
Ask HN: What is your experience with e-readers? Are they worth it? - non-entity
So recently I&#x27;ve been trying to learn a lot of new things, and I&#x27;m beginning to realize just how expensive print books are. Many times I can get the same material got free in a PDF on the internet. Unfortunately I just cannot read on my phone or PC. Both are too distracting, with too much artificial light. The phone is much to small and sadly many PDFs don&#x27;t have convenient bookmarks. For example, I recently wanted to read at least parts of the UEFI spec which is a 2500 page PDF. No way I can effectively read that on my phone, or even really my PC.<p>So I&#x27;ve been wondering about ereaders like the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. They&#x27;re pretty inexpensive, and have pretty good reviews, but the bad reviews are consistent (for the latest model). Screen glare, abhorrent battery life, dead pixel, buggy navigation. Many of the negative reviews also note that the &quot;improvements&quot; such as being waterproof or having more storage are inconsequential.<p>Does anyone routinely use these? Would you recommend getting one?
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diehunde
I've been using e-readers since the first Kindle came out. The are totally
worth when the docs/books you read fit properly in the screen. They are
normally around 6 inches (there are newer brands with bigger screens) so pdf's
won't fit and you'll need to scroll both ways which sucks. There are tools
like [https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/](https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/) that
can format pdf documents for Kindle size. It's pretty good.

Anyway, I would say if you can get your books or documents on epub or mobi or
amazon's format, then e-readers are a great option. I personally use the Oasis
and the battery life and screen performance are awesome. I think the screen
size is also a bit bigger than the previous versions.

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sunstone
I have a Kobo Clara HD and it's is fabulous. It is a little tricky getting it
attached to your computer to download the open source books in your collection
but once you're past that it's smooth sailing. Battery life lasts for weeks if
you're not using it. Very easy to resize text or change books. And not too
much at around $100.

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yesenadam
I got a Lenovo tablet (TB-7104F) about 6 months ago, it's awesome. <$90
Australian. Am using the (free) app EBookDroid to read pdfs and djvus,
scribble marks on the page, bookmark, write a few notes. Haven't had any
problems at all.

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2rsf
Since forever I am doing most of my readings in electronic formats.

Most of the new 300 ppi devices use the same screens, or small variations on
it, so the differences are not huge in terms of screen quality.

I recently moved from a Kindle paperwhite (6") to a pocketbook inkpad 3 (8"
screen) and the extra space is really a great for reading but I am not sure
it's big enough for PDFs. Battery life is great, but the software seems to be
more mature on Kindles, but still it's totally usable.

I could recommend to go bigger, but that comes on the expense of mobility and
the price jumps sharply as you go bigger.

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tartoran
Is the paperwhite 6" good enough for reading PDF documents?

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2rsf
no it is not, think of it this way- a PDF page size and content are not
dynamic, it is sized according to real physical page size so what you are
trying to do is squeeze a 210 × 297 millimeters page into 122 x 91 millimeters
screen, or alternatively move the page around on the screen but this is
usually slow to react and cumbersome.

It can work if the PDF contains very large text, or images but for most cases
its unusable.

~~~
tartoran
Thank you. I’ll stick to printing out my pdfs.

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tcbasche
I can definitely recommend e-readers for regular books (it's great when
travelling) but for reference / textbooks I'm not sure I could.

I have a Kindle Paperwhite from (I think) 2014 and it still holds up quite
well. I recently read the Kleppmann book (Designing Data-Intensive
Applications) on it and it was fine, but I would have liked the ability to
scribble notes and put in physical bookmarks. From a technical perspective,
everything worked quite well but I'm not sure I would want to read the UEFI
spec on it.

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jborichevskiy
I have the latest Paperwhite Kindle. It works - but leaves much to be desired.
Most of it is around me wishing the glossary was more accessible, navigation
were easier. Charts and diagrams should stay visible for all their references,
highlights should be easier to extract, and the DRM system is awful.

I actually wrote a post about this here:

[https://jborichevskiy.com/posts/digital-
tools/](https://jborichevskiy.com/posts/digital-tools/)

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drakonka
I love my Kindle Voyager, but I probably wouldn't use it for any books that
are heavy on graphs or mathematical notation-type graphics. The formatting can
get a bit weird, and sometimes it's just too small to properly fit what it
needs. It is my go-to reader for fiction, however, and I wouldn't be without
it. For the aforementioned more "textbook"-like material I go with my iPad
Pro.

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technobabble
I have a love/hate relationship with the Sony Digital Paper

The good

\- It's 13", so I can read/annotate full-size documents.

\- Very little eye strain.

\- Battery lasts almost a full week*

\- There's a little bit of that "magic" when using it.

Neutral

\- Syncing with computer and app is OK, nothing special.

The Bad

\- It's fragile. Chipped plastic, and dead lines of pixels a year in.

\- * Writing drains the battery faster than zooming/flipping pages. At a
conference I barely lasted lasted a few hours of heavy writing.

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gshdg
Yes, I do nearly almost my long form reading on an e-ink reader. Much easier
to concentrate on than a backlit screen.

The latest generations are indeed not much of an upgrade from previous ones.
But that doesn’t mean they aren’t better for reading than a tablet. As long as
you get something high-dpi and front-lit there’s not much better you can do.

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digital_voodoo
A little different experience by my side: I always try to have as little
devices as possible. So I often buy smartphones with large (6.4+ inches)
screen, to serve as e-reader (among other features). The screen technology
might not be the same, but I'm quite satisfied with it.

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vishnu_ks
This is not for everyone. Smart Phones are always looking for your attention
to show you useless notifications and ads. So for most people it's so much
easier and effective reading a physical book or Kindle.

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Antoninus
I enjoy mine, I had a kobo a few years ago and when I lost it I replaced it
with a kindle paperwhite 3. It would be perfect if there was a linux kindle
desktop application so I can seamless read between both devices.

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billconan
I like it if the content is mainly textual. I have trouble reading double
column papers and content with graphics.

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rboyd
I left a Paperwhite for a Kobo Forma. Give it a look -- it's a really great
device.

