Learn me Ereaders..

Mrs. DX has had a kindle for the last few years or so and the model she has is no longer supported and can't be updated so it is obsolete. I am potentially trying to find a cheap replacement. I have been looking around on the market and found the Barnes and Noble Nook BNRV 200 for cheap. It looks like you could also use this as a tablet as well. Any recommendations? Trying to keep this as cheap as possible.

The black and white ones with eInk screens will have dramatically better battery life and readability. I'd strongly recommend going that way. Nothing's more frustrating than kicking back to read and having the book flatline. My eInk Nook lasts for weeks and weeks on a charge, and I read constantly.

I like the Nook because I can load books in via Calibre easily. Looks like the current equivalent to mine is the GlowLight Plus. There's not really much to support so it never really goes obsolete. If you want to load books from Amazon into it, Calibre can do the conversion for you automagically.

I don't know Kindles as well - ever since the DRM foolishness with 1984, I've shied away from them. But can't you just plug it into a computer and load it up like an external drive? There are lots of sources for books other than Amazon.

Otherwise, you're buying a tablet. Get a tablet

The Nook you're looking at is their old model, refurbed. I had one. It's essentially a gawdawful slooooow early Android tablet that is handcuffed to a B&N operating system skin that restricts you to doing like four things. Battery life ain't great, apps are nonexistent (because you don't use the actual google play store), and I think the DRM restrictions on the books you get are a pain. IIRC, this is why I jailbroke mine, which helped, but was a pain.

The best thing I ever did with it was take it to B&N and trade it in on a new "Nook", which is just a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 with a couple of undeleteable apps from B&N. It wound up costing $90 after the $45 credit they gave me for the trade-in.

I've also had an e-ink original Kindle. Keith's right, the battery life is ridiculously good, but it's a unitasker. If your wife is the type to charge her stuff frequently and would take advantage of the extra functionality of the tablet, a tablet is probably the way to go. Otherwise, get a newer Kindle/Nook with the e-ink and the backlight.

This is relevant to my interests.

Keith - does your Nook allow you to upload a PDF file and view remotely without an internet connection? Being able to look at PDF's on something larger than my phone for work would be nice.

Nooks had a wider range of format support (PDF, epub, et.al) it does not support Amazon's .azw format however.

The problem with the Nook product line is that their store absolutely​ sucks for buying books as they go to great lengths to prevent you form actually getting the file so you can back it up.

While I was overseas we often didnt have wifi so I had to sideload books using Calibre. When B&N ended support for downloading books onto my PC I stopped buying from them.

I use Calibre heavily to manage the my collection as I have zero faith B&N will survive as a business year to year. It also allows you to convert books from Amazon or PlayBooks to epub.

There's an add-on to strip DRM from ebooks for Calibre. I won't link or go into how to use it but it allows you to make your purchases platform agnostic. From there you can choose whatever platform works for you.

I hear KOBOs are good too as they read a multitude of formats including .epub and .PDF files. Using Calibre should allow you to sideload onto it using other sources so you're not tied to anyone's store.

The big advantage to a Kindle would be Kindle Unlimited. I know a few people who are really happy with that service. Otherwise I see no reason to hitch your wagon to a particular ecosystem.

I have a newer e-ink kindle backlit model and its great. Snappy response, great battery life, read comfortably in any amount or lack of light, and I can read whatever material I want on it once properly converted with the Calibre program on my PC.

If you want to only get books from Amazon and the library, get whichever Kindle that is in your price range. If not, get one of the Kobo e-readers. They will offer the flexibility to read whatever file format that you have. It requires a little more effort since you will need to manually load your amazon books but you can also put epub, pdf, etc... on that you wouldn't necessarily be able to read with an unmodified kindle. It is a convenience versus versatility argument.

The0retical wrote: a bunch of technobabble...

And that is why I haven't bought one of these yet.

I just want some sort of touch-screen reader than can view PDF's. Zoom in, pan around, go from page to page. Preferably with about a 8.5 x 11 screen size.

How does the whole library checkout thing work with e-readers?

In reply to Ian F:

Check out the Kobo Aura One. It's pretty well reviewed, has a large 300dpi 7.8 inch screen and reads PDFs.

Other than that your options are limited, and expensive for large format e ink screens.

Supposedly there's been newspaper sized ones coming to market "soon" for years now. I wouldn't hold my breath there.

Are Kobo's the easiest to use in general and most friendly to multiple file types?

pheller wrote: How does the whole library checkout thing work with e-readers?

My county has an app called Overdrive that I sign up for. I find a book there, hit the check out button, and Overdrive syncs it to my Kindle account. No muss, no fuss.

E-ink or your preference of tablet. My wife and I each have e ink nooks from right before they released the lighted version. Still kicking, but I find myself buying more physical books lately. That reminds me to look for e copies of hard to find books.

I had a Kindle until it quit powering up. Now I just use the Kindle app on my phone, because I read a lot and I always have my book in my back pocket now. I missed the Kindle initially as it is such a book like reading experience, but the app is pretty good too.

92dxman wrote: Are Kobo's the easiest to use in general and most friendly to multiple file types?

Kobo exists in the weird niche much like Roku where is too small to directly compete against Amazon and Barnes and Nobel so it supports most of their formats but would like to do it's own thing too so it has it's own store. I don't have first hand experience with their ereaders but I'm leaning heavily in that direction to replace my aging Nook Tablet as their new models appear to be pretty well reviewed, their store has gained some traction, and Calibre has drivers for their devices.

Supported formats for the Kobo Aura ONE: EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR

Supported formats for the Kindle Oasis: .azw, .bmp, .doc, .docx, .gif, .html, .jpeg, .mobi, .pdf, .png, .prc, and .txt

Supported formats for the Nook Glowlight Plus: ePub, PDF, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP

The major item of note here, and I made a mistake on my previous post based on some older information, is that Kobo does not read .azw formats which are Amazons DRM protected files. So what you need to consider is where you're going to buy your books from or how you're going to get them onto different devices.

Minor DRM Rant

Stores like Baen's (I read a lot of Sci-fi) sell the books without DRM in .epub format which allows you to put the book on an device you choose and read it. Others like Amazon and Barnes and Noble place them in a container which must be decrypted in order to read them.

Unfortunately that can lead to some problems since Barnes and Noble locks the DRM to whatever credit card you bought it with so if you have replaced the credit card (I've had 5 different numbers in the last year, Thanks BoFA!) You may have to reenter that old number to unlock the book you purchased several years ago and want to read it again. Since that may or may not be possible you could end up buying the book again.

For that reason I strip all the DRM using the previously mentioned Calibre method if I buy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I generally try to stay away from their stores because of that nonsense so there is an immense bias on my part against them. If you want to use Amazon's store you'll have to convert the files to epub and side load them. Calibre makes this pretty easy.

Don't even get me started on how I feel about berkeleying Topaz files.
end rant

I'm sorry this was a technical answer to an easy question. Annoyingly the market is heavily fragmented due to publishers and device manufacturers insisting on different DRM standards in an attempt to control where the market goes.

If you are ok with only using one source for books an Amazon Kindle is a pretty solid choice.

If you want to shop around a bit for either DRM free files using a multitude of other stores out there, or deal with a bit of a hassle with Calibre, and buy from where ever is having the best sale on the book Kobo is the way to go.

The0retical wrote: Supported formats for the Nook Glowlight Plus: ePub, PDF, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP

Are you sure this is accurate? Because (without plugging in to check) I'm sure I've got a lot more formats than that in my non-Plus Glowlight. TXT at least. You can always convert in Calibre.

Fun fact: in order to get my most recent book on my own ereader, I had to break the DRM on it. Easily.

Ian F wrote: This is relevant to my interests. Keith - does your Nook allow you to upload a PDF file and view remotely without an internet connection? Being able to look at PDF's on something larger than my phone for work would be nice.

You can load PDFs on to the Nook. It works best on text-heavy documents. It's not a "pinch and zoom" tablet experience, but you can read them. If you want a tablet experience and a huge screen, get a tablet.

The eInk displays are fuel sippers, black and white and a little slow to respond. They're ideal for reading novels. This is why you see them used in dedicated ereaders, they're better at it than anything else. You can stuff an enormous amount of literature into one and have access to your whole library anytime, anywhere. Sure, it means you can't surf the web (yes, some eInk readers have that capability but in reality it sucks) or play Angry Birds or whatever. It just means that whenever you pull that little device out of your pocket or bag, it's ready to go. I carry one with me everywhere. I never wish it were a tablet, because what I want to do is read and not dink around. That's what a phone is for.

As for the library - my local library lets me borrow books via Overdrive. Don't get me started on the artificial scarcity of copies available. I don't do it often.

I still use my keyboard Kindle, even though it is out dated, specifically because of the built in text to speech function. I can be in the middle of a book, hop in the car, and continue the same book as an audio book as I drive.

I also use Calibre with mine, and it's pretty much drag and drop when I hook it up to the computer.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Yea that's right off the B&N website.Here

I thought it did more too. I wonder if they just left some common formats out?

Edit: Checking again it also says it does the Adobe secured files. I must have been a little overzealous with the formatting on my phone. Those are just epubs or PDFs wrappered in Adobe's crappy excuse for DRM though.

my kids all bought used Kindles from the local Half Price books for $10-15 each. With Calibre DRM removal tool and conversion, they can read most anything.

In reply to oldopelguy:

I have a newer Paperwhite and I think that also does text to speech.

I also happen to have a Kindle Keyboard lying around that I don't use anymore in case someone wants a cheap Kindle.

My wife has had two Nooks. They have not been as durable as her current Kindle Fire. The Nooks seem especially picky about charge cords.

How are the first gen kindle fires? Are they still supported by Amazon? I found a couple cheap working ones on the Bay..

92dxman wrote: How are the first gen kindle fires? Are they still supported by Amazon? I found a couple cheap working ones on the Bay..

My wife liked hers. If you're looking at Ebay ones, Woot (who was bought by Amazon) has a $29 6" tablet and a $59 7" tablet.

-Rob

Wall-e wrote: My wife has had two Nooks. They have not been as durable as her current Kindle Fire. The Nooks seem especially picky about charge cords.

Agreed, ours have occasionally rejected a cord. The biggest problem we've had is that the touch-screen needs to be cleaned off occasionally to keep it working, and the covers we have on them can lean on the power button when it's in a bag or pocket and cause it to drain the battery. I put a little plastic nub (like the bumpers you see on drawers) beside it and that solved the drain problem.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Ours went through cords at an insane rate.