Dedicated ereaders like Kindles and Kobos have gone through a number of generations over the past ten years, with each new model promising to be better than the last, but have things really improved all that much?
One thing you still hear people talking about, especially those that have just gotten their first E Ink device, is how ereaders are slower to respond and operate compared to other types of gadgets.
Having to wait for the E Ink screen to flash and redraw is something most people aren’t accustomed to, and scrolling with E Ink takes some getting used to at first as well.
Some devices handle scrolling and navigating better than others, with smoother transitions and faster response times. Newer Kindles are pretty quick to respond and turn pages, but navigating the interface is still slow and clunky, and scrolling is downright wonky at times.
Onyx’s newer devices with BSR (Boox Super Refresh Technology) are a lot quicker and smoother when it comes to scrolling and refreshing the screen, but battery life is more like an LCD tablet than an E Ink ereader—the faster they make E Ink screens the worse battery life gets.
For a long time E Ink screens have shouldered the blame for the slow overall performance of most dedicated reading devices, but that’s not necessarily true anymore. With the proper optimizations E Ink screens can be a lot faster than we’ve been led to believe.
A lot of people seem to be content with the slower nature of E Ink ereaders, but others want to be able to navigate a library with thousands of books quickly, and jump back and forth between different books and notes and other things.
What do you think? Are E Ink ereaders still too slow? Would you be willing to trade some battery life for improved performance?
Speed has not been much of an issue for me when using my kindle. I figure it is just as fast as reading through a Physical book. But when using an Android based eink device I would like to have a bit more speed. I have the budget Likebook P10 and it is o.k. but it is slow. the outdated Android 8.1 is starting to be a problem as apps are updating to require better devices. I would not expect it to be the same speed of a tablet, but to be functionally fast. You don’t get a Boox to play video games nor to watch videos all the time, rather for note taking and even as a typewriter. I would want it to be fast enough to be functional in these two aspects. My Likebook can handle note taking, but MS word is painfully slow and a keyboard is not even usable it is so slow.
Kindle and Kobo are ok, but my Pocketbook is bad and very slow.
Yeah, Pocketbooks are probably the slowest of the bunch but they’re finally starting to get a little faster.
My InkPad 4 is actually really fast and smooth!
My inkpad 3 was good, my touch HD 3 is certainly faster than my onyx nova pro.
I did not make the leap from Paperwhite 4 to Signature. I was okay with the slowness. I don’t take notes and can’t draw. I read for about 1-3 hours per day. I prioritise battery efficiency over most other attributes.
I think Kobo is waiting for the Kaleido and other competing technologies to catch up with what people want. I’d rather have more speed than colour for the foreseeable future. The illusion of reading on paper is so important to me that I never use the light. Blue light, orange light make no difference to me. I am just a reader, that’s all.
Considering that the main use for an e-ink device is reading I would focus on a device that maximized this use with fast page turns and a long lasting battery; Other speed ups are marginally useful and shouldn’t come at a cost to reading.
That said, boosts to scrolling can help reading since you might want to read directly from a website.
The best solution to that I saw was an overlay button that lets you page down which speeds things up with less need for refresh and lets be honest we don’t want smooth scrolling because we like to watch the lines go up.
My InkPad 3 Pro feels slow every time I do anything besides read on it. When reading, it feels the same as my iRiver HD Story.
Navigating on the InkPad feels laborious. But the size is great, it’s got a backlight, page buttons etc. so I still enjoy it. But sure, I’d take faster. The readers are about ten years apart. Instead of faster we get more features. Heaven forbid they give us both.
I love the Kindle line of products, but they are sluggish. What should be quick checks for reference are slow in dictionaries and eternal for anything requiring the browser. I appreciate the reader-centric approach, but if you’re going to offer the resources for reference they should enhance the reading process not detract from it.
Every Kindle I had was ok, and my Kindle Scribe is fast enough for me; Pocketbooks however are slooow
I d9 not think they are too slow. Speed increases would be fine but not at the cost of battery life or decrease in screen quality.
Both ghosting and refresh flashing got on my nerves so much that I switched everything to BSR – Tab Ultra C as my work device, Tab Mini C as my standard reading device and Palma with me forever.
The increased electricity consumption doesn’t matter – I have sockets at home and I can afford the few cents in electricity costs
I would say it depends on your use case and ability to tolerate what might be considered a “deficiency” in the technology. I find that there is a sort of false dichotomy being drawn up for the E ink Tech. Either battery life or performance- which one? What is true to E Ink? It really depends on one’s needs and the techs ability to meet those needs. For some it is perfect, others tolerable, and others yet intolerable- none are wrong, because it is based on their individual needs. So long as companies can make a living, there is a room for a varying range of specs.
Thus we have our remarkables, who leverage on the obvious E ink strengths, and Boox’s, who try to push the limit. Both help each other, as the first helps stabilize and grow the industry with fairly cheap and focused devices, and the other explores the technology being made available- which in turn grants wider documentation for the emerging technologies.
For my own use case, I have issues with LED screens, are looking for alternatives to take the strain off the eyes to some degree. In this use case I can afford to sacrifice battery life for improved performance, which in turn helps the health of my eyes and increases performance. It does not directly replace my LED screen, but it has decreased my reliance on it.
To note, I use a Boox Max 3, a veritable dinosaur, with Autodesk (I don’t even need the internet for this, the usb charge cord works for some reason). I have it leaning up on my laptop screen to cover it, and I use my lap top’s keyboard as the tablet keyboard. It works for documents, videos, and internet browsing, and if I need to see colour, I will move the boox aside and briefly look at the screen. I find that my Max 3 performs better as another monitor than as a tablet- I assume that is because it is only being used as a display rather than as a tablet. I have it plugged into my laptop, so battery life is not an issue (granted that I keep my laptop plugged in). Ideal, no, but it is good enough.
Now with Note Air 3C having been released, it shoots Mr. Good Enough out of the water into a whole new category of “good enough”, which is still poor if compared to LED- a completely different tech and display use case. Battery life? Meh. If it hooks into my laptop and runs autodesk, it will do the trick. Screen is a little small, but it will far out performs my old beast on even some of the slower, better quality settings.
So, in my mind, you need both, an Air note 3 C and a Remarkable, but presently you cannot maximize battery life and performance in a single machine. Thus it is more about what fits your needs best? It may be neither. In the end, It may be that you should just go buy a book or notebook instead- it has unlimited battery life and the smoothest page turning performance out of all text displaying devices from personal experience. Not to mention stellar outdoor readability and…bendable pages, a hot selling feature I hear.
The biggest issue isn’t refresh speed – it’s store compatibility.
If you buy a kindle, it let’s you download kindle books and they work decently well.
If you buy a kobo, it let’s you download kobo books and they work decently well.
If you buy a nook, it let’s you download nook books and they work decently well.
If you buy an Onyx Boox, you can download all three, but the apps are kind of terrible for eink screens.
I really just want a generic reader that has non-android apps for the major bookstores, or e-ink modes for the android apps for the 3 major bookstores. I could be happy with a Pocketbook Era or Onyx Boox Leaf2 or Page if either could support all major stores *and* not have a terrible reading experience.
Yeah, that would be great wouldn’t it?
I personally maneuvered around that issue to a significant degree. I jailbroke my kindle paperwhite 5 and rooted my B&N Nook brnv700 ; I found a custom Android minimal ROM image that I flashed onto the brnv700 – I put KOreader– on both devices. I then just strip all DRM from all my purchased ebooks.
^ That takes work and technical skill that exceeds the common person , though
I personally can get by with just the Amazon and google book stores which I can regularly strip DRM from but I haven’t done it for google , in a while, but should still work.
On the kindle, it is pretty cool , it works normally or kual mode etc.. with KOreader so both modes co-exist.
No, I think my kindle paperwhite 5 or 11th generation is fast enough. If I need to jump around, real quick, using or grabbing quotes from multiple books I use calibre and my laptop. I don’t do the latter, too much, because I read mostly at the analytical level rather than the syntopical level.