Recommend a Replacement for a Sony PRS-350

[purplecat]

My Sony PRS-350 is becoming increasingly flakey so I'm looking around for a new eBook reader and I'd love to hear any recommendations.

My main requirements are:

1. ePub format support (I have a lot of ePubs)
   
2. Plays nicely with Calibre (I read a lot of fanfic on my ereader and use Calibre to manage conversion)
   
3. Decent zooming of PDFs.
   
   This is something of a specialist requirement, I find not all PDFs worked well in the Sony reader when I just enlarged the font size (diagrams and equations in particular didn't like it), but the Sony eReader's actual zooming function was really horrible and you kept having to switch in and out of it to turn pages, so I'd love something that would let me read scientific papers on the device with a bit more ease.
   
   EDIT: I know I'm never going to get Adobe Reader style functionality on an e-Ink device. I never expected to be reading PDFs on it, but it's become something I find useful. So anything that improves the PDF experience over that on the PRS-350 is good and anything that makes it harder is bad.
   
4. At least 12 hours battery life (which most ereaders have, but not all tablets if you want to recommend one of them).
   

I probably want something a little larger than the PRS-350. I loved the portability of it, but I was magnifying everything up at least one font size, and that's a problem that will only get worse and the lack of screen real-estate also contributed to the problems I was having with the PDFs.

If I can access Analog Science Fiction and Fact from the UK on it (which I've not been able to do since Barnes & Noble bought out Fictionwise) then that would be an added bonus.

Playing nicely with Adobe Digital Editions on a Mac (which the Sony doesn't) would also be a plus since I have a book I purchased for $1 in ADE and I'd sort of like to read it some day, even though I only paid a dollar for it.

Beyond that I'm open to suggestions. I've managed quite happily without a wireless connection but I'm prepared to be convinced I would benefit from one.

Comments

[yhlee]

I have a Kobo mini and I disrecommend it--I don't know if the bigger version is any better for PDFs or if they do PDFs at all, but as far as I can tell, if you use Calibre tags, there's no way to get Kobo to use the tags. I find it really frustrating.

I hope someone has a good suggestion for you; my PDF-reading solution is a Kindle DX but I don't think that meets your other criteria anyway.

Edit: There are a lot of things I like about my mini! Just, for you I think it is not the right one.

[purplecat]

That's worth knowing, I'd been eyeing up the Kobos but if they won't use the Calibre tags then that's a big black mark, since I rely on the tags particularly to separate "unread" from "saved for re-reading". I don't want to have to dig through a whole load of favourite fanfics, to find the new ones I've not read yet.

[yhlee]

Oh, tell me about it! I like to use tags to organize by fandom, and while I'm not, you know, the most polyfannish of fans, I read enough fandoms that using the built-in system to organize into "Shelves" is a serious time-consuming awkward pain-in-the-ass. It's almost making me think that I should buy a third ereader (I also have a Kindle DX, a gift, that I use for reading PDFs) that's Calibre-tag-friendly for AO3 fanfic. You know, with my infinite spare change. :-P

[alasen]

Calibre can transfer things to shelves for you. I followed these instructions to make each fandom a different shelf on my mini: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193184

[yhlee]

OMG you mean there is a way???

I will have to try this when I am more awake. Thank you so much for the link.

[alasen]

Yep! You need to make another column in calibre for your shelf, you can't use the existing tag column, and it takes a little bit of fiddling, but it definitely worked for me :)

[purplecat]

That's good to know. It puts Kobo back on the list of options.

[shanaqui]

Yeah, I love my Kobo Mini, but agree with you that it doesn't seem to fit these requirements.

[elf]

I second the lack of recommendation of the mini. It's very nice within its niche, but "read PDFs" is not one of them, and it's got a few minor bugs that move it away from being worth recommending. It double-taps sometimes, and I have trouble getting it to turn pages at all when the battery's low. (At least, I think that's why, even though the battery indicator never says it's low.)

I don't use Calibre so hadn't noticed the tag issue.

[purplecat]

I think reading PDFs on any e-Ink device is never going to be perfect, but on the Sony it's really clunky. I'd be happy just not to have to switch out of zoom in order to turn pages...