LogFAQs > #936100396

I take it you mean e-readers?

I currently have a Kobo Touch, a standard Kindle, a Kindle Paperwhite, a Kobo Arc, a Kindle Fire (8gb) and a Nook. I've also owned a Kindle Keyboard and a Sony PRS-505. In addition to those I use Kindle, Aldiko & various other apps on my Android, and Calibre on my laptop. (Can you tell I read a lot?)

Of all of these, the Sony was my favourite in terms of operation & features, but both of the two I owned died pretty quickly - so much so that I suspected planned obsolescence. The Paperwhite and Fire were the only designated devices I bought new, everything else was lightly used as per my usual habits.

The Kindle won't read the epub files that are the industry standard format for every other e-reader out there, which can be downright infuriating, but the Paperwhite is a good piece of kit, and if you have a Kindle that dies on you Amazon will often give you money off a new one, no matter where you bought the old one (that being how I wound up with a Paperwhite after buying a standard Kindle used that kept freezing on me).

Kobo has a decent proprietary store, the same way Amazon does, but they don't lock down their formats in the same way. Nook has a store, but it only seems to work in North America.

Aldiko is a free app for Android with a paid version. The basic version has most of the functions you may want for reading an ebook, with the exception of highlighting and notation that's become so common for e-reader users, but if you're new to that you may not miss it. It's very customisable in terms of screen use; if you're okay reading from a phone a lot it won't be much trouble, and you can change background colour, fonts, text colour, contrast etc pretty easily.

Most designated e-readers are better for long-term reading simply because of the type of screen they have, e-Ink. The storage is more than needed for the average reader on most e-readers; I have 3000+ documents and books on my Paperwhite with space to spare, and this is because most e-books, unless they're graphic novels with huge amounts of jpg or png files, or big pdfs, are quite small in size, often below 10mb even for a longer book.

Just one note, though... my sister has panic attacks trying to use e-readers, seemingly triggered by the way the black and white invert when you move to the next screen of whatever you're doing or reading. I've never seen that in anyone before or since, but felt I ought to mention it just in case. You may want to try somebody else's before you buy your own if that might be a problem for you. I know it wasn't psychosomatic, because she really wanted that e-reader and was very upset she couldn't use one.

Hope that helps!

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