How to choose the best e‑book | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

In the era of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and all kinds of gad­gets, paper books have increas­ing­ly begun to take their places on shelves and cof­fee tables, and for con­ve­nience, we are used to tak­ing a phone or an e‑book with us. If you decide that you def­i­nite­ly need a new device, but you can’t decide which one, we advise you to read this guide.

As with choos­ing any gad­get, before buy­ing, you need to high­light the fea­tures that are most impor­tant to you or to the per­son for whom this gift is intend­ed. The con­cept of a uni­ver­sal ide­al eread­er does not exist (yet). Each man­u­fac­tur­er offers a vari­ety of prod­ucts with dif­fer­ent fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty. There­fore, we will ana­lyze the main char­ac­ter­is­tics that you should think about when choos­ing.

Display

Today there are not so many types of screens for “read­ers”, only two — LCD and E‑ink-screen. The for­mer attract users with col­or images and improved con­trast. Thanks to this, the book turns into a full-fledged tablet, on which you can watch videos, pho­tos, surf the Inter­net, play games and read col­or edi­tions. In addi­tion, the response time in such devices is much high­er. Thus, for a small price, you can get a famil­iar tablet with an aver­age qual­i­ty screen. Now for the dis­ad­van­tages. The bright LCD dis­play quick­ly tires the eyes, and due to the back­light, with active use, the bat­tery lasts for one to two days. So if you read a lot, plan to take a book on long trips and first of all look for a “read­er” and not a tablet, we sug­gest tak­ing a clos­er look at E‑ink books.

Screens based on the prin­ci­ple of elec­tron­ic ink (E‑ink) are as sim­i­lar as pos­si­ble to the books we are used to. The dis­play is mono­chrome and com­plete­ly imi­tates paper. The device is slow­er and you will have to wait one or two sec­onds when open­ing a book or flip­ping. But with fre­quent use, the charge will last for sev­er­al weeks, and the eyes of e‑books of this for­mat do not get tired at all.

We always want every­thing at once, but in the case of choos­ing e‑books, chas­ing ver­sa­til­i­ty and mul­ti-devices is not worth it, because there are full-fledged tablets with a lot of func­tions for this.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers are con­stant­ly improv­ing tech­nolo­gies and capa­bil­i­ties of read­ers. So, today the mar­ket has already appeared “read­ers” with elec­tron­ic ink with the abil­i­ty to dis­play more than 4000 col­ors, as well as mod­els with E‑ink dis­plays with screen back­light.

Formats

The more for­mats your e‑book sup­ports, the more ver­sa­tile it will be. It is not always pos­si­ble to find the right book in a net­work of a cer­tain for­mat. That is why, when choos­ing a “read­er”, it is worth care­ful­ly study­ing what types of books it can repro­duce. The most pop­u­lar are EPUB, FB2, PDF, DOC, DOCX, HTML, TXT, RTF, DJVU. It is also con­ve­nient when the device sup­ports graph­ics for­mats such as JPEG, BMP, TIFF or PNG. Even on a black and white screen, it’s some­times help­ful to look at infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed as an info­graph­ic or dia­gram.

Some gad­gets addi­tion­al­ly have the abil­i­ty to lis­ten to music. This option will help not only those who like to read with sound accom­pa­ni­ment, but also fans of audio­books and train­ings will like it.

Capabilities

In addi­tion to the most impor­tant func­tion — read­ing, the read­er may have addi­tion­al options that make it even more con­ve­nient. For exam­ple, hav­ing your own brows­er and the abil­i­ty to con­nect to wi-fi. Thanks to this, you can down­load books and files with­out con­nect­ing the device to a com­put­er. Often, the down­load speed is infe­ri­or to the usu­al brows­er, but still it is very con­ve­nient to have such an oppor­tu­ni­ty. But it all depends on the ini­tial require­ments for the gad­get.

Touch con­trol is an option for an ama­teur. Those who are used to smart­phones and tablets will appre­ci­ate this oppor­tu­ni­ty to the fullest. Nav­i­ga­tion becomes much eas­i­er, and flip­ping the page by swip­ing your fin­ger from one edge to the oth­er is famil­iar by anal­o­gy with a paper book. How­ev­er, in read­ers, the touch­screen is almost always dupli­cat­ed by but­tons. So if the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the sen­sor suf­fers, or you are not used to this type of con­trol, you can always use the stan­dard method.

The touch screen will also come in handy if you are a fan of read­ing a book with a pen­cil. With the help of the touch­screen, you can select a word or even a part of the text and fix it in your book­marks. You can also leave notes, com­ment, so that at any time you can return to impor­tant infor­ma­tion for you.

One of the advan­tages of an e‑book is the abil­i­ty to change the font size and style. Each user can cus­tomize the text for them­selves. Peo­ple who do not expe­ri­ence visu­al prob­lems usu­al­ly set the font to medi­um or small. Visu­al­ly impaired users enlarge the font. Every­one choos­es styles on their own, based on per­son­al beliefs and taste pref­er­ences.

The size

We often opt for e‑books because of their porta­bil­i­ty and con­ve­nience. That is why the size of the device plays a big role when choos­ing. If you plan to view draw­ings, dia­grams and oth­er doc­u­ments, then it is bet­ter to pay atten­tion to “read­ers” with a diag­o­nal of 8 inch­es or more. In oth­er cas­es, mod­els up to 6 inch­es will suf­fice.

Nat­u­ral­ly, weight is also a sig­nif­i­cant cri­te­ri­on. Before buy­ing a portable device, it is worth eval­u­at­ing whether it is easy to car­ry and hold the gad­get in your hand, whether it weighs less than a reg­u­lar paper­back book. The opti­mal weight of the read­er does not exceed 200 grams.

Material

Most often, e‑books are made of plas­tic. It is extreme­ly rare to find a mod­el made of met­al. Of the vari­ety of devices, it is bet­ter to choose mat­te fin­ish­es, such as soft-touch plas­tic, which feels like rub­ber. Gad­gets made of this mate­r­i­al do not slip in the hands and are tac­tile­ly pleas­ant. Nev­er­the­less, no mat­ter what mate­r­i­al you choose, it is bet­ter to buy a case with the device right away, which will pro­tect the device from scratch­es, screen dam­age and oth­er unpleas­ant prob­lems dur­ing every­day use.

Memory

Most books do not take up much mem­o­ry, so mod­els with even a small vol­ume can accom­mo­date a large num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions. How­ev­er, get­ting acquaint­ed with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the read­er, it is worth con­sid­er­ing how many e‑books and oth­er doc­u­ments can be loaded into the read­er and whether it is pos­si­ble to increase the amount of mem­o­ry. This is espe­cial­ly use­ful for those who upload a large num­ber of doc­u­ments in PDF for­mat.

So, choos­ing a “read­er” you should not chase fash­ion or cool tech­nolo­gies. First of all, you plan to buy a book. So make a list of the fea­tures you need and then look for the right device. Here you can choose the per­fect read­er, order its deliv­ery or pick it up your­self in one of the stores or pick­up points.

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