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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the way-of-the-dodo dept.

My ad-supported Kindle's buttons are dying, so I'm in the market for a new eBook reader. I figured the upcoming sales would be a good time to buy one. To my surprise, eBook readers seem to be regressing rather than advancing. My hard requirements are:

  1. e-Ink display
  2. Text-to-speech
  3. Don't need company's software to transfer books

And my preferred features include:

  1. Good PDF support (so a larger display with the same aspect ratio of a piece of paper). I want to read technical books on it, something I can't do with the Kindle.
  2. Stable software
  3. Doesn't spy on everything you do (Kindles track absolutely everything)
  4. Support for multiple voices. The same voice gets annoying after a few books.

I'm unable to find anything which fulfills all those conditions. Any recommendations? Before you say smartphone, it needs an e-Ink display. Are smartphones and tablets killing eBook readers?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Celestial on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:29PM

    by Celestial (4891) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:29PM (#431183) Journal

    Unfortunately, eReaders are very niche now. For the general populace, phablets and tablets are good enough. But, there are still some good eReaders out there, you just have to look. However, no eReader is going to match your requirements. PDF support on eReaders, even a 7.8" one, is abysmal. Just don't even try. If they support it at all, they're horrendous at it. That's why I have an iPad for reading digital comic books and PDFs, and an eReader for everything else. It's more expensive than having just a tablet or just an eReader, but if you want to read everything digitally and comfortably, that's what you have to do.

    The two generally agreed best eReaders on the market right now are the Amazon Kindle Voyage [amazon.com], and the Kobo Aura One [kobobooks.com].

    I have the Kindle Voyage, simply because as I've posted here last night, I'm Amazon's bitch. Amazon Kindle has the most eBooks available for sale by far, and the Kindle Voyage makes it easy to just tap and download. It does not support text-to-speech out of the box, but there's an official adapter [amazon.com] for that. Amazon says that the adapter only supports the Kindle Paperwhite, but it supports the Kindle Voyage unofficially as well. The software is fine.

    I don't believe that Kobo Aura One has text-to-speech support, but I do know that it has far more font options available than the Kindle Voyage and is waterproof if that matters to you. It's also 7.8" compared to the Kindle Voyage's 6". Kobo's software is generally a bit rocky at the launch of new hardware, but it should be fine now as the Kobo Aura One has been out a few months.

    If you want the Kobo Aura One instead, but want to use Amazon Kindle's shop, there are methods of stripping DRM from Amazon Kindle eBooks [the-digital-reader.com]. Once you do that, you can convert them to ePub and upload 'em to your Kobo Aura One.

    No eReader is going to match all of your wants unfortunately, but I hope this helps.

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  • (Score: 1) by ramloss on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:08PM

    by ramloss (1150) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:08PM (#431211)

    Yes, the closest non-niche device that meets your requirements is a Kindle. You can buy the Paperwhite's "blind and visually impaired readers bundle" which includes the audio adapter and support for text-to-speech out of the box. Everything else, including shitty support for pdf is similar to your current kindle (sans buttons). I keep mine with wifi off from the moment I bought it, so spying is not a problem.

  • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday November 23 2016, @12:40AM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Wednesday November 23 2016, @12:40AM (#431588) Homepage Journal

    I'm one of those people who find reading eInk to be a lot easier than reading on a tablet, and I find even light web browsing with my Kindle to be a far superior experience than I have gotten with an iPad. I have a wifi paperwhite, and I'm relatively happy with it but I have to find that my older Kindle 3/Keyboard was probably the best device I owned overall; I was very sad when it got lost somewhere in Warsaw.

    With Amazon devices, you could just leave wifi off after initial registration and simply sideload content onto it. Not exactly ideal, but it works. As far as tracking, I vaguely remember someone disassembled some of the older Kindle firmwares, and basically found it only tracked the currently read book and the page which would be required for the WhisperSync page feature (which I find handy since I often switch from Amazon Cloud Reader and my kindle and back). It would be interesting to find out what, if anything, is tracked when that feature is disabled (at least on a non-ad supported Kindle).

    --
    Still always moving
    • (Score: 2) by purple_cobra on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:47PM

      by purple_cobra (1435) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:47PM (#432188)

      A friend had the 3G Kindle w/keyboard and took it everywhere with him - he's one of those outdoors-y people that walks up mountains for fun. Lasted an age but the keyboard started failing and he persevered until he was in a position to replace it. I bought a Kindle Paperwhite last year when it was on special offer and have been very happy with it; I'd have preferred physical page turn buttons, but it wasn't a deal-breaker.

      But yes, register it and then just kill the wi-fi. You can use Calibre [calibre-ebook.com] to put stuff on it and organise it how you wish; there's also a DRM-stripping plugin available if you like your e-books to be DRM free.

      Good luck in finding something that ticks all the boxes.