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Ebook readers: Things to consider before buying
I occasionally get asked about my ebook reader, and put together a list for someone at work who's considering buying one, but had no idea where to start looking. For people whose concept is, "Um, there's the Kindle? And maybe something else? What's better" I made a list of what features are available.
The first place to look: Mobileread.com's Which One Should I Buy? forum. They post reviews, make comparisons, and answer questions about price, delivery options, customer service problems, and anything else that people might care about when trying to decide which device to buy. (It's perfectly reasonable to start a post with, "I'm a mountain climber; what works above 6000 feet in the cold and I can operate it with one hand inside a heavy glove?" Or, "I read a lot of short stories; what's the best device for 1200 tiny files instead of 150 novel-length books?" I dunno what the answers are, but people would chime in with advice.)
This is a bare-bones outline, not a detailed consideration. I'm perfectly willing to ramble on at length about pretty much any of these issues, but the main purpose here is something that people can look at and say, "THAT detail! That's what I care about—which device does that best?"
Issues to consider:
The good news: you don't have to consider all of that. Most people who get ebook readers love them, regardless of whatever flaws theirs have. (My Sony doesn't have folder support or annotations, and it takes too long to boot up.) It takes most people about an hour to get used to reading on the screen, and after that they never notice it looking funny. This includes the "flash" involved in e-ink screens changing pages; while it looks odd when you see it from a distance, when reading, it takes less time than flipping a paper page.
My recommendations:
Good-- Sony 300 (Pocket Edition), Astak Pocket Pro & Mentor, Cybook Opus (which may not be available in the US?), Jetbook & Jetbook Lite
(Check options before deciding if these are your top choices.)
Avoid--Kindle; Kindle DX (limited file support; too much space wasted on keyboard; can't use for many ebook stores)
iPad (*very* limited file support; not great ebook reading software; weighs too much; costs too much)
Nook (limited file support; battery problems because of LCD screen; atrocious customer support at every level)
Cool-ER reader (limited file support; bad customer support; better options available at the same price)
Mixed thoughts:
Sony 600 & 700 (touchscreens are harder to read, but has dictionary/annotation support; 700 has some kind of wifi)
iRex (best PDF support on the market; larger screen; higher price)
eBookwise (obsolete filetypes; great ergonomics)
The first place to look: Mobileread.com's Which One Should I Buy? forum. They post reviews, make comparisons, and answer questions about price, delivery options, customer service problems, and anything else that people might care about when trying to decide which device to buy. (It's perfectly reasonable to start a post with, "I'm a mountain climber; what works above 6000 feet in the cold and I can operate it with one hand inside a heavy glove?" Or, "I read a lot of short stories; what's the best device for 1200 tiny files instead of 150 novel-length books?" I dunno what the answers are, but people would chime in with advice.)
This is a bare-bones outline, not a detailed consideration. I'm perfectly willing to ramble on at length about pretty much any of these issues, but the main purpose here is something that people can look at and say, "THAT detail! That's what I care about—which device does that best?"
Issues to consider:
- e-Ink vs LCD screen (e-ink looks like paper but is slower, and black&white only; LCD can have color, but eats battery life; non-backlit LCD screens are much cheaper, but B&W only.)
- Wifi or not
- Allows annotations or not
- Built-in dictionary or not
- Filetype support (ebooks come in a handful of popular, easy-to-find formats, and several dozen obscure ones. And some readers support user docs in Word or RTF or TXT format; some don't.)
- PDF support: reflow, zoom, something else
- DRM support (Digital Rights Management, software that locks your ebook to a particular device)
- folder support (do the files show up in folders, like on a computer, or does the managing software sort them in some other way?)
- Firmware glitchiness/customer support
- Stylus vs Keyboard, if it has an input option
- Screen size: 5", 6" (which is most common), 8"+. (Larger costs more. A lot more.)
- Battery life
- SD Card support
- Open-source firmware options--ability to play sudoku, have a clock, change fonts onscreen, etc.
- Price ($150-500 mainly, and it goes up from there. We're still waiting on the under $100 basic ebook reader.)
- Acessories (covers, cases, AC adapter, headphones)
- MP3 ability (theoretically for audiobooks)
- Color options (Kindle is white only. Sony Readers come in about 4 colors. Astak readers have 6. Some brands have 2 or 3.)
- Dedicated online bookstore
- Probably several other things I don't think of because I don't care about them *and* they don't get discussed much. (I don't personally care about wifi, but I know it's important to a lot of people.)
- Warranty details (they range from "bad" to "useless")
- Repair options (ditto)
- Manuals & info about any uses other than "click here to pay for & install your book on the device" (All the user manuals are lousy.)
- Ergonomics (there was a great ergonomic ebook reader 10 years ago. Still available. It reads two very obscure filetypes and weighs a pound and a half. Since then, everything's small and flat and about equally badly designed.)
- User-adjustable software (it's not)
- User interface (they range from "mediocre" to "awful;" apparently, it didn't occur to any of the sofware designers that if you could put 1500 ebooks on a card, you'd want a way to sort them other than alphabetically.)
- Really *good* PDF support. (Not going to happen, ever; PDF was created as a print-ready format, and they're made in too many different ways for any viewer to ever be able to display them all well.)
The good news: you don't have to consider all of that. Most people who get ebook readers love them, regardless of whatever flaws theirs have. (My Sony doesn't have folder support or annotations, and it takes too long to boot up.) It takes most people about an hour to get used to reading on the screen, and after that they never notice it looking funny. This includes the "flash" involved in e-ink screens changing pages; while it looks odd when you see it from a distance, when reading, it takes less time than flipping a paper page.
My recommendations:
Good-- Sony 300 (Pocket Edition), Astak Pocket Pro & Mentor, Cybook Opus (which may not be available in the US?), Jetbook & Jetbook Lite
(Check options before deciding if these are your top choices.)
Avoid--Kindle; Kindle DX (limited file support; too much space wasted on keyboard; can't use for many ebook stores)
iPad (*very* limited file support; not great ebook reading software; weighs too much; costs too much)
Nook (limited file support; battery problems because of LCD screen; atrocious customer support at every level)
Cool-ER reader (limited file support; bad customer support; better options available at the same price)
Mixed thoughts:
Sony 600 & 700 (touchscreens are harder to read, but has dictionary/annotation support; 700 has some kind of wifi)
iRex (best PDF support on the market; larger screen; higher price)
eBookwise (obsolete filetypes; great ergonomics)
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I'm new to the world of e-book readers, but I really like my Astak Pocket Pro. I wanted lots of file format options, long battery life, custom folder support, and expandable storage. The groovy purple colour was an added bonus.
It's far from perfect. Still some paint bubbling issues on mine, which they said should have been resolved already, the interface is clunky, and sometimes the formatting, especially PDF, is completely off. Still, this is my first reader, so my expectations weren't huge. I wasn't sure I would even use a reader, but I've read more in the past two months than in the past two years. I'm hooked.
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PDF support is going to be glitchy on *everything* because it's usually a case of the software trying to show a letter-sized page on a quarter-letter sized screen. I have PDFs that work beautifully on my PRS-505--because I built them myself to fit on a 6" screen.
I've read more in the past two months than in the past two years.
My decision to get a dedicated ebook reader hit after I'd been using a PDA to read ebooks for over a year; I looked through the files in the "backup" folder it auto-creates when it updates, and realized I'd read over 50 novels in ebook format in the past year.
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Things possibly only I care about: handedness. A lot of the readers seem to assume you'd only like to hit the "next page" button with your right hand, and this seems to be the case for a lot of the less well-known, reads-any-format readers.
A lot of people also seem to care about whether their ebook reader supports Overdrive or Adobe Digital Editions or whatever the heck it is that libraries use.
Also, the "comes in any color you want, as long as it's white" problem is easily solved with sites like DecalGirl.
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I'd get annoyed with a right-hand-only reader pretty quick; I hold my reader with my left hand. My Sony allows pages to be turned from the left; I haven't looked at many of the others to sort out page turning options.
Adobe Digital Editions (and Overdrive) is part of DRM support. At some point, I should make a whole separate post about DRM, but it has to wait for when I'm in a non-ranty mood 'cos it's really easy to go off on a 2000-word tangent about the evils of copyright law.
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I keep looking at it and saying, "Why the HELL hasn't anyone remade this with new electronics inside? THIS is what we need in an ebook reader!"
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*curses pdf makers*
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For quick reading on the go, I'm enjoying Stanza for the iPod Touch. Small screen, of course, but it's quite customisable and easy to use. Wouldn't use it to purchase books, I think, but I've downloaded loads of books from Project Gutenberg to read on it.
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I'm told that, while the ones with memory cards can *hold* several thousand ebooks, none of the readers' internal memory can actually cope well with that many entries.
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And from what I can tell, while there's plenty of discussion about exactly which features matter most to whom, most people who have ebook readers love the ones they have. They are all *wonderful* for reading novels (less wonderful for reading technical books, and they all suck for academic research). Most people seem to learn a few tricks to get around whatever limitations their reader has, and just enjoy the reading.
My main objections to the Kindle are price and file support problems, and those aren't going to be issues for everyone. And it does have features that other devices don't, that matter to some people; the cross-device compatibility is nifty for people who switch between readers.
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I've actually found it to be rather decent ergonomically. It came with a case and if I flip the cover over and fold the clasp inwards it becomes about the same thickness of most books. After that the only hand cramps I get are remarkably similar to what would develop from reading a regular book and holding the thing open for hours on end.
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If date is "date loaded onto the reader," that's somewhat useful. If it's "date file was created/modified," less so.
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I think at least one of the "normal" e-ink readers offers both reflow and zoom options, but I can never remember which.
iRex has great PDF support (erm, within the range available), including zoom & annotations, but it costs about twice as much as other ebook readers. And I think the Jetbooks can zoom PDFs. (I think the Jetbooks only zoom PDFs, which could be troublesome.)
Depending on the kind of PDFs you want to read, sometimes it's easier to just convert them to another format.