Kobo announces color e-readers • Hacker News Board

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#201

Post by paulcole » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

abdela wrote: post #199

paulcole wrote: post #96

I've bought the Remarkable 2 and probably 10 Kindles over the past decade. I have never once been like, "You know what this eink device needs? Color!" I get that it might be a draw for some people but this just isn't appealing to me and I can't see the mass market use case for color besides color being neat.

Honest question, why did you buy 10 kindle devices in 10 years?

I like to upgrade them (the battery life, screen, refresh rate, etc. have all gotten consistently better over the years), I usually have one to leave at work and one for home use, and I give the hand-me-downs to friends and family.

You can also sell them back to Amazon for a pretty good bonus when it’s time to upgrade. I think I sent back an old paperwhite and got $50 + 20% off my Scribe.

Right now I have an Oasis and a Scribe that I use about equally.

Reading is one of my bigger hobbies, I read around 100 books a year on Kindle.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#202

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 1:25 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #47

I want something like this but just to hang on the wall to display graphs. Why are e-ink displays only ever focused on ebooks, I think there are lots of cool non-ebook applications for this technology but to use it you either have to build something with a soldering iron and a raspberry pi or hack an ebook's OS. I don't understand why there aren't more special purpose e-ink devices for other uses like monitoring, pri…

Have you looked? The devices exist. Onyx Boox has a diverse line of readers, tablets and monitors. Their competitor Dasung offers a bunch of monitors, phone displays and other e-ink stuff as well. But large e-ink screens are expensive compared to small.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#203

Post by futureshock » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

mikepavone wrote: post #174

futureshock wrote: post #103

E Ink has been developing a full color tech they call ACeP. This tech has no color filter like Kaleido 3 so can run at full resolution and better contrast. Wonder if this tech will reach ereaders soon. Rumors are that Amazon is considering ACeP.

There was one on the market, but not from the well-known names: the Bigme Galy. Doesn't seem to be available anymore though and Bigme's site has no mention of it

Interesting. Yes looks like that ACeP screen had reasonable specs on paper with 300dpi and as low as 500ms color refresh. Seems like this tech could be getting closer. Reviews of the Galy were terrible though and it’s unclear how much of that was from the screen vs. the device around it.

Still watching this space and holding out with my Kindle Paperwhite.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#204

Post by abdela » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #201

abdela wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why did you buy 10 kindle devices in 10 years?

I like to upgrade them (the battery life, screen, refresh rate, etc. have all gotten consistently better over the years), I usually have one to leave at work and one for home use, and I give the hand-me-downs to friends and family. You can also sell them back to Amazon for a pretty good bonus when it’s time to upgrade. I think I sent back an old paperwhite and got $50 + 20% off my Scribe. Right now I have an Oasis an…

Interesting, thank you. With regard to the refresh rate, I saw a recent eReader recently, the difference with my nine year old eReader is striking indeed.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#205

Post by _thisdot » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #58

Give me high refresh rates before giving me color. What I don't get is that people say that e-readers are easy on the eyes, but you still get this epilepsy-inducing flicker all the time when changing pages.

Newer Kindles have something called a page-turn animation. Not exactly high refresh rate. But no flickers either

https://youtu.be/QBev52EYJi4?si=-0l-2u2Hq3_6PeXN

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#206

Post by vantassell » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 6:46 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #47

I want something like this but just to hang on the wall to display graphs. Why are e-ink displays only ever focused on ebooks, I think there are lots of cool non-ebook applications for this technology but to use it you either have to build something with a soldering iron and a raspberry pi or hack an ebook's OS. I don't understand why there aren't more special purpose e-ink devices for other uses like monitoring, pri…

There are e-ink license plates in California now.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/10/digital-license-plates-...

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#207

Post by hyperman1 » Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

WolfeReader wrote: post #22

teroshan wrote: post #4

Know that while useful in some scenarios, I'd avoid buying a color e-ink display if you're still going to primarily be using it for B&W colors. To quote the eBook Reader Blog [1]: > The main drawback with color E Ink screens is they look darker than regular B&W screens because of a color filter layer that is applied over the top of the screen, which makes the contrast appear lower. Kaleido color screens are really ju…

I've used a Pocketbook Color for over a year now. And yes, it is a somewhat darker screen, but that mainly just means I turn on the frontlight in some cases where I wouldn't have needed to with other e-readers. I've otherwise been having a good time with it - comics and PDFs benefit greatly from the color screen, and regular text is fine too.

I bought a pocketbook inkpad color 3 yesterday and love it. It's good enough for displaying lego manuals.

It's a gigantic step forward in speed from my kobo reader, but that one is 7 or so years old at this point . It also crashes less.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#208

Post by swsieber » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #9

Bleh, and I was just up until 1am last night reading about black-and-white PDF compression schemes for my Kobo :) Technical knowledge obsoletes so fast. (Well, maybe not that fast: ImageMagick's best-performing monochrome scheme is, apparently, one that was standardized for literal fax machines in the 1980's [0]. A very basic one called "Group 4"). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax#Compression

Mmm... I patched a fax4 decoder for rust the other day. It's an interesting format. But amazing really. It's still widely used the mortgage industry, specifically the land record systems.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#209

Post by swsieber » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #163

nottorp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In order to do that, I have to lay on my stomach and hold the phone with one hand. Why? I mostly lie on a side when reading and prop the reader (or the paper book) with the bed sheets. This has the potential to turn into a reading positions subthread :)

> This has the potential to turn into a reading positions subthread :) Wish granted! If I lie on my side for more than a minute or two, my hips ache. Only a little at first, but if I ignore it and fall asleep, I will wake up in writhing agony 30 minutes later. Been like this since my 20's. Reasonably healthy otherwise so I don't know what the deal is. Otherwise, yes, this would be the ideal reading position. Extra cr…

> I can only FALL asleep on my stomach, but I can only CONTINUE sleeping on my back. Which means almost every night, I somehow flip myself over without waking up.

This is me, to a T. It's nice to hear I'm not the only odd sleeper.

Re: Kobo announces color e-readers

#210

Post by Menu_Overview » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 8:47 PM UTC

mcpherrinm wrote: post #33

dustincoates wrote: post #25

I have very little to add about the color aspect, but I can say that I love my Kobo. I've had three Kindles before buying the Kobo, which I got because it has a "better" integration with my local library (better in quotes, because I still have to do with the Adobe DRM, which is so bad on Linux that I borrow my wife's computer just to transfer). The Pocket integration is fantastic, as are the physical page turn button…

Just to join in the kobo love thread: One reason that I love my Kobo is perhaps very tech-specific in a way this audience may appreciate. It's great for plain text files. In particular, it's pretty good at reading plain RFCs. I have to choose a font size so the hard-wrapped RFCs fit right, and it doesn't ship with a monospaced font (but you can install and use your own fonts, so that's a minor speed bump). Reading ve…

I also love my Kobo.

Only issue I have is syncing. There is no wireless sync, right? I have to plug it in to sync my library and tack on extra files.

The Overdrive/Libby support is excellent, though.