Ask HN: Which iPad would you buy for reading technical books in 2023? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which iPad would you buy for reading technical books in 2023?

4 pointsdondraper3611 comments

I frequently read technical books in PDF and generally read a lot.

I have always thought that iPad is useless for me when there's a laptop and phone but after a whole day of using my laptop I just switch to my phone. The screen is not small (at around 6 inches), but it's of course not enough for comfortable reading.

I know very little about iPads, to be honest, so the number of models available is frustrating. Overall, it seems that iPad 9th gen and iPad Air 5th gen are of great value and I definitely don't need the more expensive models. That said, even between these two models there is a huge price difference.

Which model would you personally buy now?

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Really the plain iPad is great for reading PDF.

To be frank though, so are AMZN Fire Tablets and even though they have some annoyances the price is really right. There is some "reality distortion field" such that people wonder "where did all the Android tablets go?" and never see they are hidden in plain site.

I read everything on an iPad Mini. If you read PDFs then the base model iPad or iPad Air is a little bigger.

Frankly just go to an Apple Store and try them out, then buy a used iPad of that size for a fraction of the price, and none of the ecological impact.

It's a pity the books are PDF and not ePub. ePub reformats to fit the window and the chosen text size; PDFs are fixed to the page size.

You really need to try out the different sizes to see what you are comfortable reading on.

9th generation iPad, it is cheap and more than adequate for the job. It is still being sold so support is guaranteed for a while and has everything you need and much more.

I got iPad mini 6th edition with Apple Pencil 2 and I couldn’t be happier for work and personal reading.

iPad Pro M2 11 with magic keyboard when using apps, browsing or watching videos, and with the vertical stand when reading ebooks + AirPods.

Also iOS' builtin text-to-speech produces almost audiobook qaulity narration, but it's annoying to use with PDFs as it's hard to tell it where to start to read from, it works much better with epub format.

I use the iPad Mini for that sort of thing.

Same. The regular iPads are a bit heavy and large for me. This is a cozy size and probably the first time I've paid more for a smaller device.

Won a Mini in a work giveaway a while back. Have to say I do like using it for reading (and not just tech books, which I don't read a lot of).

Eink products are better for reading than any iPad model. I love my boox note 3

Kindles are great on the eyes and a lot cheaper.

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