-intensive and RAM-intensive. eInk devices generally have slow CPUs (to maximize battery life) and not very much RAM.
After years of trying to find the optimal device to read PDFs on, for me it's the 12.9" iPad Pro. Fast CPU, lots of RAM, great screen, and lots of storage space (I have the 256GB model). If you go decide to go for an eInk device, I'd strongly suggest choosing one with at least a 9.7" screen, and much better a 13.3" screen. |
06-10-2017, 05:48 PM | #7 | ||
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Quote:
Having said that, the vast majority of PDFs work just fine by either zooming 2x or rotating 90 and matching autocropped width to the long axis of a screen that is at least 5" and then panning vertically down the page. Maybe one pdf in 20 is a high resolution scan that needs a lot of ram or complex drawings that need a lot of cpu to render. Maybe one pdf in 40 has stupid colors and low contrast that render poorly in 16 shades of grey. I've seen a few scanned documents with non-white background or some kind of watermark that renders stupidly on the e-paper screen. Maybe one pdf in 15 has fine print that I just can't seem to zoom enough, or worse, when I have zoomed it enough, I now have to pan horizontally several times to read the whole line -- this makes it very unpleasant to read. About one pdf in 5 is multicolumn text which is nice because if I can pick the right zoom, I can see the whole column width without rotating, so maybe I can vertically pan once or twice per column. Of course, your experience may vary because if you are getting all your pdfs from a single source or similar sources, they might all have one of these problems that just work better on a tablet with more memory, a fast cpu, and/or a color screen. There's no replacement for a larger screen, but I think 4" x 6" (7") is probably adequate for 90% of pdfs. 6.5" diagonal is marginally adequate. Much larger than that is nice, but probably overkill. Quote:
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06-11-2017, 02:52 PM | #8 | |
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I agree with HarryT that in principle, a decent monitor (like my 24" UHD monitor or a larger tablet with 300 PPI or better) makes for a much better random PDF experience, but it all depends on your goals. I read many PDFs on my H2O. I find screens without backlight make for a significantly better reading experience. I sacrifice the usually unnecessary minor convenience of smooth scrolling and zooming for viewing comfort and not having to worry about battery life.
Besides which, I think it's much harder to justify spending money a tablet because you need a decent monitor regardless. That's different if you need it for a job, like the architectural drawings mentioned by HarryT. I'm operating on the assumption that it's basically a luxury item to make it slightly more convenient than on the desktop or laptop that you already need. I think that regardless of what device you use, many PDFs are greatly improved by some form of processing (see, e.g., the readablepdf script I wrote). When I perform such processing, I actually do it primarily for desktop use. However, the greatest improvement can actually be felt on ereaders with weak CPUs. Quote:
Also, this book (just as a random example) is bigger than A4 in real life but perfectly legible on the H2O. If you think it's a tad small you can always use landscape mode. |
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06-12-2017, 01:10 AM | #9 |
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This is great additional info, thanks!
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06-12-2017, 06:58 AM | #10 | |||
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06-12-2017, 11:52 AM | #11 | |||
Wizard
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Quote:
On my desktop I can easily affect similar cropping, but on a tablet or phone type OS it's all very limited at worst and very difficult at best. Additionally, the lack of page down on my phone and having to scroll by necessity rather annoys me. Bubble is pretty much the only app I actually appreciate because of the intelligent way it zooms and deals with pages. Quote:
If I felt wasteful I'd get a tablet as well, but only one that clearly offered me something extra, like being able to draw on it properly. As it is I already have that from my regular, much cheaper Wacom tablet that's "only" good as a computer input device. (Although for all I know it can be used on Android and iPad with Bluetooth or something, but that aside. :P) Quote:
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07-02-2017, 12:11 PM | #12 |
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Frenzie, after reading your interesting take on reading PDFs on eInk (which I agree with, also reading plenty of PDFs myself) - if you don't mind, what is your opinion of the Aura One? Do you think it's an improvement over the H2O?
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07-04-2017, 06:04 PM | #13 |
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For me, I already have some nice large computer monitors, and a nice laptop, so if I want to read on a phosphorescing screen, I'm covered. No interest in an iPad, and I already have a 10.1" IPS Android tablet for an even more portable eyeball-electroluminescing experience. But what I really want is an experience more like reading on paper.
Just acquired a Kobo Aura HD for $80 - it's at least largish (6.8") and has a microsd card slot so I can carry 32Gb of pdfs. I've been reading pdf books and scientific papers on it and it's not a bad experience at all. (I don't get the recommendations for non-eink tablets [I've just had one on my 'welcome thread' too; now closed, so I can't reply. I've spent the last four years trying to use a non-eink tablet for pdf consumption and it's not a pleasant experience for me at all, and so I just don't end up using it.) |
07-04-2017, 06:11 PM | #14 |
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One thing to keep in mind is that the Aura One has no microsd card slot, so you'll be limited to the 8Gb of internal storage, unlike with a Aura HD or Aura H2O. This meant that I wasn't interested in it; sure that's plenty of space for lots of epubs, but not so much for scanned pdfs.
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07-07-2017, 03:45 AM | #15 | ||
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Quote:
The differences consist of a slightly bigger screen, a slightly higher PPI, and no a µSD slot. I consider the screen size and to a lesser extent DPI the most important shortcomings and highly welcome improvements. However, the differences are too small to justify the price of upgrading. I guess I could consider selling off my H2O. I've really only ever put in a µSD for testing. Having a few dozen books at once (including some that are pretty big) is plenty for me and anything more would just give me the convenience of never having to delete anything. PS I suppose there's one thing I'd need to see it in person for: to make sure the frontlight can also go as low in brightness as the H2O. I normally don't use it at all, but in the rare case I do I put it at 1 or close to it. I might appreciate a warmer light temperature but really frontlight doesn't matter to me at all as I don't use it. Quote:
Last edited by Frenzie; 07-07-2017 at 03:59 AM. Reason: added quote of emacsomancer |
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