Help me find: Page-turn buttons & sideloading

[Elfwreck]

In light of the second database collapse on my Pocketbook HD-3, I'm considering replacing it. I've had several ereaders and am very familiar with the standard option range. (I used to be a regular here.) I'm looking for:

• Buttons to turn pages - not optional, non-negotiable; not interested in anything that's touchscreen only.
• 6" or smaller screen (I miss 5" readers but I don't think anyone's making them anymore) (Could be flexible on this)
• Easy sideloading (drag and drop into folders)
• Epub support (I gather they may all have this now)
• Available in the US (Could hypothetically be flexible on this; I have friends in UK and Europe and could arrange for shipping.)
• Long battery life: 8+ hours reading time; more than 3 days idle time between charges. (I expect more than a week of idle time, but I don't need it.)
• Large database capacity: Can handle several thousand ebooks without choking; can navigate in folders with several hundred to a couple-thousand files. I want a library, not a bookshelf.

Do not care about (will not use):

• Wifi; bluetooth
• Audio of any sort
• Large storage capacity (8gb is fine; 4gb is fine; nothing is that small anymore.) (Currently have about 4500 ebooks in my PB, which takes up less than 2gb of the 16gb drive.)
• Store connections/support (won't use; 90% of what I read is fanfic)
• ADE support
• Waterproof (...I am capable of putting my ereader in a ziploc if I want to read in the tub)

Would like, optional:

• Frontlight - I've gotten used to one but don't need it.
• Asian language support - current Pocketbook does not show Japanese characters; no idea how to activate that
• SD card option - never used; might be nice.
• US tech support (the pipe dream; I think Amazon is the only one, and Kindles don't have page turn buttons)
• Filetype support outside of epub - pdf, mobi, html, doc/docx.
• No account needed to start using it (last I checked, Kobo and Kindle both require a login to set up the device at all, but it can be ignored after that)

Used/Refurbished is fine. If I could find an Astak Pocket EZ-Reader with a battery that's not 10 years dead, I'd use that.

A quick look around says options may include:

• Onyx Boox Darwin, Poke4 Lite
• Pocketbook - various options; all may have the database problem I've run into
• Is the Ectaco Jetbook still a thing? (I prefer e-ink. Willing to consider otherwise to get other features.)

Other options seem to be larger than the desired 6" screen.

[Aleron Ives]

The Kobo Libra 2 has most of what you want, if you can compromise on the 7" screen.

It supports EPUB/PDF/HTML/MOBI, drag and drop sideloading, 50+ hours of reading per charge (depending on frontlight), and it supports large libraries. You don't actually need to connect to a Kobo account to use it, if you edit the configuration file the first time you turn it on.

I've never used an Onyx device, so I don't know how good the Boox Darwin is, but I guess you can compare its features to the Libra to see if they outweigh your desire for a 6" screen. I only mention the Libra since you said you could be flexible on the screen size.

[Elfwreck]

I could deal with a larger screen (really don't want one; I miss my 5" ereaders), but I'd want to know what it does better than the 6" readers with physical page-turn buttons.

I had a Kobo Mini in the past and remembered not being able to set it up without an account (no idea how I could edit a config file), but I also remember it not being a hassle - I set up something, turned off wifi and never touched the "account" again.

I remember it not being easy to navigate through large numbers of books, but that may be a nearly universal thing. Can't remember if I could turn off cover view so it just showed a text list of titles. (Most of what I read is fanfic; there are no covers. Auto-generated covers are just text that's too small to read.)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I could deal with a larger screen (really don't want one; I miss my 5" ereaders), but I'd want to know what it does better than the 6" readers with physical page-turn buttons.

Depends on what you mean by "better", as preferences differ wildly. A Kobo is the best option for heavy Calibre users (automatic metadata, series and collection management) and for those who like a plethora of customization options. If those things aren't important to you, a Kobo won't have any particular advantages for you personally.

[Elfwreck]

I don't use Calibre much, although I've considered starting. Mostly I download fic directly from AO3. If the Kobo would recognize series tags from there, that's useful to me.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I don't use Calibre much, although I've considered starting. Mostly I download fic directly from AO3. If the Kobo would recognize series tags from there, that's useful to me.

Nope. You need Calibre for series management (for sideloaded books, of course).

[kandwo]

In your case I'd go for the Onyx Boox Darwin if you can get hold of it.

If the screen size is important you might want to consider the Hisense devices. Functionality wise they are definitely overkill for your stated purposes, but they are small and are easy and comfortable to read on with page turn (volume) buttons.

[Aleron Ives]

Honestly, I hope Kobo refreshes the Nia as a 5" device, instead of keeping it as a gimped version of the Clara, since it's kind of pointless right now, and the market is lacking in 5" readers these days. Wanting buttons on a 6" reader limits your options significantly, though.

[Elfwreck]

The Boox Darwin is available in the Ectaco shop for $240 (or potentially lower; they have a "bid" option); the Caesar 4 is cheaper and the Poke 4 is more expensive. None of their other 6" models seem to be available in the US. (Unless I want to take my chances with ebay.)

The Hisense Hi Reader seems to be $400 and maybe only available through the GoodEReaderStore. Larger-but-narrower screen size might be okay. One of the main reasons for wanting a 6" screen is "fits in women's jacket pocket." (People who aren't familiar with the pockets issue in women's fashion will not know how to make reasonable suggestions.) But it's not clear from the reviews if there's page-turning buttons. (Maybe has only one button? Which can be set to different things for single click vs double click? But there's no list of the actual options that I could find.)

The $400 price tag (...possibly +$50 shipping?) is not as much a barrier as the fact that it doesn't seem to have any US storefront or tech support. (The Hisense A5... phone? which is an older model might work. But again: No reliable US source, no tech support.)

I'm aware that wanting buttons sharply limits my options. I used to have a Kobo Mini, which was touchscreen only, and when the battery started to run low, the screen didn't always register taps, which got really annoying. (Especially since the battery indicator also didn't work, so I didn't have any warning that it was low.)

And I hated having to constantly move my hand (or at least my finger) back and forth - move it onto the page to tap for next, and out of the way so I could read the text.

If a touchscreen-only reader had other features I really liked - that I haven't mentioned here, because it's hard to talk about navigation & sorting options - I might consider giving up page buttons. But an ereader would to offer better software functions that I'm getting from my current Pocketbook.

Things I'd like:

• Show filenames and sort by date/time added
• Edit metadata (hah; I don't think anything will let me edit the visible title)
• Show list (titles, authors, filenames) excluding books marked "complete"
• Select multiple ebooks & add them to categories/move them to folders

I'm aware Calibre would let me do most of that; I'm trying to dodge having to spend extra time sorting and then upload to the device. (I want to not have to get out of bed & start up the computer in order to sort ebooks to find the one(s) I want to read next.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'm aware Calibre would let me do most of that; I'm trying to dodge having to spend extra time sorting and then upload to the device. (I want to not have to get out of bed & start up the computer in order to sort ebooks to find the one(s) I want to read next.)

For me, calibre and the search functions on my Kobo ereaders work very well to find a book I want to read. Much like with calibre, I don't worry about where the books are stored since search works on the metadata stored in the database.

Admittedly, I will sometimes queue up a series (search for the series, sort by series index) and starting with the last member and opening it, returning to search and repeating until I hit the first in the series. The 5 opened books on the home screen will allow me to step through those books as I finish them even if there are more than 5 books in the series.

[Sirtel]

Kobo has built-in categories Unread, Reading and Finished. Books get sorted into those automatically.

As to Calibre being an additional step in sorting... not with Kobos. Once you've sorted/tagged the books in Calibre and connect your Kobo, all the categories get automatically uploaded to the device when you send the books over. That means you won't have to do any manual sorting and category creating on the device. After disconnecting everything will be already sorted and categorized. AFAIK it should work the same way with Pocketbooks, but I've never owned a Pocketbook, so can't say for sure.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The Boox Darwin is available in the Ectaco shop for $240 (or potentially lower; they have a "bid" option); the Caesar 4 is cheaper and the Poke 4 is more expensive. None of their other 6" models seem to be available in the US. (Unless I want to take my chances with ebay.)

The Hisense Hi Reader seems to be $400 and maybe only available through the GoodEReaderStore. Larger-but-narrower screen size might be okay. One of the main reasons for wanting a 6" screen is "fits in women's jacket pocket." (People who aren't familiar with the pockets issue in women's fashion will not know how to make reasonable suggestions.) But it's not clear from the reviews if there's page-turning buttons. (Maybe has only one button? Which can be set to different things for single click vs double click? But there's no list of the actual options that I could find.)

The $400 price tag (...possibly +$50 shipping?) is not as much a barrier as the fact that it doesn't seem to have any US storefront or tech support. (The Hisense A5... phone? which is an older model might work. But again: No reliable US source, no tech support.)

I'm aware that wanting buttons sharply limits my options. I used to have a Kobo Mini, which was touchscreen only, and when the battery started to run low, the screen didn't always register taps, which got really annoying. (Especially since the battery indicator also didn't work, so I didn't have any warning that it was low.)

And I hated having to constantly move my hand (or at least my finger) back and forth - move it onto the page to tap for next, and out of the way so I could read the text.

If a touchscreen-only reader had other features I really liked - that I haven't mentioned here, because it's hard to talk about navigation & sorting options - I might consider giving up page buttons. But an ereader would to offer better software functions that I'm getting from my current Pocketbook.

Things I'd like:

• Show filenames and sort by date/time added
• Edit metadata (hah; I don't think anything will let me edit the visible title)
• Show list (titles, authors, filenames) excluding books marked "complete"
• Select multiple ebooks & add them to categories/move them to folders

I'm aware Calibre would let me do most of that; I'm trying to dodge having to spend extra time sorting and then upload to the device. (I want to not have to get out of bed & start up the computer in order to sort ebooks to find the one(s) I want to read next.)

Kobo Mini used IR touch screen tech. New devices use capacitive like smartphones. They aren't directly comparable.

Boox devices let you show filenames, sort by date/time added, name, authors and size. You can also filter out finished books and select multiple ebooks to move into folders. You can also nest folders. You can't edit metadata though but you can rename the filename.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The Boox Darwin is available in the Ectaco shop for $240 (or potentially lower; they have a "bid" option); the Caesar 4 is cheaper and the Poke 4 is more expensive. None of their other 6" models seem to be available in the US. (Unless I want to take my chances with ebay.)

The Hisense Hi Reader seems to be $400 and maybe only available through the GoodEReaderStore. Larger-but-narrower screen size might be okay. One of the main reasons for wanting a 6" screen is "fits in women's jacket pocket." (People who aren't familiar with the pockets issue in women's fashion will not know how to make reasonable suggestions.) But it's not clear from the reviews if there's page-turning buttons. (Maybe has only one button? Which can be set to different things for single click vs double click? But there's no list of the actual options that I could find.)

The $400 price tag (...possibly +$50 shipping?) is not as much a barrier as the fact that it doesn't seem to have any US storefront or tech support. (The Hisense A5... phone? which is an older model might work. But again: No reliable US source, no tech support.)

Things I'd like:

• Show filenames and sort by date/time added
• Edit metadata (hah; I don't think anything will let me edit the visible title)
• Show list (titles, authors, filenames) excluding books marked "complete"
• Select multiple ebooks & add them to categories/move them to folders

I'm aware Calibre would let me do most of that; I'm trying to dodge having to spend extra time sorting and then upload to the device. (I want to not have to get out of bed & start up the computer in order to sort ebooks to find the one(s) I want to read next.)

All the Hisense products have volume buttons on the right side of the phone/reader; they are also used for turning pages. On the left side they have an additional "e-ink button", which by default does a full screen refresh when pressed once and enables/disables the frontlight when double pressed. This additional button is programmable and the functions can be switched out to whatever else you please.

I would rather buy Hisense products from Aliexpress than GoodEreader (they have a very bad reputation for a reason).

Both Hisense and Onyx Boox (Darwin) use Android. If you have an Android phone you can try out the reader functionality installing Alreader X (the default on Darwin) on it or Koreader or Moon Reader or Librera or whatever else you want.

If you go for the Darwin I'd recommend going for the latest model as they upgraded the Android and some internal specs for that one. Any of the models should be fine, but the latest is obviously more future-proof.

[rcentros]

I know they're long in the tooth, but if you want a 5" reader with buttons, used Sony PRS-350s are still available. I think they would fulfill your main requirements except for large database capacity. New batteries seem widely available for PRS-350s.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I know they're long in the tooth, but if you want a 5" reader with buttons, used Sony PRS-350s are still available. I think they would fulfill your main requirements except for large database capacity. New batteries seem widely available for PRS-350s.

Also they work with Calibre and collections, but best to change the default to a custom collection column or all those tags create collections.
Extracting annotations doesn't seem to work with Calibre and the old Sony Windows PC desktop program is ghastly. The PRS-350 is far better than a new Y-Ben / Yiben P47L a 4.7″ ereader (buttons, but no touch, no collections or series, covers & images often fail and terrible battery life reading, standby better than Kindle, but 8G Flash). My PRS-350 is still on the original battery and the only advantage at all of the later PRS-T2 is the SD Card slot.