Technology

Years ago, I donated most of the physical books I had to local libraries in preparation for moving out of the country. While abroad, I switched to reading books on a tablet device as a way of staying minimalistic. In the fall of 2021, I purchased my first e-ink reader: A Kobo Mini. Although it was new old stock, the reader was already past its support life when I purchased it. I’ve read over a dozen books on it in the past three years, but this small e-reader is starting to show its age. Momentarily, I tried an Amazon Kindle, which turned out to be a horrible mistake.

I ended up replacing the Kobo Mini with a PocketBook Verse Pro Color. It had to be ordered from Europe since it’s not available in American markets. It’s a great little reader, and I’ve already finished six books on the device in the first two months I’ve had it. In this post I’ll go over the Kobo, the issues I ran into with Amazon products, and my current thoughts on the PocketBook.

The Kobo Mini

I remember when e-ink readers were first coming on the market, well over a decade ago. A good friend of mine ranted about how he would never purchase “a book you have to plug in!” Sure enough, there were times when I opened my e-reader, only to find it was totally out of battery.

The features that drew me to the Kobo included is small size (it can easily fit in a pocket) and that it could be loaded with epub files over USB. This was a great little device to read books while outside or in a diner while I ate. It supports highlighting, although highlighting can be finicky. Highlighting across pages isn’t possible, so I simply zoomed in an out if I needed to make a note on a large section.

I found some really wonderful e-reader cases from a seller on Etsy. I got two of them for the Kobo. Unfortunately, this particular seller has stopped making these cloth covers, with her Etsy store listed as “taking a short break.” No one else seems to make similar cloth covers that hold in readers by the corners. There are some leather covers with similar designs, but they can’t be as easily thrown in a washing machine if something gets spilled on them.

After a while, the Kobo has started to show its age. The firmware no longer gets updates, and it has several bugs. The battery indicator isn’t accurate, the wrong book now appears on the lock screen, and the device is slow and lags heavily for simple tasks like changing the zoom level. It also doesn’t have modern features like a backlight for reading at night. So after three years, I finally started looking for a replacement for my Kobo.

Never Buy a Kindle

I’ve avoided purchasing things from Amazon since 2016. I’ve’ bought Kindle books in the past, and do like the experience of reading books on their mobile apps. A Kindle does support uploading your own epub files to their devices and apps, so I thought a Kindle might be a good alternative. I purchased one from a local Best Buy. At first, it seemed like a decent replacement, up until I put the device to sleep.

The device runs advertisements on the lock screen! I paid over $100 for a device for ads that cannot be disabled. You must make an addition purchase from Amazon to disable the lock screen advertisements. This purchase isn’t even tied to the device, but your personal Amazon account. There were some hacks I had found online, but they seemed to require keeping the device offline, eliminating multi-device syncing features I was looking forward to.

I’ve read forum posts where people were able to get the ads removed by contacting Amazon support. It seems this loophole has been closed, as I was told the ads could not be removed without purchase.

This is anti-consumer and entirely unacceptable. If I purchase a device, I should get the entire device and not be subjected to ads. I was weary of even considering an Amazon device due to their long history of anti-consumer practices.

In 2009, Amazon discovered one of their publishers didn’t have the rights to a certain e-book they sold. They refunded the customers, but deleted the book from peoples’ devices without warning. What was the book? It was George Orwell’s 1984¹. More recently, Amazon removed the ability to download and save offline copies of purchased books²³. Roald Dahl’s books were censored by his publisher posthumously, and were silently updated on customers’ e-readers without their consent⁴.

I immediately returned the Kindle to Best Buy the next day for the full purchase price, and was reminded with a harsh lesson that Amazon is horribly anti-consumer². Although their device seemed to have good software and competed on price, it simply wasn’t worth contributing to blatantly terrible anti-ownership practices.

PocketBook

What drew me to the Kindle was the ability to save highlights and sync reading locations and notes between devices. Still, I preferred the smaller size of the Kobo Mini. After doing some research, I decided to try the PocketBook Verse Pro Color. It’s not available in the North American market, so I had to order mine from a store in Spain.

I knew from other reviews that the highlighting and location syncing on PocketBook devices was less than stellar⁵. Still, after dealing with highlighting on the Kobo, the PocketBook was a considerable step-up. I still zoom out rather than attempt to highlight across pages, but it’s a fairly fast device that handles zoom changes easily. Sometimes it’s impossible to precisely select a sentence to highlight. The PocketBook’s software will often include stray punctuation or even parts of the previous sentence in a way that’s impossible to de-select. I’ll typically highlight these in a specific color, and then edit them later using the PocketBook Android App after I finish a book.

Synchronization is okay. They e-reader didn’t come with access to PocketBook Cloud initially. Due to the market it was sold in, I had to contact support with my device ID to remove the local store and replace it with PocketBook Cloud. I’m not a huge fan of this setup, but even if PocketBook does go away one day, the device can still be loaded with epub files via USB. Their cloud interface does seem to do a good job at synchronizing notes and highlights.

Synchronizing the most recent page is very hit-or-miss. The Android App does have an explicit synchronization button, but it seems to only initiate synchronization when returning from the book to the library menu. The e-reader will attempt to synchronize every time it is turned off. Sometimes I’m prompted to move to the latest page, and sometimes I’m not. I wish one of these cloud services would have a panel that just listed every device and the last page they reported, but none of the e-reader apps I’ve used implement such a feature.

Even though location synchronization isn’t great, I’ve found that it’s not a big issue with the PocketBook. In the past, I used synchronization so I could easily switch between my phone and tablet. Since the PocketBook has a backlight, I often just use it to read at night before going to bed. It’s a far better experience than using a bright tablet.

Conclusions

So far, I’m really happy with the PocketBook e-reader. It does cost more than an equivalent Kindle, and the software could use a little more polish. Yet, I still prefer it over an Amazon device. It’s small, has great tactile buttons, and the highlights are easily exportable in HTML. I created a program to parse highlights from various reader apps, and hope to add support for both the Kobo and the PocketBook in the coming year.