I like my Kindle. It's held up well. It's convenient.
I'm less excited about being tied to Amazon to get books. I'm only slightly less that way about B&N because they're less of an 800lb gorilla. I think the marketplace available on the Kobo is broader, but I'm actually not certain. And yes, I know I can download, convert, upload, etc... Let's just leave it at the idea that in order to enjoy the "convenience" aspect, I need the ability to acquire reading material from the device without getting out of bed. I may go beyond that for certain books, but if I hit the end of book N of a series and want to go straight into N+1, I want to do that from the reader.
All three readers mentioned above can do that, with different constraints.
I'm curious as to whether anybody has any feedback on differences between the devices themselves, and also the marketplaces that are available on them. How are they to read on? How's the purchase process? Anything I'm not thinking of that you can only get on X platform (or only excluded from X platform)?
The motivation for a new eReader: I'm a little cross that my Kindle is totally fine, if a little shorter than it once was in battery life (have to charge it every couple of weeks!), but they've discontinued its compatibility with the Kindle marketplace, so in order to get a new book, I have to go to another device to buy it and have it sent to the Kindle. It's old; like over a decade, but given the numbers they exist in and how well I imagine they're still working, it feels like an unnecessary obsoleteing of my device to force me to buy a new one. It fell off Whispernet years ago (more understandably as 2G or 3G or whatever went away), but I think the new ones really only work on WiFi anyhow, and that part was fine 'til relatively recently. It's bad enough that phones and PCs get trashed so often, but this device only had one job and no real changes to the demands.
I think Kindle still has the best ecosystem in the US, even though you are tied to the "river in South America".
The Whispernet thing is rather annoying, especially as they seem to have completely discontinued it rather than replaced it with a newer 5G variant. I got caught out by that as well, although the Kindle I have that was Whispernet-capable still works otherwise.
One alternative to consider is that you can likely get a replacement battery (check iFixit), but that doesn't solve the marketplace purchase issue.
I started with some Sonys, then a Nook, and I'm on a Kindle Paperwhite now. The best thing about the Kindle is the cover I have for it has a magnetic switch. Open the cover, the book turns on. Close the cover, the book turns off. Super-simple. It has a good backlight that I think is probably fairly standard now, but wasn't on my earlier readers. It's also well sized to slip into a pocket and has been quite durable. I keep it in airplane mode so battery life is ridiculous. I have noticed that it seems to have trouble with my latest wifi update for some reason, but it can connect to my phone as a hot spot. Weirdly, my wife's Kindle which is the same age doesn't have a problem.
For new books, I rarely buy from the store. I tend to borrow from my local library using the Libby app. That will load them into my Amazon account and the next time I turn on wifi the book just appears. Neat trick - the library book loan doesn't expire until Amazon tells it that it's expired, so if you stay in airplane mode you have all the time you want to finish the book.
FYI, if you have Amazon Prime you get access to a number of "First Read" books every month - basically, pre-release access for free for major(ish) releases. They're not the wildly varying "Prime Reading" books.
Im on kindle exclusively. App on the phone allows me to get books through kindle unlimited that appear on phone and reader. The sync between the two is flakey at best as far as updating location in the device compared to the other. My wife has a free book app on her iPhone thats pretty much trashy romance novels that are poorly edited but free.
About a year ago I finally got around to getting a library card for our local regional library. I almost exclusively read e-books, on my phone using their free Libby app. They have an almost unlimited supply of books and the price is right. The text is sized so the books are comfortable to read on a phone screen.
They also have a wide variety of magazines available including many motorsports titles, but they're more difficult to read on a phone since the images are basically a scan of the actual pages - you have to zoom in and out and scroll around to see them at actual size.
I gave up on my Kindle years ago because I found it just as easy to use the Kindle app on my phone. I also have a library app and I always try there first find a book for free before I buy one.
In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :
There's a considerable difference in the reading experience and convenience of reading on an eink screen vs a phone, so let's just take that as a given for Jesse :)
BoxheadTim said:
I think Kindle still has the best ecosystem in the US, even though you are tied to the "river in South America".
FWIW, while you are tied to the Amazon store for purchases on the device itself, they support loading non-Kindle-purchased ebooks onto the device through an email gateway. They even support epub format now.
I have a Kindle Oasis and it's great. (used to have a Paperwhite gen 2, it worked well until I dropped it)
Kindle app on my phone or a regular tablet for me, usually my phone. I prefer the sepia on the app over the paperwhite screen options. Keeping up with another tablet and keeping it charged was more trouble than it was worth. I tend to read any time I have a few minutes free and the Kindle would invariably be somewhere else so I ended up seldom using it. My wife ended up with the Kindle and really liked it until the battery puked.
As an add, Google and Amazon are/were having a pissing contest over the cost of transactions, and purchases through the Kindle app on Google are no longer allowed. They must be made through a browser instead of the app. I would hope that's not the case with their readers, but that is the case when using the app on a Google device.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
BoxheadTim said:
I think Kindle still has the best ecosystem in the US, even though you are tied to the "river in South America".
FWIW, while you are tied to the Amazon store for purchases on the device itself, they support loading non-Kindle-purchased ebooks onto the device through an email gateway. They even support epub format now.
I have a Kindle Oasis and it's great. (used to have a Paperwhite gen 2, it worked well until I dropped it)
ISTR that they're shutting down the email gateway soon, but one should still be able to "sideload" book via USB. I've also got a Kindle Oasis after my Paperwhite showed signs of the battery getting a little worse for wear these days. I guess I should try and figure out how to disconnect the Paperwhite from my account and see if I can pass it on to someone else who could use it.
The kindle kids edition is like the ad-laden paperwhite, but for the $20 upcharge you get no ads, and you get a two year (instead of one year) warranty. The screen is great, it's waterproof, it's fantastic. I'm jealous of my daughter's kindle because my 5 year old kindle still works well enough that I can't justify replacing it with one as nice as hers. The Kindle Oasis I got for my wife has been great, but not worth the upcharge.
Get yourself the kids version, it's great. Even better refurb.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I have a large Square phone and it makes for a great reading experience. The only thing I miss is the back lighting but having said that I don't miss it anymore. I travel a lot and I read a lot and pulling out my phone to read beats the heck out of packing yet another electronic device around. But I understand that's not for everyone.
The other option is a standard tablet. I read daily on inexpensive Chrome and iOS tablets that I also use for web browsing, video streaming and gaming.
I'm hooked on the e-ink thing for reading. I just find it soothing in a way a normal screen isn't. I also kinda like putting away all the full-Internet devices at the end of the day. The Kindle may be one more thing to pack for travel, but it's two less than three books. 
Oddly, I've never gelled with a tablet. I just go from my phone to a full computer and back. I don't really like reading on either of them.
Interesting points along the way, but it sounds like nobody's really used any of the non-Kindle dedicated readers recently, and the only move has been Nook->Kindle. I suspect my best bet is to just get a kids Paperwhite.
An unfortunate side effect I guess of living in a semi-major metro area with a lot of bookish people is that most every ebook I've tried to borrow from the library has been on hold for months. IIRC stuff that was probably middling popular but not recent. Just a substantial interested population, low barrier to borrowing, and a limited number of virtual copies? I half wonder whether the countywide ebook count is lower than the number of physical copies needed to have a reasonable distribution across individual libraries. Neither here nor there, but results in purchasing some books I might not otherwise add to the library. Definitely paying for the convenience of not physically going to the library.
Thanks, everyone!
