Choosing a good e-reader for studying
I started studying again this semester, and have to read a lot of stuff because of it.
As we get nearly all our Books as PDF and reading on my notebook or my phone gets tiering quite fast. So I'm thinking about getting myself an e-reader to make things go easier.
So i tried to find some ressources to learn about e-readers, but the internet (or search engines) these days seem to suck.
So maybe my lovely tildes can help.
must haves:
can read PDF
needs to make reading this "shitty" two colums pages my PDF have good and easy
nice to haves:
FOSS
Backlight
can somebody help me out? or do you know about a resource where I can learn about the pro and cons of the different e-readers, I'm starting with close to 0 knowlege as I never thoght I will need one, I generally prefere to read proper books.
I just recently won a ReMarkable 2 bundle as part of a sweepstakes and have had enough time to evaluate it recently. Your choice of reader really should be subjective so I'll make this more of a collection of thoughts than an outright recommendation.
I will say that it is the best at doing what it's designed to do; to be something to write on. But as a reader it has two major benefits: number one is a big e-ink screen that's very readable in medium to low light and is also very responsive. Number two is that it makes handwriting notes really easy - but that's kind of locked out as standard because you need to use one of their "markers" which doesn't actually come with the tablet.
The size of the tablet is probably the biggest strength it has as a reader. It's big enough that I can upload digital comics and be able to read them perfectly fine (although it isn't a color display, so it's better for Japanese manga than the colorful stuff you see around the rest of the world - though I must say that the monochrome picture will generally look great so the lack of color isn't as painful as you'd think). It's also the only e-ink reader I've ever seen that actually lets you zoom into your PDF files, though it takes a while to re-render when you do that. On the other hand, it's big enough that you probably won't need that functionality. But at the same time I don't think it even has fulltext searching, and that's an important feature!
The downside is that the software doesn't have very many of the more advanced reader functions. You can't write in plain text anywhere, so you can't have a way to search through your annotations. There is a proper text highlighting annotation (with a tool that requires the Marker), but as far as I can tell there is no index of what you highlight. Highlights also don't come through very clearly so they're hard to see unless you're looking at the version on the app. PDFs can be very slow to load, especially if they are full of graphics (which textbooks frequently are!), and there is no DRM support so you will have to liberate any DRMed files you come across.
The RM2 has a companion app that offers cloud connectivity, however you're limited to very basic functionality unless you want to pay their subscription - which mainly just syncs the stuff from their private cloud into a handful of other services you might be using. You upload things to your tablet through the app, and it supports both PDF and EPUB formats.
To be honest, even though I have a bunch of complaints about it, it is by far the best implementation of an ebook reader that I've ever seen. It feels premium; the tablet itself is slim, and if you get the book folio it actually almost starts to feel like it's a real book in my hands. And I can't stop singing the praise of that large screen and how it lets you read a whole page of professionally typeset work without breaking the design is such a huge benefit. I've been reading that 1900 Wonderful Wizard of Oz book on it and even with the frustration of slow page turns it has made the experience so much nicer than if it were on my laptop!
I just really like the e-ink screens, but i think at that price-point it's just better for me to get a tablet, but if i had the money... i would love to get one of these just to read my e-comic collection :-) (as i read mostly noir stories the black/white screen would not even affect me that much)
Of note here, most EMR pens work with both the rM1 and rM2, and different people prefer different pens. I have a Remarkable Marker Plus, and a Lamy Al-Star EMR, and I don't see any difference in quality that justifies the significantly higher price of Remarkable's pen, which is additionally annoying in lacking a cap for its comparatively fragile tip and fragile ring around its tip, lacking a clip or any way to attach one, and attaching magnetically in a way that's ultimately not very secure. There is a patch which allows the Lamy's button to function as an eraser selection. I generally prefer the pen-like Lamy, except for its appearance; I know there are others who prefer the very pencil-like Staedler. There is actually a reasonable selection of different EMR pens and inserts; you can also mix-and-match some of the tips (the Lamy and Remarkable tips seem interchangeable; Lamy's feel more like pens, Remarkable's feel more like pencils).
I also have a ceramic-tip Supernote insert pen, which does function on the rM2, but I'm not confident that it wouldn't scratch the screen, and the pressure sensitivity does not work.
The Remarkable supports other ereader software (Plato, KOReader) which may have better document, highlighting and text note support (and allows highlighting without a pen), though on the other hand, I don't think either of them have good pen-based annotation support.
I have a 10.4" Samsung tablet and it's great for reading both PDF and comic books. I also own a Kindle Paperwhite.
I gotta be honest with you, in my experience and research, the best way to read PDFs is a regular tablet. The biggest you can get.
The exception to that would be those "novelty" very big e-ink devices from smaller companies, but you should understand that you're buying something that will serve primarily to read, everything else is clumsy and uncomfortable.
Even highlighting and making annotations on PDF will be a pain compared to a regular LCD. And don't expect to have a great experience browsing the web either.
And to be clear: I love reading ebooks on my Kindle. The issue is specific to PDFs.
yes i see, an E-reader will not be the solution i was looking for. I'm looking into the Lenovo Tab P11 Plus at the moment, it's not to expensive and pretty big.
Probably the closest is one of the larger Boox readers. Boox has solid hardware, and they run android so you never feel limited per se by the available readers or apps, since you can install any Android app (now, whether or not any given app works well on an e-ink screen is another question). In return, Android even with some modifications is a jankier experience than Kindle or Kobo's custom interface.
A boox note air is probably close to what you want.
No matter what, for PDF reading, always get something around the size of 8.5x11 (accounting for bezels). PDFs are pretty much all formatted for printing - bigger, and the text will be too big, smaller and it'll be too small. Around paper size is best.
i looked into this products, but it's expensive, i can get a really nice tablet for that price :-)