Preferably not a Kindle because I dislike Amazon spyware but if it must be then it must be.
My use case is downloading PDFs and epubs onto my phone and transferring them to the eink display.
Preferably not a Kindle because I dislike Amazon spyware but if it must be then it must be.
My use case is downloading PDFs and epubs onto my phone and transferring them to the eink display.
I use Boox (the max and the poke) and they give you a QR code you can use to connect to the device and transfer files.
It’s a Chinese company and I’ve seen a bunch of claims that they don’t properly follow the licensing in terms of making source available, so there’s a layer of sketchiness there. If you can’t stomach Amazon you might not tolerate them either.
I deal with it because Android is that much more useful to me and the hardware and the UX modifications for e-ink are high quality, so I’m mentioning it despite your concerns. I wouldn’t be reading like classified documents on it or anything, but you’ll have to evaluate the tradeoffs yourself.
I have a boox page. Agreed that it is a great option if you want something that is more flexible since it is essentially an Android tablet including the ability to install apps from the play store. Not as user friendly as a kindle type device though.
Is it really any less friendly? The play store is a couple steps, but without it you just use the QR code to load books in and can read them right in the default library with the default reader, which isn’t really good enough for me when android exists, but it’s as good as the kindle.
And the kindle is slow as absolute hell. Loading a book takes forever, navigating your library takes forever. I was reasonably happy with my Kindle Oasis before moving to the boox max, which I chose for the huge display, not Android. But it’s so much more responsive and from looking at current demo units that hasn’t changed.
I meant in general user experience isn’t quite as intuitive. Things like the settings are just more complicated and not clear (at least comparing to my original kindle paperwhite). The refresh speeds and backlight in particular are both somewhat important settings that could be implemented better.
The nice part is that they could essentially eliminate the need for their phone since they can download directly from wherever they get their ebook files on the device.
i use boox and syncthing so all books, audiobooks, files, notes etc are across all my devices automatically :)
You can also use Bluetooth sharing right out of the box, like with any android device.
Not to mention you can install cloud storage apps on it too. I haven’t set up FolderSync on mine yet but that’s my plan to keep all my eBooks available across devices.
Good background to have, thank you for an insightful reply.