Good device for DIY books, manga, comics?

[biGPlant]

Hello again.

You may recognize me as the guy who bricked his Libra 2 after trying to flash koreader and not correctly following the instructions.
I tried to bring it back to life, but failed.

If I were, in theory, to buy another device for:

• diy books like this one --> Ultimate Guide: Plumbing in PDF format.

• magazines in PDF format.

• manga in cbz format

• comics in cbz format

• basic epubs support

What would be optimal for this?

I promise I won't break it this time

Thanks for reading!

[Quoth]

A 10″ or larger tablet with a true matt screen. There are several brands. Some are better than tablets with shiny screens costing x5 more.

Even an 8″ Sage is often too small. I have (or had) 6, 6.8, 7, 7.8, 8, 9.7 and 10.3 inch eink, inc Libra, Libra 2, Sage, Elipsa and reMarkable.

The 6 to 8 inch mono eink are great for novels (reflowable epub), but poor to unusable for PDF.

[Anghirrim]

Yep, I second that. I bought my Forma (8") with the hope to read pdf's as an extra. But it's way too small.

[biGPlant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A 10″ or larger tablet with a true matt screen. There are several brands. Some are better than tablets with shiny screens costing x5 more.

Even an 8″ Sage is often too small. I have (or had) 6, 6.8, 7, 7.8, 8, 9.7 and 10.3 inch eink, inc Libra, Libra 2, Sage, Elipsa and reMarkable.

The 6 to 8 inch mono eink are great for novels (reflowable epub), but poor to unusable for PDF.

Thanks for the this (sorry for the late reply)

I see you have the nxtpaper 11. I tried to order one but I can't find it on amazon or ebay. Is it only avaliable in the Europe? Are they preparing for a new release?

I read your thread on it, so it seems like you're satisfied with the device.

[Quoth]

TCL's marketing and releases are a bit incomprehensible. There might be the Nxtpaper 10 (maybe earlier version of nxtpaper) in USA, which normally has mobile/cell built in. Or there might be the newer Nxtpaper 14 and Nxtpaper 14 pro, which isn't available in Europe, but might be in the USA and uses a newer version of nxtpaper. They have always made the Alcatel brand phones and now also make the Nokia branded phones.
Honor and Hauwei might have similar tablets.
I was in a dedicated Apple store yesterday and all theirs are extremely shiny.

[leaston]

biGPlant, I'm also looking for a reader for similar purposes...manga, comics, pdf and maybe fiction.

I have a couple of tablets (Android and iPad) and a Kobo Forma (8" screen). The Forma is wonderful for fiction and not much else.

The new, colour readers from Kobo have piqued my interest, mainly for reading comics, but they just aren't big enough. I want a 10" screen reader, with colour and decent pdf capabilities. I'd imagine we'll see a 10" colour reader at some point if the Kobo devices sell well for them, but I doubt the pdf handling will improve much.

So, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm sticking with a 'normal' tablet.

The iPad is fantastic for speed, build quality, battery life and the screen is great. However, the iOS experience is beyond dreadful. I cannot get on with being forced to work the Apple way and having no access to the OS or directory structure.

The Android tablets can be just as good as the iPad, depending on the brand. However, Google still hasn't adapted Android to deal with tablet sized screens in the way Apple did. It makes for some frustrating experiences with certain apps. That said, as things stand now, my only real go to for anything other than fiction is a 10" Android tablet.

I live in hope there will be one device that fits all, eventually

[kwik]

A 10+ inch reader than can handle the formats you listed well is what I want too. But I am not prepared to pay the high sums being asked by the companies currently making 10+ inch e-readers.

[Havsabas]

What about a Kindle Scribe?
Would that be arecommended device fot his usecase?
(This is pretty much the usecase i had in mind and I am also looking for recommendations)

[DNSB]

One law firm that I do some work for is looking to replace their old Sony devices. That you need to send your PDFs to Amazon before you can mark up the document and that sharing annotations requires emailing them made the Scribe a non-starter for them. What they want is the ability to check a PDF file out of the corporate library, mark it up and check it back in with the mark up using Adobe's standard for PDF mark up.

[kwik]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One law firm that I do some work for is looking to replace their old Sony devices. That you need to send your PDFs to Amazon before you can mark up the document and that sharing annotations requires emailing them made the Scribe a non-starter for them. What they want is the ability to check a PDF file out of the corporate library, mark it up and check it back in with the mark up using Adobe's standard for PDF mark up.

That doesn't surprise me. Amazon are in the spyware business (Kindle, Echo, Ring). CIA and countless State Mafia contracts too. Not to be trusted. The problem is, most companies are the same rotten lot.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by Havsabas

What about a Kindle Scribe?
Would that be arecommended device fot his usecase?
(This is pretty much the usecase i had in mind and I am also looking for recommendations)

Great screen, but you need to be a bit tech savvy to get the most out of it. As of now I've had only small problems with converting pdfs and comics into kfx format, but this may change, as Amazon appears to be cracking down on sideloaded content. So I really would recommend looking at other companies making 10'' readers, even though I still love mine.

Major problem is that it doesn't read sideloaded pdfs well, and it doesn't read comics formats at all, so you really need to convert those into their newest kfx format, and that's not as straightforward as it sounds. Their way is to send your files via their web app to your device. This has limit on file sizes, and may destroy quality in the process, that's why it's best to do that process locally, and this only works via command line tool that you can find on this forum.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Great screen, but you need to be a bit tech savvy to get the most out of it. As of now I've had only small problems with converting pdfs and comics into kfx format, but this may change, as Amazon appears to be cracking down on sideloaded content. So I really would recommend looking at other companies making 10'' readers, even though I still love mine.

Major problem is that it doesn't read sideloaded pdfs well, and it doesn't read comics formats at all, so you really need to convert those into their newest kfx format, and that's not as straightforward as it sounds. Their way is to send your files via their web app to your device. This has limit on file sizes, and may destroy quality in the process, that's why it's best to do that process locally, and this only works via command line tool that you can find on this forum.

It is not that hard to convert a comic PDF to KFX comic format with Kindle Create, if you are willing to forgo panel view. Creating the panel views is not difficult either, but it takes time (panel auto-detect does not work very well except for traditional comic strip layout and some manga).

I am not seeing evidence Amazon is 'cracking down on side-loaded content'. I am guessing you are talking about circumstances where it 'gets removed'? But nobody has shared enough information to be able to reproduce this as far as I know. Imputing intent is premature until then, and with more information it might be something that could be avoided entirely. I've tried to reproduce but unsuccessfully.

You have a choice when it comes to Send To Kindle: create a fixed layout ePub (when I have created a comic KFX, From KFX toolbar does a good job at creating ePub/PDF/CBZ), or send PDF to get converted to Print Replica format. The main issue with the latter is that Print Replica does not support facing pages (spreads), which are often found in comic books. Even with large displays, print replica will only display one page at a time.

You cannot get panel view (or 'advanced features' of print replica) with anything sent to Send To Kindle. Unfortunately it does not accept KPF.

The Scribe screen is fantastic for manga and B&W comics, and I have several I have done DIY. 8" screen is not big enough; 10" is just adequate for 2 page spreads (manga work well as they generally have smaller page sizes to begin with than graphic novels).

I have a PocketBook InkPad Color 3 7.8" and while I think some improvements could be made for handing comics better, it's just not physically big enough. I may have to experiment with Kindle Comic Converter to see if its Panel View options would help.

[Havsabas]

Thank you very much for the replies

I have ordered both the kindle scribe and a Boox Go 10.3 in the meanwhile.
I am keeping the Scribe and returning the other.

Going to write-up a brief comparison to help others who are on the same boat

Screen:
Boox has a screen that is fantastic and lacking at the same time. Has no front light and does not have a variant in the western market that does have it at the same PPI - which is super strange. It also has a huge ghosting issue. Pages usually have noticeable ghosting. Everything looks great on it - only after you manually refresh the page. The image is pretty much right on the surface and in print quality. Quite uncanny.

Scribe screen is great. It would have been the best screen I've seen on an e-reader if I did not receive the Boox on the same day. Having a front light and a glass screen, the images look quite sunken in, but the combination of 300 PPI and a fine-tunable light does give a nice holographic look to the images. The refresh rate is very fast, much faster than the Boox, while ghosting is pretty much a non-issue - there is some of it sometimes, but you don't see it if you don't go looking for it.


UX:
Boox runs android. It allows you to just install Mihon on it and basically have your manga automatically download and update all the time - great for keeping up with ongoing series. The downside, however, is huge. Android is clearly not made for e-ink, so it at least looks bad on 3rd party apps, and is straight up unusable at points. Mihon's default reader interface is no exception. You basically can not swipe to turn pages, since it tries to scroll, very poorly, and even after you rewire you muscle memory to only tap for pageturns, you still have to go into deep system settings and manually tell the app to flash wildly between pages to battle ghosting. This still nets you a reading experience that is more distracting than the scribe because of the flashing and you are still left with more ghosting, somehow. The device does come with a default reader app, and this app at least allows you to swipe between pages. The flashing here is less intense and the ghosting is more acceptable, but none are at scribe levels. However, if you do want to use the default reading app rather than Mihon you do have to give up some of the convenience - such as having to manually download the issues, having to manually mark issues as read for tracking and updating to work properly and having to navigate 3-4 folders deep every time you pick up the device. Android downsides don't end there. Boox devices famously don't have sleep so you basically boot up every time you go to read something. The combination of slow refresh and other optimization issues makes everything you do on the screen feel unresponsive. When i ended up installing a Mihon port on my ipad before returning the Boox I felt like I jumped forward in time.

Scribe on the other hand is extremely limited but very snappy. It is a pain to convert CBZs with KCC first and send them to scribe via Calibre, but once they are there, it's all good. Kindle home screen layout, is what it is, and comics don't make sense in that layout before you organize them into collections - which feels clunky to do. But, again, once you do that, it's all good. The page turns are snappy, flashing and ghosting are non-issues. You get proper sleep, proper wake and a fantastic battery life. You press the power button and you are right back to the page you were reading - this takes some minutes and many awkward taps on the Boox.


Build:
Boox is much lighter than the Scribe, which is great, but did not inspire any confidence in me for it's potential longevity. Its screen has a bit of give to it, which feels nice, but also feels like it might be an issue in the long run. I enjoyed the back texture and did not find that the sharp corners of the back cover materials affected day to day use. Because of it's weight it was easier to read from when on a chair, or holding it up in any fashion. The bezels though were too small and too asymmetric for me. All in all, it felt like it was one wrong move away from bending, and I am glad I did not void my return conditions.

Scribe feels like a tank. The added weight is not great and one-handing it becomes impossible very quickly, but I do feel like I am holding a premium device and I do feel like it will be with me for a good while. Screen texture is excellent, even just for swiping. I love the chunky bezel. I even dig the button feel.

TLDR:
Boox Go 10.3 - Screen looks great but has major ghosting issues. Getting manga on it super easy. UX is poor, every interaction feels awkward, and you have to cold boot it every time you pick it up. It doesn't weigh much but the build quality does not inspire any confidence.

Scribe - Screen looks good, and has no ghosting issues. Getting manga on it is a chore. UX is excellent, super snappy but is super locked down - wake from sleep takes few seconds and you pick up where you left off. It is heavy but super well-built.


I was pretty much looking for a sleep-machine and Kindle fits that purpose much better. I will be missing the on-going series tracking and update features of Mihon, a lot. But towards the end of my testing period, the idea of loading my sleep-machine with every series I have on my list and forgeting about doing any higher level stuff on it did prevail. The Mihon / tachiyomi navigation experience is better on non-e-ink tablets, and i don't want to be doing much more than swiping pages before bed.