I am a huge fan of reading novels on 8″ or smaller dedicated ereaders with eink with ambient light only, no front light. The reasons are:
- Low shine / lack of reflections (though this is really nothing to do with eink, just how they make most. Some are shiny and a failure).
- Metadata browsing library interface with search
- No need to adjust screen brightness as ambient light changes
- Very long charge life (even the maligned Kobo Sage and Amazon Kindle Oasis-2 is good enough)
- Good contrast (for over 10 years)
- Decent sharpness (any models with more than 227 ppi and ideally 300 ppi).
- No stupid nagging notifications or updates.
- No change to screen with viewing angle
Some eink based models don't meet the criteria above.
Historically LCD screen using devices had shiny screens (simply because it's cheaper), poor range of view angle, poor contrast (originally only mono with no shades! IPS and later screens solve viewing angle and contrast), poor control of brightness, short run time per charge, poor user interface and lack of resolution.
There are still plenty of substandard screens (even Apple who only concentrated on resolution) and devices, but there are also good desktop monitors though few decent tablets because shiny glass is cheap and a fashion. You can't go by brand.
A 6″ to 8″ mono eink for novels is better now than a paper experience and still has the edge over any other display for that purpose. Also dedicated ereaders with USB Mass Storage and a metadata library interface beat everything else if managed by Calibre for 1000s of books. A file browser is too clunky for that. So Kobo with support for series, collection and subtitle as well as author and title beats everything else for novels.
However as soon as you need PDFs, colour, comics, documents more complex than a novel with a few inline illustrations that can be ignored, and content creation you need a decent tablet, laptop or workstation (screen). The eink copes with simple typed notes and an annotation highlight for proofing novels or similar. The 8″ is better than 10.3″ for notes unless on a desk stand. But a decent tablet with a digitiser blows the Kobo Sage or Elipsa out of the water. The iPad is too shiny, as are the similar spec and price big name Android tablets. There are now 10″+ size tablets with similar run time per charge to some eink, certainly good enough.