I’ve been gifted a Sony PRS-T3 over a decade ago. I’ve recently gotten into reading again and used it to read a manhwa/webtoon/web novel (or whatever the Korean ones are called) and most recently a light novel.
It’s functional and perhaps even decent (especially given its age) but my main gripes with it are:
- Size: It’s much too small to fit an entire manga page with readable text, so you need to use hacks like kcc which is suboptimal. I’d like the display to be the size of a typical manga or slightly larger.
- Lack of customisation: It has this ugly indented paragraph style in books which I don’t like and the selection of fonts aswell as font rendering isn’t great.
- Artifacts in images: When anything more complex than text is on display (and even with text it’s subtly noticeable), you always see ghosts of the previous image. This is perhaps the most critical flaw for the purpose of reading Manga. Image quality in pictures isn’t great to begin with either.
- Slow: Page turning is fast enough but doing anything else it turns into a slog. Switching between “books” (the manhwa had each chapter as a separate book) was annoying to say the least.
- Bad UI: It’s just generally poorly organised and common things required way too many interactions (which, mind you, are slow).
- No light: I appreciate not requiring a light but I’d sometimes like to have the option.
- Ergonomics: It’s light but not very comfortable to hold. I think I’ve seen readers that have a thicker end on one side so that you can better hold onto it? I’d appreciate advice here.
It’s also showing its age; I had to tape the lid already as the material started to disintegrate.
I did very much appreciate how simple it is though. Open the lid, it immediately turns on, (I enter my PIN) and I can continue to read my book where I left off. Just like a real book but more convenient. I’d like to retain that property.
Battery life is also still great, even after all these years. I can close the lid and leave it sitting around for weeks and return to it with barely any battery drained. Again like a book where I don’t have to worry about any battery charge either.
It’s also quite light which I like, though a little bulky but totally acceptable.
Deal breakers:
- Enshittification: If the primary purpose of the reader is to sell books rather than read them, I don’t want it.
- Espionage: I don’t want Google, Amazon or anyone else spying on when I read what books. I’m probably going to have its networking off anyways but I don’t want anyone spying on me offline either.
- Gesture-only page navigation. Physical buttons please.
- Ads of any kind.
- Any power/data connector other than USB-C
I don’t care for DRM. I’ll be loading epubs onto the reader from another machine.
I don’t think I need colour. I mean, it’d be nice I guess (especially for manhwa, those appear to frequently be coloured?) but if that compromises on greyscale or text clarity, no thank you. I also don’t know whether e-ink can reproduce colour accurately enough that it’s even an upgrade over greyscale and doesn’t just look ugly.
FOSS firmware would be amazing but my research suggests that’s not really a thing? I’d settle for a decently customisable proprietary firmware as long as it doesn’t suck donkey balls or needs to be connected to the internet.
I don’t need to draw on it.
Price is secondary but I don’t like wasting money either.
I’m in Germany/EU.
I don’t have a single clue about the e-reader market. I’d appreciate any advice on what I want and, more importantly, don’t want given the constraints and desires I described.
I have a Boox tablet I quite like. The OS is somewhat heavily customized, but with some work it’s very usable and the screen is, in my opinion, a very good size. Strikes the balance of big enough for images and small text, small enough that the overall device still feels very portable. That all being said, I have not actually tried reading manga or other comics on it, so I I can’t speak to long term viability in that use case, but it handles web browsing decently enough, so I’m basing it on that a bit.
I’d encourage you to look into pocketbook. I’m not German, but they’re by far the biggest option we have here for privacy-respecting ereaders.
I got a verse pro a couple of weeks back, and while the device isn’t perfect, I am extremely pleased with it.
Also FWIW all current-gen color displays suffer from much worse contrast. I have yet to be in the same room as one, so I don’t know what they’re like IRL, but I’d encourage you to look into that before buying a color model.
Thanks, will look into that. Your model is available here and quite cheap even.
How is the image quality in full-screen greyscale images? Any residual artifacts?
I think it’s a bit small for my purposes though; I’d want a ~20cm tall screen.
If buttons are most important, the Kobo Libra 2 or Colour or the Kobo Sage (B&W) are solid options. The main downside would be screen size, which is only 7” or 8” compared to your Sony’s 6” screen. Better, but probably not quite manga-sized.
If size is the most important factor, you’ll probably have to sacrifice ergonomics and physical buttons. I don’t know of a >8” screen that also has physical buttons.
If you do end up going down the Kobo path, I expect you’d be quite happy. Their readers are very nicely designed and built, they last forever, they don’t hit you with ads (apart from their own logo on the boot screen), they are comfortable, and they’re reasonably priced for what they offer. Vastly more consumer-friendly than Amazon.
I think the Sage had some slightly weak battery life when it came out, but they may have improved that with firmware. I had a Kobo Libra H2O for ages until I upgraded to the Colour model, and my old one is still 100% functional.
Edit: re: enshittification: Kobo devices do have a native store, but between built-in library access, Dropbox support, and a web browser that I use to connect to a Calibre server, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a Kobo store book on either of my devices. They’re very easy to use how you want.
Edit edit: since you mention FOSS, steer clear of the company called Onyx that makes devices branded as Boox. They have been wantonly violating GPL for years.
the Kobo Libra 2 or Colour or the Kobo Sage (B&W) are solid options
Only the latter is available here sadly.
The main downside would be screen size, which is only 7” or 8” compared to your Sony’s 6” screen. Better, but probably not quite manga-sized.
8" is edging it really close, I’d have to test it somehow. Ideally it’d be 10" diagonally as that’d be about as large a manga page is IRL.
The only Kobo I’ve found available here that is 10" diagonal is the Kobo Elipsa E2. Is that one any good?
The hardest thing for me to judge is image quality; whether it’s any good at displaying greyscale images and whether there’s any residual artifacts when turning full-screen greyscale image pages.
If size is the most important factor, you’ll probably have to sacrifice ergonomics and physical buttons. I don’t know of a >8” screen that also has physical buttons.
I may have to backtrack on the buttons if it’s really that uncommon. I’d have expected most devices to have physical buttons because it just seems so obvious to me to have them.
If you do end up going down the Kobo path, I expect you’d be quite happy.
Do I need any account or accept any sort of
human rights abuse consent formprivacy policy in order to use Kobo devices?Vastly more consumer-friendly than Amazon.
That’s not a particularly high bar :D
Edit: re: enshittification: Kobo devices do have a native store, but between built-in library access, Dropbox support, and a web browser that I use to connect to a Calibre server, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a Kobo store book on either of my devices. They’re very easy to use how you want.
Yeah the greatest risk for me is that that can change overnight and history has shown that eventually greed will eventually win out unless explicitly mitigated against through effective means.
How would you rate the likelyhood to enshittify or otherwise turn into an adverse contract partner given your past experiences with Kobo/Rakuten?
Edit edit: since you mention FOSS, steer clear of the company called Onyx that makes devices branded as Boox. They have been wantonly violating GPL for years.
Thanks for the warning, will steer clear of those fuckers.
I’ve also heard of KOreader before which now I realise the KO might refer to Kobo?
The Elipsa is, like almost all >8” screens, designed specifically to be an e-note rather than just an e-reader. For that reason, I’m pretty sure it too lacks physical buttons. The two use cases are pretty distinct, as you wouldn’t want to accidentally change pages while writing or drawing.
That said, I have heard that the Elipsa line does a pretty good job of still functioning as a reader because of the Kobo pedigree. So it’s probably one of your best options. I’m pretty sure the software is going to be very similar to that of the Sage or Libra lines. In fact, I suspect that apart from screen size and such, it’s identical to the software on both the Sage and the Kobo Libra Colour since they both support pens too.
Image quality should be roughly as good as anything else out there. The number of e-ink screen makers is small and almost every common black and white e-ink device uses a Carta screen. But reviews say good things about the quality overall. Your concern with ghosting is common to most screens, which is based on the fact that an e-ink “pixel” is actually a bubble of suspended black pigments that can be magnetically oriented to the front surface of the bubble, making it show black, or to the back surface, showing the white solvent instead. That process isn’t complete and perfect though, so quick changes can leave a ghost image. The remedy is to do a “refresh” that flashes the whole screen in order to fully orient the pigments again. It’s slower, but it ensures a good clean image. It depends on the device firmware how often and when/why it triggers a refresh. Now I just checked on my Libra Colour and it provides a specific setting on how often to do a refresh, which you can set as often as every page if you don’t mind the delay.
I also looked into whether you need to sign in. Apparently in 2022, kobo specifically ADDED the ability to use your device without logging in (https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2022/02/10/how-to-use-kobos-new-sideloaded-mode/), which is a move in the RIGHT direction for once. Based on that and my history so far, they’ve been a very hands-off company that will probably not do a villainous heel turn anytime soon. Now I can’t promise anything about them changing their minds (I was surprised by Roku pulling their bullshit about forcing you to accept updated TOS or stop using the devices you own), but so far kobo has been “one of the good ones” in my experience.
Now if you’d rather pay more and be pretty damn sure you’re going to be safe on all counts, you could look into a Supernote device. They cost a lot and they are definitely designed around note-taking, but the company is very conscientious, to the point that they literally insist that you not buy more devices from them than you need. They support old devices as long as possible and they don’t offer trade-up discounts in order to limit e-waste. I have one I use for note taking and it’s a solid, well thought-out device and you definitely don’t need to sign into any account to use it. There’s a touch gesture strip along the side that if you slide your finger up the bezel, you can manually trigger a screen refresh whenever you want. They are probably the closest I’ve seen to a “we’re just here to sell you a good device” company, pretty much ever.
Edit: I don’t know much about KOreader but someone else sure does!
The Elipsa is, like almost all >8” screens, designed specifically to be an e-note rather than just an e-reader.
I don’t need that functionality but having it doesn’t hurt.
I’m done with uni but being able to take hand-written notes with a pen every now and then could be useful from time to time.
For that reason, I’m pretty sure it too lacks physical buttons.
I’ve actually looked into it and it appears you can turn pages by just tapping and even adjust where you touch to perform which action.
It’s not as good as a button but this would be fine by me.
What I don’t want is weird swiping gestures that don’t work half of the time. A tap OTOH should be simple enough to get right.
Image quality should be roughly as good as anything else out there.
Hm, I’d expect the image quality to be determined in part by firmware magic which would mean there’d still be differences.
I’ve seen a review since writing the previous message and it compared the screen side-by-side with a similarly-sized Amazon tablet and there were significant differences in contrast.
Apparently in 2022, kobo specifically ADDED the ability to use your device without logging in (https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2022/02/10/how-to-use-kobos-new-sideloaded-mode/), which is a move in the RIGHT direction for once.
Neat, that sounds like exactly what I want from the device.
Supernote
Will look into that.
I’m also aware of ReMarkable which I heard has a big hacking community around it. By chance, I actually spoke with someone who showed off theirs and how it’s just a plain Linux+systemd environment today. The GUI is just a plain old systemd service that runs the GUI binary and when they restarted it, the GUI restarted.
The biggest issue with these devices is that they really are made for writing rather than reading and are missing handy features such as a frontlight.
I forgot that yeah, a lot of these don’t have lights built-in on order to reduce the distance from the pen tip to the display layer. The Elipsa does though.
As for display quality, you’re right that the handling of gradations can be affected by firmware, but lots of them are all working with the same base display hardware. So if you drop some kinds of custom firmware or system on, you may be able to change how it’s handled. I’m not completely sure. I suppose it’s possible that there are display controllers that could vary between devices. That said, Kobo will likely be tuned for a variety of content by a bigger company that’s had a lot more time to dial in the quality.
The ReMarkable is a very nice device but one of the reasons I went with Supernote is that the nibs are ceramic and never need replacing. But yeah, there’s no frontlight on it, so it behaves a lot like paper for better or worse.
Hey there!
Not the above guy, but I’ll share my thoughts too.
I’ve owned two Kobo devices (the 7" Libra Colour and the 6" Clara BW), and many others, and I can highly recommend them.
I’ve also heard of KOreader before which now I realise the KO might refer to Kobo?
KOreader is a FOSS third-party reader application that can run not only on Kobo readers, but also Pocketbooks, Kindles, and Android devices—if you have an Android device with F-Droid, you can try it out right now. It’s extremely popular, and for very good reason—KOreader is absolutely fantastic, and I don’t think I could ever go back to reading books any other way.
the Kobo Libra 2 or Colour or the Kobo Sage (B&W) are solid options
Only the latter is available here sadly.
I personally wouldn’t recommend the Sage, after the week I spent with one. Although it has a gorgeous 8" display, I found it to be somewhat unergonomic to hold, and it has a notoriously bad battery life.
8" is edging it really close, I’d have to test it somehow. Ideally it’d be 10" diagonally as that’d be about as large a manga page is IRL.
The only Kobo I’ve found available here that is 10" diagonal is the Kobo Elipsa E2. Is that one any good?
I read a ton of manga on my Libra Colour (and I know many other people read manga on the Libra as well). From what I’ve been told, 7" is about the size of an actual BW manga page.
In any case, I’ve found it to be absolutely fine. In KOreader, I use the “fit to width” option, which makes the page fit the whole width of the screen (and display about two-thirds of the height of the page at any time); I end up pushing the “next” button twice for each page, but as I like to read slowly, I don’t mind at all.
The key factor that made me stick with the Libra over the Sage (besides the aforementioned battery life issues) was that, in KOreader, a page shown in “fit to width” mode on the Libra was the same width as one shown in “fit to height” on the Sage—that is, although an entire page could be shown at once on the Sage, it wasn’t actually any wider than it was on the Libra. For me, an extra page turn each time was worth the vastly superior ergonomics, battery life (especially the new Libra Colour, which has an enormous battery which), build quality (the Libra feels sturdier and more rugged than the Sage), and portability.
If size is the most important factor, you’ll probably have to sacrifice ergonomics and physical buttons. I don’t know of a >8” screen that also has physical buttons.
I may have to backtrack on the buttons if it’s really that uncommon. I’d have expected most devices to have physical buttons because it just seems so obvious to me to have them.
Some of the InkPad’s have physical buttons at that size. I only tried one, the InkPad X Pro—and while it was significantly cheaper than the same size Kobo, I wasn’t very impressed with the UX (particularly how slow the thing was). I also found that I didn’t actually like the larger screen when reading reflowable text (epub novels, etc.).
I planned to try the Elipsa 2E after I returned the Sage, but I actually enjoyed the Libra so much that I decided my search was over.
Do I need any account or accept any sort of
human rights abuse consent formprivacy policy in order to use Kobo devices?You don’t. It’s very easy to bypass the account registration on a new Kobo. You don’t even have to turn on the Wi-Fi.
After that, you can install KOreader if you wish, which is just done through a shell script, or you can also enjoy the built-in reading software (which is pretty good as well).
How would you rate the likelyhood to enshittify or otherwise turn into an adverse contract partner given your past experiences with Kobo/Rakuten?
I don’t want to be the one to say something good about a company, only for the future to prove me wrong—but, as I can tell, Rakuten seems very well regarded in the community, and I don’t think they have a record of screwing people over.
Not the above guy, but I’ll share my thoughts too.
Much appreciated :)
if you have an Android device with F-Droid
Yeah I think that’s how I heard of it ;)
Although it has a gorgeous 8" display, I found it to be somewhat unergonomic to hold, and it has a notoriously bad battery life.
I think battery life isn’t that important of a factor for me. As long as it’s in the range of “I need to charge it every once in a while” rather than “I need to make sure to charge this every day”, it’s probably fine.
Comfort is more important but hard to judge without actually holding it.
From what I’ve been told, 7" is about the size of an actual BW manga page.
From what I gather online, Manga is apparently printed on JIS B5 paper which is 257mm x 182mm which has a 12.4" diagonal but the small hand books Manga you typically see is B6 which is 128mm x 182mm (8.7" diagonal).
The diagonal isn’t really that meaningful though as the aspect ratio of JIS B paper and e-readers is different. A 10.3" reader with 4:3 aspect ratio is 157mm x 209mm and an 8" one 122mm x 163mm.
While 8" is almost wide enough for B6, it’s not nearly tall enough, even for B6. 10.3" is quite a bit larger than it needs to be for B6 and quite a bit smaller than B5 which sounds much more ideal.
I use the “fit to width” option, which makes the page fit the whole width of the screen (and display about two-thirds of the height of the page at any time); I end up pushing the “next” button twice for each page, but as I like to read slowly, I don’t mind at all.
Ah, that doesn’t fit my style unfortunately. Manga is also frequently laid out a way where some elements might be the entire page tall.
You don’t. It’s very easy to bypass the account registration on a new Kobo. You don’t even have to turn on the Wi-Fi.
Neat thanks, that’s what I’ll do then.
Oh hey, didn’t see your very thoughtful and informative reply. Thanks for jumping in! I didn’t realize KOreader was something you could put on a kobo device. That’s wild.
A lot of people say kobo, but since you are in germany, you might want to consider tolino as well. they use kobo hardware with slightly customized software, and since you don’t have to import (kobo does not have a market presence for their devices in Germany), they are cheaper.
I went to tolino from kobo because I lost my kobo and wanted to use onleihe, which is not your use case. but if you are considering kobo, in my experience the devices from tolino are very comparable. loading epub on there is easy and works, no DRM-shenanigans, and wakeup to last-read book on opening a magnet folio as well.
one caveat - while UI is identical, I had a slight dip in life quality (problems opening up specific files, longer loading tines), but I think it’s mostly because I downgraded on hardware when I went from kobo libra (like tolino vision) to tolino shine (like kobo clara).
tolino
How are they w.r.t. human rights abuse, enshittification or otherwise being an adverse contractual partner?
The maximum size I could find on Geizhals (tolino epos 3) was also only 8" diagonally which is a tad small. I’d prefer something closer to 10".
they use kobo hardware with slightly customized software
I’ve tried finding equivalents to some recommendations in this thread but it appears they’re entirely different devices and some even have Android.
onleihe
That’s a good point, the local library does offer that.
How are they w.r.t. human rights abuse, enshittification or otherwise being an adverse contractual partner?
I’m not entirely sure what level of morality you are aiming for… it’s an electronic device, and contains lithium and other rare substances which are won and manufactured into parts far away and in highly problematic conditions concerning human rights, as is true for most devices you are likely to own. So maybe not that.
Their cloud as well as online in general is optional for basic use (not updates and onleihe, of course), and their servers are based in Germany, so Datenschutz applies.
You own your files, and nobody asks where you got then from. If you buy from their store or do onleihe, of course there is some amount of tracking. They are linked to German book stores, the one from which you buy the device will be put in as default. However, it’s not hard to choose another one from those participating in the program, or buy independently and load the file onto your reader. More details are likely to be found in their terms and conditions.
The maximum size I could find on Geizhals (tolino epos 3) was also only 8" diagonally which is a tad small. I’d prefer something closer to 10".
Yeah, they do not have a device that big. Kobo does, I think, with the Elipsa, but as I said, you’d have to import it and can’t use onleihe there, which made it unsuitable for me. Might not be for you.
I’ve tried finding equivalents to some recommendations in this thread but it appears they’re entirely different devices and some even have Android.
Tolino used to be a part of Rakuten for some time, all the current devices have virtually the same hardware as kobo devices, with customized kobo software, which is based on linux.
for more details, look here: Wikipedia
I just wanted to say, I’ve been very happy with both tolino and kobo, the devices last really long, and I want to pull my hair out anytime I have to deal with an amazon device of any kind instead. Take from that what you will!
meowmeow if you don’t want ads, anything amazon is right out.
personally, ive found kobo very nice as an offline-only ereader as it plays very nicey with sideloading my own files, and kobos firmware is a linux and theres a bit of a modding/jailbreaking scene, so i think thats a plus towards it
i have a kobo nia (the cheapest one) and i think it meets all your criteria excepty buttonns and usbc :3
as for buttons, i think the cheapest model is the kobo libra, and it does come in a model with a color eink display if you wants it to
Just stumbled upon this:
interesting!! though it is technically incorrect when it says the nia doesnt have an sd card slot, as the internal memory is held on a 16gb sd card (so if u open it up (and thats easy - no glues) you can expand it to ~12g for free! though some knowledge is required)
plus the battery size ratings are a tad misleading, as the nia is slowrr, its more power-efficient, i think a better way would be measuring in terms of time per device as well :3
Kobo Libra Colour.
I have a bunch of e-readers, but most of them are Android, so Google is spying on you. Are you planning towards e-ink, or LCD? My manga go-to is a Bigme Inknote. Ups: nice and big, color, good battery life once you turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, does everything any android tablet can do, light, selectable backlight. Downs: Ghosting, slower than LCD, expensive, not as vibrant as LCD. If you want to go LCD and DIY: Get an old 2-in-1 like a Surface Book. Replace Windows with a Linux that uses Gnome. Ups: way brighter, faster, sharper image, more customizable, private, probably cheaper. Downs: Battery life in hours, not days. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj4--_wSXTzV9trwNZj9WPw has a lot of e-reader reviews.
https://m.youtube.com/@jeffreymoss3409 has a lot of e-reader reviews.
Are you sure you linked the correct channel?
Nope! I’m a dummy. The guy’s name is Jeffrey Moss, and I clearly got a different one. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj4--_wSXTzV9trwNZj9WPw
Sorry, e-ink of course. No backlight, only an optional frontlight is what I want.
I already have a Linux LCD tablet and it’s not that great for reading. Battery life is poor, it’s quite heavy and the fan is annoying. The 13" size is nice but it doesn’t need to be quite that large.
I don’t care for using the device for anything but reading books. I also want it to be as dumb as possible while still offering a nice reading experience (e.g. highly customisable text rendering).
I don’t care for poor motion performance but the UI needs to be responsive and residual artifacts after flipping a page would not be unacceptable, especially with full-screen greyscale images.
If they use Android, perhaps the user could swap the system for a pro-privacy distro and never turn on internet, bluetooth and GPS?
I don’t want to port LineageOS to a device with a super non-standard display (or any device really). If it’s not private OOTB, Android is not an option for me.
If you want large, Boox has a good product line. Out of my price range, but I seriously considered their largest models for displaying sheet music.
Most of their products run android so don’t meet OPs requirements
Ah, good point. But if runs Android it can be made to run something else. (With effort, I’m sure.)
As mentioned, my research suggests there aren’t really many usable FOSS firmwares and I don’t want to deal with porting lineageos to a device with a very much non-standard screen interface (or any device at all really).
