Is kindle worth it?

[Manusia]

What the pros and cons?

How about buying used kindle? 

Did you prefer use kindle than a real book after buying it? 

[ZzzleepingBear]

E-readers are absolute awesome. I recently bought a e-ink tablet that works great as both note pad and reading device. But for reading only, then a e-reader is probably much cheaper.

Pro:

The weight. An e-reader are lighter than most books to begin with. You can basically fit multiple bookshelfs into your device.

You can change the size of the text, and have back light to read in the dark without disturbing someone sleeping next to you.

The battery life are probably lasting you a week, minimum.

No tired eyes! These e-ink and e-readers wont hurt your eyes, as phone or computer screen does after long time usage.

 

Cons:

No feeling of turning a paper page.

Can probably be a bit slower to search for notes (Maybe). It may vary from e-reader to e-reader.

Real books don't need a battery at all.. :-p

 

Edited May 5, 2022 by ZzzleepingBear

[Leo Gura]

The biggest downside and deal-breaker for me is that you can't flip through a book and find the sections you need.

[Average Investor]

I feel for 1000 page hard cover books it can be pretty hard to hold them. So a kindle would be nice for that. I have a gen 3 paperwhite and I really like it. I got it use off ebay. I rarely use it now though. I prefer the physical books, but I would like to try having the physical book with the kindle for big heavy reads. Use the physical to mark things up with, when needed. It would be most ideal for biographies for me as they don't need as much marking. 

[ZzzleepingBear]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The biggest downside and deal-breaker for me is that you can't flip through a book and find the sections you need.

I think that an e-ink tablet are more suitable than a e-reader to flip back and forth between pages. With a e-ink tablet, you also have the ability to use a pen to take notes anywhere, and that is quite useful.

[Superfluo]

Check out Kobo Reader too.

[LSD-Rumi]

@ZzzleepingBear why not use an ordinary tablet?

[StarStruck]

Pocketbook is much better than Kindle. I notice that a lot of people never give ereaders a real shot. In terms of bookmarking, taking notes, and annotating it beats real books in my experience. 

 

[Michael569]

It can be if you are not the "own the book" type of person or don't care about flipping through the pages and experiencing the thrill of grabbing a new book. Better option if you don't want to be paying for books is to simply sign up for the local library which is usually covered by tax so books are free for citizens or people who fall under that council. 

[Espaim]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The biggest downside and deal-breaker for me is that you can't flip through a book and find the sections you need.

Many e-books have built-in shortcuts to chapters

-

I have a 7 year old Kindle I still use to this day. I prefer to use e-books because:

• I can read any book I want, anywhere, without carrying like 1kg worth of books.
• It's possible to adjust the size/type of the font.

On the other hand:

•  it's very annoying to write notes. If I want to write down notes about a book, I'll need to actually have a paper by my side.

Regarding using a tablet: e-ink readers don't put so much strain on my eyes as tablet/smartphones screens do. TBH it's just like a normal book.

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Espaim

[LSD-Rumi]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The biggest downside and deal-breaker for me is that you can't flip through a book and find the sections you need.

Boomer Leo, most ebooks nowadays offer a tab to see all the sections of the book.

Something like this, this from my tablet not an e-reader tho.

 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, LSD-Rumi said:

Boomer Leo, most ebooks nowadays offer a tab to see all the sections of the book.

Something like this, this from my tablet not an e-reader tho.

 

Not good enough

[ZzzleepingBear]

8 hours ago, LSD-Rumi said:

@ZzzleepingBear why not use an ordinary tablet?

That's a fair question. I would not suggest that an ordinary tablet, and a e-ink tablet are easy to compare, because the focus remains mostly on what the user need is, if you have to choose between them.

I try to keep it as short as I can here. So a ordinary tablet can do basically everything and more than an e-ink tablet can. What an e-ink tablet does better, is basically saving you from eye strain, that staring at lcd screens for long period of times often causes. And the second selling point is the massive battery life. So an e-ink tablet are basically useful for three things, reading/writing and some basic sketching. This makes it a very good working tool for those purposes alone. So you are basically out of entertainment options when you are poking around in a e-ink tablet. The tools that are provided for you in most of these e-ink tablets are specifically designed around usability for reading/writing and some sketching.

Since you can't do much more than that, these e-ink tablet are not designed to outclass ordinary tablets at what they already do better, but rather be more of a replacement for papper in various ways. Books/note books/notes/calendars etc.

And the great thing with the lack of digital entertainmen traps, apart from reading a entertaing book or a comic maybe. Is that you are more likely to actually use the e-ink tablet as a tool, rather than it using you, like a phone/computer/regular tablet easily can end up doing.

So a e-ink tablet are fun to be creative with, and work with texts, reading, sketching etc. So as long as you pick up and use one, you are likely to be productive in some shape or form, instead of easily be sidetracked by all the fast entertainment that is provided through your other digital screens. E-ink is fun, but you have to put in a little work for it first, that's all.

[Manusia]

Thanks for your input guys. Might start saving for having one. Lots of book did not available in my country and shipping from outside country is very costly. 

[Einsteinonacid]

Yes, worth it. Makes it easier to transfer your book notes into your digital commonplace book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Mystical Man]

The ideal is to have both. I have the kindle version, physical version, and audiobook version of my favorite books. 

The mind can grasp a book in its entirety when you have the physical version. You want to be able to jump around easily and grasp the structure of the book. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[Preety_India]

I just love it. 

 

[UnbornTao]

Saves money

Less environmental impact

Instant delivery

I buy a few physical books every year though. They make knowledge tangible. They're in front of you. Physical is great.

[Hello from Russia]

PDF is king for efficient reading

[ZzzleepingBear]