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Ask Soylent: Where Have All The Good eBook Readers Gone?

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

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:56PM

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:56PM (#431204) Journal

    When I was searching for a new e-reader several years ago (then again last year), I discovered two blogs that are extremely useful for the hunt:

    http://the-digital-reader.com/ [the-digital-reader.com]
    http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/ [the-ebook-reader.com]

    You might also try asking over at the Mobileread Forums, as the people there know enough to make intelligent device & software suggestions — they might have ideas for how you can keep a silent e–ink reader in sync with a phone/tablet if you can't find a device with decent text-to-speech:
    http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ [mobileread.com]

    HTH. If it wasn't for the fact that you require TTS, I'd highly recommend the Kobo Glo HD (or any HD Kobo for that matter) as I believe it'd otherwise meet your criteria.

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