Other Need Suggestions for an e-book Reader

su30mki117

su30mki117

Disciple
Need to buy an e-book reader ( budget about Rs. 6000 ). Most of the books I read will be in PDF format (mostly text based).

Now, I have almost zeroed in on the Nook Simple Touch. But, the reviews online are mixed when it comes to Nook handling the PDF files, so a bit confused.

Is the Nook Simple Touch good enough for text based PDFs?
Or are there better alternatives out there?
 
If your PDFs are gonna be mostly text based, as you say, I don't think you will have much problems with the Nook or Kindle. Text reflow will work mostly well. If, and only if, your PDFs contain more images, these readers will cause problems. I would rather choose the current gen Kindle 6", given that Amazon will take care of the after sales part.
http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00...rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=408408907&pf_rd_i=1320006031
 
Thanks for the clarification.

I will give the Kindle a look, but I guess I will finally tip in the favour of Nook knowing that I can root it :p
 
Nook simple touch does a better job of reflowing multi column text. Kindle is slightly worse off.

Might be a good idea if you can test out few of your pdfs with the device before buying. That way you wont be disappointed if the pdfs doesnt work as well as you expected.
 
If most will be A4, then try to imagine how small it will look on a 6 inch screen. Cut out a template from cardboard which is the same size as the nook screen stick it on your PC then reduce the size of the text so it fits.

How well can you read ?

If you cannot then you will realise that the best screen size for A4 is either 9.7 or 10.1. A 10.1 will read in landscape mode without any modifications required.

Reflow is for text only and messes with the layout.

Next, the PDF handling is largely dependent on how complex your PDFs are to begin with. What is the avg filesize of your PDF's ?

Processing power is needed here and these ebook readers are good for just one thing. Reading material sold either by amazon or B&N that is optimised and formatted for such a screen. These devices are subsidised to sell ebooks. This is the same model used by companies like gilette except books cost a great deal more than blades :)

if you must have a 6 inch ereader then you will have to process your pdf files into a size that will work. There is a tool called k2pdfopt. Get to know that tool, process your pdfs, then put them up for others that have the device you are interested in and ask them to tell you how the peformance is.
 
Now you have got me thinking :)

Thanks a ton for the advice! I already have a Nexus 7, thought I will get an e-ink device to relax my eyes a bit, now I guess that's too much of a wishful thinking. I guess I will make do with Nexus 7 for now.

I heard the Sony readers are a bit better in handling PDFs, any truth in this?
 
su30mki117 said:
Now you have got me thinking :)

Thanks a ton for the advice! I already have a Nexus 7, thought I will get an e-ink device to relax my eyes a bit, now I guess that's too much of a wishful thinking. I guess I will make do with Nexus 7 for now.

I heard the Sony readers are a bit better in handling PDFs, any truth in this?
Click to expand...


not really, both nook and sony are better than kindle at pdf, but not by much.
 
su30mki117 said:
Now you have got me thinking :)

Thanks a ton for the advice! I already have a Nexus 7, thought I will get an e-ink device to relax my eyes a bit, now I guess that's too much of a wishful thinking. I guess I will make do with Nexus 7 for now.
Click to expand...
A quad-core tab vs an e-reader isn't a fair match. Also e-ink display tech is slower than what you find on a tab. From what i can tell on e-readers its the software that matters for PDF, so stock does not do it well. Amazon or B&N are not interested in pdf they want to sell you their books.

Brightness on my tab is set to ~10%, no auto-brightness and its quite easy to read indoors. Outdoors in bright light might be harder with a tab.

How do you find a 7 inch tab for reading A4 ? Text size helps if its not too small.

su30mki117 said:
I heard the Sony readers are a bit better in handling PDFs, any truth in this?
Click to expand...
What is the avg filesize of your pdfs and how complicated are they. Post one up and ask people that have e-readers to tell you how well it works.

Look for demos of onyx e-readers on youtube they will give you an idea of the best pdf performance you can expect with ereaders. Since you are used to nexus 7 it might be a disappointment.
 
Brightness on my tab is set to ~10%, no auto-brightness and its quite easy to read indoors. Outdoors in bright light might be harder with a tab.
Click to expand...

It's enough if I set the brightness to minimum on the Nexus 7 to read indoors, it's not a problem at all and I don't really do any outside reading.
But I can certainly feel my eyes getting strained after about an hour of reading.


How do you find a 7 inch tab for reading A4 ? Text size helps if its not too small.
Click to expand...

It is definitely readable on Aldiko after a bit of tinkering but can be better. Which app do you use for pdfs?

What is the avg filesize of your pdfs and how complicated are they.
Click to expand...

Average file size is about 3 to 5 MB and mostly text based, nothing with multiple columns or lots of images.

As I said, I guess I will stick with the tab for now.
 
su30mki117 said:
But I can certainly feel my eyes getting strained after about an hour of reading.
Click to expand...
And is this the same if you were to read on a laptop ?

I never could understand the eye strain thing because once things went LCD i had no more eye strain. Working in front of a CRT was a much different affair.

What slows me is actually understanding what i've read, that takes much more time & effort :)

su30mki117 said:
It is definitely readable on Aldiko after a bit of tinkering but can be better. Which app do you use for pdfs?
Click to expand...
started off with mantano because everybody was raving about it and ended up with adobe which had free highlighting.

su30mki117 said:
Average file size is about 3 to 5 MB and mostly text based, nothing with multiple columns or lots of images.

As I said, I guess I will stick with the tab for now.
Click to expand...
Put it up somewhere and ask those with an e-reader to tell you what the experience is like.
 
Do you want to save and get an iPad? Reading on it is really worth the wait. Battery life is good too plus you can do other things with it.
 
Me too was looking for an e-reader for quite sometime. But unfortunately due to this PDF format's i could'nt get one still. Each of the other Nook/ Kindle/ Sony e-book reader et al, has one drawback or the other. My requirement is - an e-book reader that can be used to store all those academic related books for particular class/ board (this is for a school teacher/ College lecturer) so that it can be used, rather than carrying more than one book for reference.
If any of you know about the links - pls do share. Need to convert these school/ college books to pdf format (scan the book/ convert to pdf) and use in the e-book.
 
If you're going to be scanning books then even a tablets GPU might not suffice. You will need an ultrabook. These grabs will be anywhere from 10-50MB unless you use some good image compression.
 
I have a kindle touch and I have also tried Nook simple touch. They are NOT AT ALL adequate for pdf reading. I did a lot of research before buying the kindle a couple of years ago. PDFs are just not doable on an e-reader, no matter how simple it is.

However, if the pdf is light and only has text, then you can always convert them to EPUB (for NST) or mobi (for Kindle) and that would give you much better results. Conversion is very simple and the best tool is caliber. It not only converts but also acts like a personal library with all kinds of archiving options. It can even act like a central server from which you can upload/download files at any time anywhere. It becomes a central repository.

BTW, are these PDFs technical in nature or do you read a lot of fiction PDFs? I read fiction, fantasy, sci-fi etc. and buy the books from Amazon or get them from humble bundle deals. So, if the books that you read are mostly linear fiction/non fiction books, they would convert nicely to the native format of the respective e-reader.

Also, a word of caution. Barnes and Noble is on its way down. Google it if you are not not aware of this already. Might be a better idea to put your money where you get the most guarantees: amazon, sony etc. I can vouch for Kindle. Its the best e-reader, period.
 
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