Eink ereader + ebooks
February 3rd, 2022
Will it show graphs and images at least? quality doesn’t really matter i just want to be able to read.
I’m going to look at some at the shops though im just curious what everyone thinks, and i only want Eink for the long battery life and no eye strain.
Hello there, i own two e-readers currently, both of which are considered the best, the Sony PRS 505 which i bought last year and the newer Amazon Kindle 3 latest generation. If your from America it might be worth checking out the Barnes and Noble Nook, i heard that was good too. Sony has a range of ebook readers out there, the PRS 505 was like the second one they produced i think, there are more modern models but the 505 seems to be the best performer across all the areas, plus it has the best readability and non glare out of all their other readers. It’s considered old now so you should be able to pick it up for less money. I think it would be bargain to get although there is a momentarily lag when you turn pages or navigate around in the menu system and it does lack wifi and internet browsing etc. Battery life on the sony is pretty good althoughin my experience they don’t live up to the manufacturers claims. The PRS 600 is touch screen but i hear that because they have an extra layer for the touch screen that it is a little blurry and not as bright as the 505. The prs 300 is a smaller version of the 505, same performance etc but smaller screen which is not really ideal.
The Kindle 3 is quite new and looks better and includes a wifi or 3g enabled internet browser. The browser sucks, it’s like using a 90’s computer in black and white to surf the net, plus it’s a tad slow loading web pages, so if you expect to browse the net with it as easy as you can with your comp then think again, it’s used mainly to navigate Amazon’s site to buy books. The Kindle has a very nice screen, the contrast is better on it than the Prs 505 so aids in readability. Both have the same sorta battery life although K3 with wifi/3g enabled will drain power quicker so bare that in mind.
On the issue of images and graphs, the Kindle 3 is not very good at displaying certain PDFs, some pdf’s it cannot reformat to display correctly on the screen and uses a zoom in feature instead which makes reading pdfs a chore since you have to fiddle about a bit. You can convert the PDF to it’s native format although i’ve not tried so i can’t really tell you if it’s successful or not. The Sony is much better with PDF’s and can reformat them to fit the screen. Both e-readers can view images, the kindle has a better greyscale and contrast so theres better colour representation although it’s not quite user friendly so you need to fiddle with it in order to get images to show up. The SOny PRS 505 is very intuitive and easy to use, just drag and drop images into a folder and voila it’s there under the picture category. The Sony because it is older has alot of hacks and cracks for it allowing it to be even more flexible, although you still need to put up with the laggy page turns, the kindle can do a page turn in 1/3 of the time but is not very flexible, case in point you cannot change your screensaver on the kindle unless you hack it which voids it’s warranty. I have found converting books to be relatively easy, the PRS 505 can read alot of formats already including epub format which is what you would get from project guttenberg, whereas the kindle is kinda limited but because of great conversion software such as calibre it can pretty much equal the playing field and convert the formats easily. So it’s very rare that you can’t find a format you won’t be able to read. If you can go check out the PRS 505, the nook in shops first. The kindle 3 has a 30 day no hassle return so if you buy it you can try it out for a month and have them pay for the return of the thing if you don’t like it. Look carefully at the functionality of each (page turn lag etc), the weight and the looks. If you have any other questions feel free to pm me or reply here.
i have a Sony PRS300. i have an hour commute to work and another hour home, and i use it every single day. i got it in March, and i can’t count how many books i’ve read on it, it’s just incredible.
i download books from here and elsewhere, then convert them using a program called Calibre. if you end up with a Sony (which i recommend), you can use Calibre to manage it, instead of the crap software it comes with.
most can display graphics, but it really depends on the type of file you are using. some don’t support graphics. what kind of books do you intend to read? technical books? text books? novels?