this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Depending on your needs, you can get a very basic e-ink reader for not that much.
My e-reader, the Kobo Libra Color, has an e-ink color display, stylus capabilities (I've been doing crossword puzzles on it), WiFi so you can download books straight from the store as well as Dropbox/Google Drive integration if you store downloaded books there. It also supports Adobe DRM which Kindles don't.
But my mom has the Boox Note 4C which runs a full version of Android. Since it's e-ink, don't expect it to play video or games at all. But for productivity, they're pretty good. Similarly you can get the reMarkable which is like a large e-ink tablet.
As far as obsolescence goes, you can't go wrong with an e-reader. It uses very little battery, so wear is minimal. The build is not too complex and usually quite sturdy. You might have to rely on WiFi 4 or 5 but that is no issue for the foreseeable future.
The only thing is new e-book formats. Pdf is very basic and is not subject to change, but epub, the more interactive e-book format is currently on v3. It's basically just an extension of HTML, xHTML to be precise, so it's unlikely version 4 won't open on older readers. But considering the capabilities of v3 I won't expect v4 to be coming any time soon.
I never truly understood the use of epubs to be honest, I usually convert them to PDF. Also I didn't know you could do crossword puzzles on E ink that does sound very nice, so I assume you could do Sudoku as well? I have heard of reMarkable and it sounds perfect for me but its not within my reach atm unfortunately. I never heard of Boox so I will check it out. Is Kobo durable too?
ePubs are generally a bit smaller than PDF's, and more critically, allow the text to reflow to fit the screen of any device, or to your personal preference (such as spacing, font size, ragged edge vs full justification, etc). It's the best open-source format for reading on a device, IMHO.
Is it safe as PDF (i know PDF can be virus ridden by usually embedding the virus in specific parts of the PDF layers or so I heard a while ago, which I usually am careful what PDF i open) or more/less?
More safe, imo, since at present nobody really bothers to try and use epub that way because it's essentially only used for reading, and in apps that aren't going to be able to do much in the way of escalating privileges. PDFs at least get used on a wider range of devices , and for more use cases.
Thanks that's reassuring.
Should be, yes.
Thanks, I'll try it
Well me and my wife both have Kobo and I'm very impressed with the build quality and battery usage. You could definitely do sudoku on the Libra, although at 350 plus stylus makes 410 it's a bit more expensive than the Clara, but you can't do puzzles on that.
Good to know, I appreciate you taking the time to clarify it to me, thanks