i don’t since i don’t read much and i am fine without the paper feeling mabye
I think I’m on my 3rd kindle now - I had the paper white, the voyage and now the oasis. I read loads, a good hundred books a year. I have lupus though and the arthritis in my hands was making it really painful to physically hold open a book. Plus I’d filled two huge bookcases in my tiny flat. The kindle is obviously much lighter and with a case or popsocket it doesn’t hurt me to hold it. I have damage to my vision now and the kindle has worked out brilliantly for that too - I’ve been able to upload a particularly legible font to help me out and adjusting the screen brightness has been kinder on my eyes too. They really come into their own when you go on holiday - the oasis is waterproof too.
I never thought about real accessibility on kindles, but those are all huge benefits
I just got an Oasis (few weeks ago) after using my iPad Mini extensively for reading. I wanted something more portable and noticed they were quite popular with tourists on a recent vacation.
It’s my first Kindle and I had no experience with the Oasis in person really other than asking someone on the trip what it was.
I thought something was wrong with it, like maybe it wasn’t the traditional e-ink that had always been advertised. Had I missed something?
No, it had all the bells and whistles. Compared to the color of the iPad, this seemed like an order of magnitude lower in terms of quality. So please help me figure out what I’m doing wrong wrt settings because obviously this is a me problem. Otherwise I love it!
What’s lower in terms of quality?
The e-ink display is different than something like an iPad. I find it easier to read, to be honest. I can read the kindle for longer in comfort and it’s easier to read while falling asleep.
It’s crap at displaying anything that’s not intended for the platform. PDF files or graphics heavy books are a poor fit for the kindle, but novels or regular books are far better in my opinion.
I have an iPhone, an iPad Mini, an iPad, and multiple laptops. I prefer the kindle for reading in any formats that support it.
What’s lower in terms of quality?
Good question - I just realized I failed to mention specifics facepalm
It seems - blurry or fuzzy? Not as sharp, as if there’s a film over the screen. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well, but it’s just not clear.
Regardless of dark or light background, and brightness, I can never get a clear picture. It gets brighter, sure, but then it’s too bright - it’s never clear.
I don’t know how else to explain it other than it’s like there’s a film over the screen. It’s not crisp, etc.
Like the person below commented, it’s a completely different beast compared to an iPad or an iPhone screen. It’s only intended to be a book so it might help to think about it like that - it’s designed to be as close as possible to paper, not a screen. It’s not a step down in technology, rather it’s a completely different tech for a completely different set of needs.
Put your ipad and kindle side by side in different conditions and try and read a page. In full sunlight you can’t see an ipad screen. In the dark an ipad screen is really really bright. In both cases the kindle lets you read easily. Because it uses e-ink, the screen isn’t made from glass, making it lighter and much less breakable. Because e-ink is only black and white it uses far far less power than an iPad screen so you don’t need to charge it remotely as often.
If you only read a few pages in bed before you go to sleep, you might not need a kindle. If the reflective screen and brightness of your iPad don’t bother you, you might just want to stick with that. But if you read a lot, read in the bath, or in the sun, or at night with the lights off, or if you have a physical disability that makes holding a book/iPad difficult - a kindle is the answer.
Thanks! This is helpful. And good point - I haven’t tried it in sunlight. I have tried my iPad…with not the best luck, like you said. I guess I really didn’t know what I was expecting with the “Paperwhite” description, so that’s on me.
I like its portability. I also use my iPad Mini for work - so it has a case with a keyboard, and not the slimmer Apple or Logitech ones - those don’t work with the Mini, so it requires Bluetooth, and it’s just bulkier overall.
I wanted something smaller for when I’m waiting at appointments or if I stop somewhere to eat, etc. It’s more portable and lighter and slips easily into my purse.
I have e-book readers that use e-ink, and I love it. I can read books for hours and not have my eyes feel tired, that’s what it was designed for.
I have a remarkable 2. Had it 2 years, use it daily for taking notes during consults.
I don’t use it for reading or any other task. For me it’s pretty much just an infinite notepad. For this purpose it’s perfect. After 2 years it’s cost has reduced to something similar to paper notepads and pens.
These devices are definitely not for everyone. They have a way to go to really fulfil their potential, but I wouldn’t be without one.
I’ve had my eye on this for a while, I’m a rigorous notebook and pen note taker but the ability to search through notes would be a huge benefit - do you find the integration with other services to work well? (I would want to export notes to a separate cloud storage platform like OneDrive)
Nah, it doesn’t work like that. You couldn’t search hand written notes.
I’ve never tried it but I think the OCR stuff happens remotely and the only output is email. As in, you can email yourself a notebook and it will arrive as text. The whole idea of this seemed so clunky to me it could barely be called a feature.
Similarly with services like onedrive. I think you can upload a notebook to onedrive but not sync with onedrive.
This may have changed, I haven’t looked into this for a long time.
My advice would be to think of the device as a paper notepad with infinite pages, nothing more. If that’s not worth it for you then don’t get one.
I used my old ones a ton. I had the original nook and had been using it for 13 years. I finally upgraded to a newer one with a color e ink screen and I like it a lot. It’s a boox ultra tab c. It was pricey so I wouldn’t get it unless you really read a lot and like e ink
I use it for reading almost exclusively. I read 1-2 books a week and a few volumes of graphic novels/manga per week as well. I have poor vision and the e ink is much easier on my eyes than lcd/oled screens. I can read on this for hours but reading on a traditional phone/tablet/laptop gives me eye strain/headache after a few hours. It’s nice to have a screen you can read with no back or front light. I do use the front light at times but I usually have it off
It’s handy for taking notes and annotations. I’ve read it’s good for drawing as well but I am terrible at drawing so I don’t know. The stylus seems comparable to my friends Apple Pencil except you can use the back as an eraser like an actual pencil
battery life is much better to a traditional tablet - a charge lasts 2-3 days usually, can last longer if I keep the front light off and all the wireless radio stuff off. I’ve gotten it to last a week. It’s a bit heavy bc of the battery though
Wrt color it’s a mixed bag. It’s a very handy feature for manga and graphic novels. But the color panels are new tech so they come with issues; primarily ghosting/image retention. After some time I’ve found an ideal mix of settings to minimize the issue and make the color look as good as possible. The boox os also has a little nav ball that can quickly force a full refresh the screen at any point to remove any retained image. But the color is still not comparable to an lcd/oled by any means
Mine is based on a kaleido3 panel. There’s a newer gallery3 panel that has more vibrant color but with a trade off of noticeably slower refresh rates. It’s not actually an eink panel but something called acep; it was more meant for advertisements/billboards so quick refresh rates weren’t a priority. There’s also no real options for a device with it at the moment aside from one that has real mixed reviews and one that has an open preorder with no eta on delivery as far as I know.
It’s also a somewhat capable android tablet but I don’t really get this part. Like you can run YouTube and games and stuff. But i don’t know why you would bother? It’s workable but not nearly as good. The exception to this is web browsing depending on the site. Heavy text based sites work well in Firefox.
My spouse bought a Kindle Paperwhite that was gathering dust on a shelf, so I loaded it up and gave it a whirl. I absolutely love the thing: it’s light, clear, easy to read, and easy to load things onto (especially via Calibre). The only thing I dislike about it is that the idle battery usage seems completely random at times. Sometimes I can leave it alone for two days and it’ll be at half power, sometimes I go away for a few hours and it’ll drop from 80% to 8%. Usually it’s fine, but I’ve learned to keep a power source handy.
There’s something wrong with the device. Paperwhite’s battery should last for weeks, especially if it’s somewhat recent model. Try to calibrate the battery by charging it to full, and continue to charge couple more hours after it’s full. Then use the device until the battery is completely empty (the device turns off by itself). And finally charge it to full. Do not charge it while you are discharging the battery, or interrupt the charging while charging to full. If that doesn’t help, the battery might be faulty or there is something wrong on the software side of things.
