Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

What are you trying to do with it that you’re concluding it’s a “bad product” due to the slow refresh times? Kindles have always been the benchmark ebook reader and the most common piece of e-ink technology that you can actually buy. Hardly a “bad product” in any dimension that matters in business terms.

View on HN

Successful doesn't necessarily mean good. the UI is slow. It crashes with large books. The hardware is seemingly under-powered. The OS degrades in usability over time. Search indexing is poor. The lack of responsiveness makes the keyboard unusable.

I've heard similar pitfalls about Kindle Scribe, the write-able Kindle.

I use a Kindle Scribe almost every day, have read dozens and dozens of books and documents on it. Maybe we have different expectations but I love mine and take it everywhere. It's never crashed.

When I am trying to focus on reading a book, I appreciate that the Kindle doesn't have too many bells and whistles. I don't want notifications popping off and the distraction of fast Internet access.

The Kindle Scribe is way more expensive than normal kindles (and has to handle the more computationally demanding task of vector graphics), so it would have a faster processor, and would be able to handle ebooks way easier than a cheap Kindle.

Not saying you're wrong, just that your anecdote doesn't mean much about $100/$50 Kindles.

I looked into Scribe and it sounds like they upgraded the hardware to making writing more responsive. that's good news.

Sounds like my Kobo Glo from 2013.

They've been the benchmark for amazon kindle books. They suck for pdfs or anything with graphics.

Again, you're confusing market success with quality. Many beautiful products fail and many awful products succeed.

I'm talking about aesthetics. In this case, elegance, utility, responsiveness, durability, efficiency .

you are confusing your needs with the use case of the Kindle which is heavily focused on linear reading of text, mostly fiction. Graphics and PDFs are much lower on the priority scale.

> Graphics and PDFs are much lower on the priority scale.

Unless of course you read books that have graphics or come in pdf form.

Which is not the business that Amazon and Kobo are in.

PDFs and comics are not a small use case at all - the push to larger screens is mostly driven by people who want to read scientific papers, business documents, etc which come in pdf form, or manga and other graphical works (the drive for color ereaders seems to come almost entirely from this segment). The smaller "ebook only" readers are much cheaper and marketed less aggressively.

Even optimized e-ink devices are not particularly suitable for those kinds of materials and most of the e-ink reader manufacturers have not tried to address that market. It is generally better served by LCD tablets.

How so? My Kobo works great with anything, my Pocketbook and Onyx Boox also worked great with pdfs. Only Kindle sucks at non-ebook formats.

I think e-readers are pretty much a solved problem for books that consist of solely text - it's got to the point where they only differentiate themselves on things more related to personal taste than any technical merit. And price, of course.

I consider myself a heavy user of ereaders, probably averaging over an hour a day, and have had a few in my time (Kindle paperwhite, Kindle Voyage, Kobo Aura H2O, latest the Kindle Oasis - which I got in Jan 2019). The only real time I felt like I got an "upgrade" was the slightly denser screen on the voyage, then the slightly larger screen on the Aura. The Oasis feels functionally the same for my use case (again, 99.9% text, no images or diagrams or animations, so can't compare them). But really the only reason I "upgraded" after the voyage is leaving it on a train or got damaged in my luggage one time.

And what can they really improve on it? There are denser screens - but they don't make the font size I use actually look any better. There are larger screens, but it's already about the limit of what I want for portability, and much larger would be harder to read not easier. There are faster refreshing screens, but I've never even noticed the page refresh speed, as it's lost in the time it takes to realign my eyes to the top of the page anyway.

So what's left? Looks? "Premium" materials? Thinness? The oasis is already at the point where any thinner or bezels any smaller and you couldn't hold it. I don't read comics on it, so don't really need a higher resolution, or colour panel (though can see the advantage if you did). Same with flash size - every book I've ever read on it (nearly 3000) is still on my 8gb model, and it's not even at 50% capacity.

And now my Oasis battery is starting to fade - it doesn't more than a few days anymore - and somehow it feels weird considering buying the same thing again - or pry open the back off and try to replace it - though who knows what that would do to it's water resistance. I guess the newer models have an amber backlight option, which would be nice, but still doesn't feel like an upgrade to something I purchased over 5 years ago now? Or even more as I only got that because the (functionally equivalent) predecessor got crushed on a plane.

So I think my point is that for the "Reading Books" use case, a kindle has already reached the maxima. Any "improvement" would almost be a waste - why improve refresh times when it won't actually affect the user experience one bit?

Is there something I'm missing? Is this just a local maxima where you'd look back on and feel stupid for not seeing the "obvious" improvement path? Or is ereader "development" just a waste now as it's now just a commodity?

>Is there something I'm missing? Is this just a local maxima where you'd look back on and feel stupid for not seeing the "obvious" improvement path?

A handle. My hand is not L-shaped. Make it hand-mirror shaped and shift as much weight as possible into the handle. Preferably a fold-down handle.

A folding screen. Or rather, two screens with a hinge, no need for fancy flexible screen tech. It doesn't matter if there's a visible bezel between the screens, you're only displaying text. Ideally, you'd cram it just small enough that it can fit in your pocket when folded.

Also, once you have a handle you don't need bezels.

A handle is an interesting one - I'd be a bit worried by having that you'd make it so you can't hold it any other way. As I read I naturally reposition my hands, sometimes both on the device on each side, sometimes one gripping the side. Sometimes my thumbs supporting it from the bottom, sometimes the thumb over the top corner. It's light enough you don't really need that much "grip". Sometimes not really gripped at all, but leant against sometime, like my hand or the back of a seat tray table on a train. I do the same thing with paperbacks.

I can't imagine holding a hand mirror for any length of time comfortably - especially if there's only a single orientation you can grip it with the screen upright - but that may be the weight distribution as you mentioned.

Folding would be useful for putting it in a bag or fitting it somewhere, which hasn't really been a big issue for me. A flat profile is already fine when putting it in a laptop bag - it's thin enough it just slides down the side of the pocket. I wouldn't be surprised if decreasing the total volume is pretty much at it's limit already with being able to be held - but maybe putting that is a more square package when stored would be easier in some cases?

Probably you've seen already, but Kobo is now experimenting with colour screens, plus note taking. People on the internet seem enthusiastic about the colour screens at least.

So maybe zines and comics is where ebook readers are heading.

i'm compelling people that it's not solved given how critical reading is. It should be better than reading a book in every way. Right now the library sync features are better but the reading experience is worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com