I’ve been getting back into reading and while nothing will beat a physical book, having a device with multiple EPUBS seems like a good way to save space and money. After a bit of searching, I’m down to two options: Kobo (specifically the Libra Colour) and Boox (specifically the Go Color 7). I’ve discarded tablets because they’re just a larger phone and thus blue light-induced eye strain. I’ve also discarded the Kindle because of Amazon’s business practices. I known that Kindles can jailbroken (which I wouldn’t mind doing) and I could buy one second-hand on eBay but I prefer to give my money towards a better competitor.
Which one do you think is better? Have you used their previous e-readers? How do they compare?
Thanks in advance!
Kobo user here. I dumped my kindle for two reasons: Amazon gave money to trump, and I wanted to get library books. The Kobo allows you to borrow books from your local library for FREE! I hated that you had to pay Amazon to be able to read anything in their walled gardens.
I have the Clara Colour unit. nice to hold, easy to use, can access library catalogs directly without having to jump back and forth to PC or other stuff. I find i dont use the colour a lot as i pretty much just use it to read books without pictures.
I would buy it again.
I have a Boox Palma, it’s really portable, but the tradeoff is the screen is pretty small.
Having it run android is both a gift and a curse. Being able to use self hosted solutions with it is nice, but the Boox OS kinda sucks (and it feels like I’m fighting it at times). On top of that not everything runs smoothly on it as it’s hardware isn’t the best.
I’ve also noticed it can run into “burn-in” issues where the text doesn’t fully clear until you force it.
That’s not burn-in, it’s ghosting. Just about every e-ink screen can have that problem if the software is doing partial/fast screen updates. E-ink screens are very slow and use somewhat more power when doing a full screen clear, so many devices save energy and time by only partially resetting the screen when turning pages/navigating. After some number of interactions, they’ll do the full screen refresh to clean out the ghosts.
Thanks, that is the term I was looking for, but I did find the Boox did it more than previous devices and I’d frequently have to force the refresh.
I’m not familiar with boox’s software (I’m still on a Nook but thinking of getting either a boox or kobo soon), but there may be a way to tweak how often it does a full refresh in the settings if you dig around a bit.
Yeah, there are different modes and configurations you can set up, and you can do it per app. It’s possible that I’ve just misunderstood some of those options, but I found I ran into the issue both when reading text on default settings and reading comics with modified settings.
I love my Kobo Libra Colour!
I have only good things to say about it.
- great screen size
- love the colour for covers when it’s on standby, and for if you read anything with images
- battery life is good
- holds a ton books
- works great with loading your own books from any source
- the device follows right to repair guidelines so you can fix any broken part without having to buy a new device
That last point really puts it above and beyond any other e-reader out there!
I love my kobo libre 2.
I have a Kobo Libra Color and it’s awesome for reading both books and comics (and anything color, really)! You can also use it to draw, though that functionality isn’t super great lol. I’ve sideloaded everything from Anna’s Archive (dot org) and haven’t had any issues.
I’ve heard Boox are neat too, youtuber jvscholz has some reviews on their various models!
I use a Kobo and it’s great for two reasons - firstly I can get library books on it via Libby/Overdrive. Secondly I can get pirated books in the event my library doesn’t offer it. As a small disclaimer I’ll always buy a book I love after pirating to support the author.
That’s why we originally bought the Kobos (two of them) and it worked up until last year. We simply could not get it working with Libby on either device so I’m assuming it’s a library issue.
I use calibre and calibre-web now and it’s great.
Boox price point and Kobo price point are way way different, correct?
Throwing out some love for the Bigme B7.
It’s my e-reader, my maps, my podcasts, and I can even knock out a reply to a telegram and then get back to my book without pulling out my (stupidly small) phone.
I have an old as eff Kobo, and it’s a marginally better e-reader, but just grabbing an Epub off the net, off nextcloud, or even reading a decent sized article… Yeah, love my B7.
How’s the battery life? I’ve been considering it vs a comparable boox device and most reviews have been pointing me at boox
Honestly? Not fantastic. I run it with the wifi and LTE on, some backlight, GPS on, and I get two solid days out of it. For e-ink, I would expect more. Still… Quite nice for what I paid. Much more useful than a pure e-reader, even just for ease of getting content into it, you know?
I miss the Yotaphone days.
Honestly thats better than the impression I had gotten, thanks for the reply! Its really hard to find current experiences with them, most were from when it came out and these days it so often hard to tell if thats representative of the product anymore. Plus bigme reviews are like disproportionately influencer marketing ads, which isn’t very helpful 😅
I guess I’ll have to consider boox vs bigme a bit more then. I wish there were more current direct comparisons
I had a few really annoying problems with the Bigme when I first got it, but two updates later and it’s really solid.
Thats super helpful! Are there any thing with it you still dont love other than the battery life? I think the comparable boox device has similar battery life issues, just as a product of running a full android os and having the more powerful hardware needed for that
Well, e-ink has it’s own limitations, so watching videos sucks. No headphone jack. The charge port is covered by the case when it’s closed, so I have to leave the case open when I charge it. The “menu ball” is a weird design choice, so I don’t use it. These are pretty nit-picky things though.
Been looking at a kobo for years, but finally went with a boox go b/w because of the feaures. I hate closed systems and while kobo’s isn’t as closed it’s still limited. Their store is way better than boox’s though, I’ll give them that.
Anyway the boox is fantastic. Thanks to android I’ve been able to read books, rss, even lemmy and reddit on it with minimal issues. They also have a “high speed” eink mode which makes scrolling tolerable on eink. Being android, the great downside is battery life. If you’re doing any kind of reading outside of simple ebooks or you put it through anything cpu-intensive or scrolling-intensive, it will gobble up your battery in hours or days. Standby is fine however, can last for weeks. Oh and also because of android, booting takes longer than other e-readers ( and you’ll probably do it more often then on a kobo too )
We have a Kobo Clara and a Pocketbook Touch Lux 5 in our house. Neither are color so I can’t speak to that, but both are usable offline with wired file transfer support, which was our main requirement. And decent privacy. Though I can’t speak to Boox, I will be considering another Kobo if the Pocketbook ever dies.
I liked my Boox, but I only had it for about a month before the screen shattered. No idea how it happened. I just picked it up one day, and it was unusable. Apparently their screens are pretty fragile, and they cost basically the price of the device over again to replace them. My plan now is to wait a bit, and get a reMarkable when I have the extra money available
There are ways of mitigating the blue light issue on tablets as well. My Samsung tablet has a thing called “Eye Comfort Shield” which applies kind of a tea-stained / sepia tone to everything.
Of course book reader apps have all their own font/color choices too.
I’m actually looking at replacing my current tablet, this one has caught my eye:
Do you, by chance, know the differences in battery life between a tablet vs a dedicated e-reader? I’ve heard, though I don’t know, that e-readers have better better battery life since e-paper used less power than blue light screens. Battery life won’t the deciding factor in my choice but long battery life would be a huge plus.
eReaders are definitely going to have better battery life, but for me, I haven’t hit that problem as I charge my devices nightly.
For me, the dealbreaker on eInk is color reproduction and refresh rate. I read a lot of comic books and color eInk is not ready for that yet.
Kobo Clara BW with calibre-web has been great!
Full control of your books with self hosted calibre-web. Open device that allows easy epub transfer via USB if you don’t go with calibre. Then its also quite repairable and water resistant which is great.
If you want to tinker with it, get the Boox. If you want something that just works, get the Kobo.
