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Ask HN: What is your experience with e-readers? Are they worth it?

11 points by non-entity ↗ HN
So recently I've been trying to learn a lot of new things, and I'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'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.

So I've been wondering about ereaders like the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. They'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 "improvements" such as being waterproof or having more storage are inconsequential.

Does anyone routinely use these? Would you recommend getting one?

19 comments

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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.
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.

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/ 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.

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.

tartoran
Is the paperwhite 6" good enough for reading PDF documents?
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.
jtloong
Thankfully I was able to find an old Kindle DX (a discontinued line) on Ebay that has a 9.5 inch screen which is legitimately the perfect size for PDF books & papers. Super happy that I was able to find one for pretty cheap. I'd suggest keeping an eye out online for one of these if you don't want to break the bank for PDF suitable ereader.
rboyd
I left a Paperwhite for a Kobo Forma. Give it a look -- it's a really great device.
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.
billconan
I like it if the content is mainly textual. I have trouble reading double column papers and content with graphics.
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.
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.
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.

[dead] gunerk
Hi im happy to day
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.

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.
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/

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.