I've been using Kindle Paperwhite since 2013. The hardware is fantastic, but their locked down nature is less than amazing. I'm currently looking at options for upgrading and moving away from the kindle ecosystem, and the the Kobo Clara BW is a compelling option. Or maybe wait and see if a new BW Libra comes out.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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Yeah, I love everything about my Kindle except for the fact that it’s tied to Amazon. Calibre goes a long way in bridging the gap, (I have a fairly large personal library that isn’t tied to Amazon), but it’s no replacement for native support. If you plan on using Calibre, you should seriously consider a Kobo.
What does kobo do that kindle doesn’t? I’ve been thinking about switching since I damaged my kindle, but calibre works great and I love the kindle hardware.
The Kobo and Kindle are functionally identical in terms of hardware, except for a few things that are specific to Amazon. But Amazon has been increasingly hostile towards Calibre in recent years. It used to be supported almost natively, but it seems like each update from Amazon locks down something that used to be accessible, or breaks existing functionality.
For instance, you used to be able to edit collections directly in Calibre, but Amazon broke that because they want everyone to use their collections (which are only included on books purchased directly from amazon) instead. So for instance, if you uploaded the entire Harry Potter series, you used to be able to tag all of them with the series and they’d be added to a collection together. You can’t do that anymore, and have to add them manually one by one on the Kindle’s laggy touchscreen.
They have also started breaking included cover art, because the Kindle automatically polls Amazon to download art instead. And when it doesn’t find any, (because the book isn’t from Amazon,) it wipes the included art instead of just falling back to it. Luckily this has a fairly simple fix (just unplug your kindle, let it index and break the cover art, then plug it back in so Calibre can push the cover art back to the Kindle,) but that means you need to actually take the extra time to do that every time you upload something new.
The Send To Kindle email functionality has recently been broken to where every .epub file you email just gets sent to Documents instead of Books or Newsstand. So if you have Calibre set up to grab news every Sunday, or to send new books to your Kindle, they won’t actually land in the News or Books sections like they’re supposed to. The only way to fix that is to plug it in and upload them via USB. Additionally, they have the same issue with broken cover art. So you need to plug your Kindle in to update the cover art, even when emailing your books. Which kind of defeats the purpose of emailing them, because you’d most likely do that if you don’t want to plug your device in every time.
The kindle’s indexer also has some weird issues, where certain books will just crash it and new books will stop appearing entirely. And there’s no way to see which book is the issue. So if you uploaded a bunch of books to your kindle, you’ll have to play guess-and-check to see which one is the issue. This may not be exclusive to the Kindle, but I haven’t experienced the same issue on the Kobo.
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I’m the same way
I got the kobo bw. I spent a weekend downloading all 500some ebooks I’ve purchased off Amazon (which they do not make easy) to my laptop. Then I imported them into calibre, stripped all drm, and loaded them onto the kobo.
It’s great, I love it.
How easy is it to strip DRM from Kobo ebooks?
Sorry, I strip it from Amazon ebooks. There’s a plugin for calibre called deDRM that does it, it’s pretty simple once you get it setup.
Just import book, and the drm is gone.
Super easy, Calbre with the DeDRM plugin will strip the DRM from Kobo books as well. Anytime I buy a book on the kobo store the first thing I do is rip out the DRM and upload it to my self-hosted ebook library
You can even self host a calibre web instance and have it fully integrated/replace the kobo store on the device
Can you elaborate? Do you use it that way?
If you are into self hosting already, you run a calibre web instance then you can enable full integration with the kobo so Your own self hosted eBook repository becomes the 'store' on the kobo.
https://brandonjkessler.com/technology/2021/04/26/setup-kobo-sync-in-calibre-web.html
I use it like to to get access to all my ebooks
If you don't already do any self hosting, then it can take a while to get the foundation of your server setup. I already had that setup so this took less than an hour for me.
You use calibre web. Then on the Kobo you connect it to your computer, backup 1-2 files, then change the store link to your domain name for your calibre web. Simple json file iirc.
Works well but doesn't sync progress I don't think.
Thx! How can you describe you reading experience (especially outside) ? Is device durable?
Durable is an understatement, to be honest. I have the a Kobo Clara BW and it’s fully waterproof. As in, “shit, I dropped it in the ocean lemme run it under this tap to clean it” waterproof.
I’ve dropped it a good many times as well.
The Kobo Clara BW is hands down the best ebook reader I’ve owned, and definitely better than the ones I’ve encountered in the wild with my mates
Worth noting that the one exception for every e-reader is the screen. E-ink screens are very sensitive to pressure, and can be damaged internally even if the surface is totally fine. It’s not something that any one model will do better or worse, because it’s simply due to the way e-ink screens work. Fixing the issue would require inventing new e-ink tech.
Get a folio cover, with a hard/stiff fold. This will more evenly spread any pressure out across the entire screen, ensuring that no damage happens to the underlying e-ink. Nothing worse than pulling your e-reader out of your bag and discovering that it was resting up against something pointy while you walked around, and is now damaged.
That being said, the Kobo’s waterproofing is no joke. I take mine when I go camping, because I’m not worried about it getting wet at all. I could read in the middle of a monsoon, and it would be totally fine.
This is an excellent point. I’ll chime in here and say I’d never consider using one of these without a proper cover. I got the official sleep cover with the little fold in it for making it a stand and it does the job perfectly.
Yeah it’s amazing. It’s my go to reader for vacations, have it at the pool and beach. I don’t know about waterproof per se, but it’s resisted kids splashing me and me dropping it a bunch.
I use Boox. I don't really trust them, but Android is just way better than not Android, and their modifications to support e-ink are the best IMO.
I primarily use the go color 7, and the page turn buttons also add a lot.
I'm opposite to you - android is stop factor for me:) Much appreciated since Boox is smth new for me.
Anything bad about Android is worse on kindle or kobo's OS. They're more invasive, give you less privacy options, and make it much more difficult than a decent android app to organize content. I don't actually particularly like Android, and would be miserable if I had to use it in place of my iPhone. But the device specific software is pretty much all really bad.
Kobo OS let's me completely replace their store with a self hosted calibre-web instance for 100% DRM free ebooks.
Its fully integrated and organized exactly how I want
What's the battery life like? Without actually doing much research, I always lent towards dedicated eReaders. I just assumed that a tailor made, super simple OS would save a lot of needless processing, therefore power.
I charge my Kindle about once a month, I guess.
By default it will turn itself off after two days, but it still sleeps pretty completely without a bunch of idle power draw without doing that.
It has a pretty long battery life with no backlight and airplane mode. If you do a bunch of downloads or run heavy apps and have the backlight high, it will drain faster, but it depends how you use it. Boox pretty aggressively limits background behavior by default, though you can change some of it to allow what you want. I don't have benchmarks or anything to give you a direct comparison, but I rarely think about battery. You're right to raise it as a question, though.
The one thing with color specifically is that it needs more light than black and white to really shine. In bright sunlight it looks great, but indoors I generally have to raise the backlight higher than I would for other content, and that's a good chunk of the power draw so makes a dent.
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I love my Kobo Libra 2, with KoReader installed. I manage my books with Calibre.
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I’ve had a Kindle Paperwhite in the past and now I have a Kobo Clara 2E (that’s the BW one).
I prefer the Clara because:
- it is not an Amazon product, and I even bought it at a local retailer
- it works with epub files for books — even if Kobos have their own kepub file extension, calibre has plugins that deal with that
- setting up calibre-web on my home server and having the Clara connect to it was very simple
They both have water resistance and warm light. The Paperwhite’s screen is a bit bigger, but the difference is not monumental.
In the end, they are similar enough both in terms of specs and price that depending on your use case you will be fine with either one, but if anything I mentioned above is an important factor to you then I hope this was helpful :)
My last eReader purchase was the Kobo Clara 2E and it’s fantastic. I got one for my dad as well. I love the fact that you can use it completely offline and without any account.
Then they announced a partnership with IFixIt, and that cemented for me (barring any changes), that my next eReader will also be another Kobo… though with this partnership I expect that to be a long time down the road.
Is it possible to use this reader with an amazon account?
Not without significant hurdles due to Amazon’s (very intentionally crafted) walled garden. You’re locked in by the file format as well as Amazon’s DRM. If you do anything to bypass this, it’s technically illegal as a violation of the DMCA.
without any account
Did they make this easier? I have a Sage and I had to open a SQLite database file on the e-reader, then flip some flag, to bypass account sign in. But that was a few years ago.
I don’t think so, I had to go in and do the song and dance with changing a config file. Reposting this comment here for posterity.
- Delete
.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite(if you are already signed in). - Restart Kobo
- DO NOT tap "Set up over wi-fi". Press the other one and connect it to a computer.
- Go to
.kobo/Kobo/Koboreader.config(or something like that) - Open the config file and under
[ApplicationPreferences], write on a new line:SideloadedMode=true. - If you did not do steps 1 and 2, delete
.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite. - Eject and restart ereader.
- Yay! You just bypassed registration!
If you want to sideload your own books and continue to be able to do so, steer clear of any Amazon device.
As someone who has sideloaded a ton of books onto their kindle, why?
From what I've heard, the newest generation doesn't show up as an external drive when you plug it into a computer.
Just looked this up. It looks like the new generation just shows up as an MTP device instead of an external drive. That doesn't stop sideloading books onto the device, it works as before.
However, they've seemingly stopped allowing the "download and transfer" option for Amazon-bought books, which was an easy way to get them into Calibre and remove their DRM. So that's something to keep in mind for sure if you want to buy ebooks from Amazon.
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They’re making it harder and harder to do so apparently and to download the books that you buy from their store.
I don’t trust that they won’t make a strong push to lock you into the Amazon ecosystem.
And, bluntly, I don’t trust Bezos, especially after all of this election bullshit he pulled with WaPo where he personally got involved. The chances are now non-zero that Kindle could censor books. If a tyrannical regime told Bezos to remove a list of books from Kindle devices I think he’d roll over and do it. And that’s not right. They’re the customer’s books - they bought them and they get to decide what they read without censorship. And to be clear, I don’t care which way the censorship goes. We shouldn’t be censoring books - full stop.
I used to be such a kindle Stan but I don’t think they will let me have full control over an expensive device that I buy and books that I buy on their platform.
I de-drm every book I buy and side load it onto my devices because no company in the future should be able to tell me what books I can read. I’m currently using a Kobo but if they start fucking around too (no signs of this yet…) I’ll find a device that will respect my freedom.
Amazon is increasingly hostile with Calibre, especially within the past year or two. Things like intentionally destroying included book covers/thumbnails for books uploaded by Calibre, intentionally breaking Collection editing via Calibre so you have to do it on the Kindle directly, and not allowing users to download their Amazon-purchased books into Calibre.
I own the Kobo Libra H2O and the Boox Air 2, both are amazing for different reasons.
Kobo is small and portable, fantastic for reading in bed.
Boox Air 2 has pen support and runs android. Fantastic for note taking, large PDF files, and so. It is a bit big at 7in screen, pretty much a tablet.
Kobo Libra H20 owner here too then Kobo Colour!! Love both! My husband upgraded me for free because he worked with Kobo
How do you like the color? I'm looking to upgrade from an H2O like you did!
Love it though admittedly I haven't utilize much of the color e-ink feature. Primarily book covers right now and highlights (btw, contrary to what someone already responded Kobo has yellow, blue, green and pink highlights). The book covers look great in color but not as sharp as black and white. I'm hoping to read the Sandman soon though and other graphic novels from my library is why I got it (and it was a free upgrade for me).
But I love both my Kobos and have no complaints. Theyre so customizable and easy to use.
Pocketbook also makes great devices, not that well known outside of EU but their software has more features than Kobo and is (as of yet) not in the book selling market so no conflict of interest (and no analytics, contrary to kobo).
If you can get an Onyx Boox tablet used by a first adopter that it wasn't right for, it has the best of all worlds. Open, Android, EInk, large screen, and can be used to bang out content and read email. Other than that I would just get a downmarket but new Android Tablet and use it as a dedicated eBook and audio book/podcast device. The screen isn't ideal but you can get a stock android tablet for $150 bucks us and use Caliber on it along with all the typical android stuff. Hell you might even be able to get a Linux tablet that would fit your needs but cost a little more. But if you go tablet the devices tend to be a bit more open to sideloading.
Don't get a device without e-ink as a reader. It will end up in the trash where it belongs. A low resolution backlit display will just discourage actually using it to read.
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A decade old paperwhite is plenty good jailbroken. A real bargain.
I'm a cheap guy, and honestly I got the cheapest Kindle (I believe 2022) and I've been reading books from Calibre without issues.
No other e-reader was as cheap as that, and it... Just works.
I've been extremely happy with my boox go 10.3! Crazy long battery life (on the order of months; no backlight and i keep wifi off), amazing reading experience (looks basically indistinguishable from paper) and writing experience is good enough as someone who doesn't write often on it.
i have a pocketbook touch lux 4 and a boox page. both are good at their own thing: the book trades a bit of battery life and a higher price for being able to run any android app like tachiyomi, etc.
my recommendation is look through what e-readers are supported by koreader, the best e-reading app, and also, get something with physical page turn buttons and enough/expandable storage.
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