Sage Kobo Sage for PDF reading

wherahiko · 07-29-2025, 09:54 PM

I'm wondering if some of you who have (or had) a Sage can comment on what it's like for reading PDFs? The two things I'm most interested in are contrast and speed.

I'm not planning to read born-digital documents designed for A4/Letter size (the 8" screen would be too small for my eyes), but, rather, scanned books from Internet Archive, such as these:

https://archive.org/details/laviespi...e/n11/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/lasainte...e/156/mode/2up

(In many cases, on Internet Archive, the .epub versions are full of OCR errors and basically unusable.)

I previously had a 1st-gen Onyx Boox Note—which was great for this purpose until the battery gave out—but, in comparison to a Kobo, it had the ability to make text bolder for reading (and speed wasn't an issue). I have tried loading PDFs onto my GloHD just to test these aspects, but text is often not very bold, and the page turns are ... oh so slow!

I welcome your thoughts on this.

Quoth · 07-30-2025, 05:41 AM

Some PDF novels from the IA work, but often you need to reprocess to make the background white and text black.

The Sage (and Kobo generally) now has added per document margin crop (Zoom) that stays as you page which reduces the number of PDFs that need processed.

However mostly I now read IA PDF novels on a 14.25¨TCL Nxtpaper 14, which is as kind to the eyes as Sage with front light on, if NOT in epaper mode and sRGB + adjusted colour balance and brightness, using Pocketbook app. It's better than Xodo for PDFs. Sumatra on a Windows Tablet (but I gave those away).

Edit:
I find the Sage better than the reMarkable or Elipsa for IA PDF novels. The 9.7″ Kindle DXG was got cheap from Amazon on maybe the final "sale" for PDF and was a total failure. Unusable slow page turns on PDF image files and poor quality (only 150 dpi).

The Sage page turns are fast enough.

Quoth · 07-31-2025, 08:55 AM

See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=144711 and ImageMagik and The GIMP for processing PDFs: Crop, fix brightness / contrast, convert to 14 greys with true black & White (saves storage and improves, background, text and images on eink) etc.

For Novels:
Tesseract or other OCR SW if no decent text layer, then edit & proof in LO Writer, (odt files), final extra save in Docx and then Calibre to epub.

07-29-2025, 09:54 PM	#1
wherahiko Connoisseur Posts: 65 Karma: 290 Join Date: May 2018 Device: Kobo Glo HD, Kindle PW 3	Kobo Sage for PDF reading I'm wondering if some of you who have (or had) a Sage can comment on what it's like for reading PDFs? The two things I'm most interested in are contrast and speed. I'm not planning to read born-digital documents designed for A4/Letter size (the 8" screen would be too small for my eyes), but, rather, scanned books from Internet Archive, such as these: https://archive.org/details/laviespi...e/n11/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/lasainte...e/156/mode/2up (In many cases, on Internet Archive, the .epub versions are full of OCR errors and basically unusable.) I previously had a 1st-gen Onyx Boox Note—which was great for this purpose until the battery gave out—but, in comparison to a Kobo, it had the ability to make text bolder for reading (and speed wasn't an issue). I have tried loading PDFs onto my GloHD just to test these aspects, but text is often not very bold, and the page turns are ... oh so slow! I welcome your thoughts on this.

07-30-2025, 05:41 AM	#2
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,164 Karma: 105212035 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	Some PDF novels from the IA work, but often you need to reprocess to make the background white and text black. The Sage (and Kobo generally) now has added per document margin crop (Zoom) that stays as you page which reduces the number of PDFs that need processed. However mostly I now read IA PDF novels on a 14.25¨TCL Nxtpaper 14, which is as kind to the eyes as Sage with front light on, if NOT in epaper mode and sRGB + adjusted colour balance and brightness, using Pocketbook app. It's better than Xodo for PDFs. Sumatra on a Windows Tablet (but I gave those away). Edit: I find the Sage better than the reMarkable or Elipsa for IA PDF novels. The 9.7″ Kindle DXG was got cheap from Amazon on maybe the final "sale" for PDF and was a total failure. Unusable slow page turns on PDF image files and poor quality (only 150 dpi). The Sage page turns are fast enough. Last edited by Quoth; 07-30-2025 at 05:45 AM.

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07-31-2025, 08:55 AM	#3
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,164 Karma: 105212035 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	See also https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=144711 and ImageMagik and The GIMP for processing PDFs: Crop, fix brightness / contrast, convert to 14 greys with true black & White (saves storage and improves, background, text and images on eink) etc. For Novels: Tesseract or other OCR SW if no decent text layer, then edit & proof in LO Writer, (odt files), final extra save in Docx and then Calibre to epub.

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