Original post: hachyderm.io (Mastodon)
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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I never got the point of eReaders tbh. I mean sure, they look exactly like paper n stuff, but what's wrong with ur phone?
I read on my phone with a black background and white-gray text. It's really comfortable, and I don't need to buy and charge extra devices. Really curious to know why you guys don't do something like this.
Because they look like paper... They don't hurt your eyes because you're not staring at a light the whole time. They're not backlit at all.
I have an OLED screen though. It gets really really dim, plus the black background is as dark as it can get. But again, I guess it's that additional luxury.
E readers are definitely not worse than my phone. They most definitely are better (even if the difference isn't that significant). Therefore, if money was not a concern, I would get one too ig!
A lot of them are, but you can turn it off when there's enough ambient light.
They aren't. What you've seen is called a frontlight.
E-ink panels are not transparent, light cannot pass through them at all. The complete opacity of the ink particles inside the panel is part of how it works. They physically cannot be backlit.
The built in light you find on most new e-readers is a string of LEDs around the edges of the panel, which shine light into a glass or plastic layer in front of the screen.
This allows the device to illuminate the e-ink panel in exactly the same manner ambient light does.
E-ink is just genuinely incredible. As you said it looks like paper which is nice, including needing an external light to be read at all lol. Feels easier on the eyes than a phone.
They use no power at all except during page turns, so battery life lasts for like a month.
Screen is much larger than a phone and the device is also a lighter weight. I find it more comfortable to read for longer sessions.
Overall they’re just nice. That being said mine was a gift, I’m not sure if I would get another one tbh. I usually just read physical books still lol
I grew up reading paper books and I don't like how narrow my phone is, or how reading for 8+ hours at a time drains the battery so much so quickly unless I attach a tether to it to charge while I read (I don't like the sensory feeling of that phone charger dragging over my body as I shift in bed). Phones also provide too many "quick gratification" distractions like apps and social media. Also, as I get older, I have to increase text size because my eyes already sucked before aging got to them, then they got worse, and large text on a tiny phone screen is ridiculous.
eReaders have better battery life and a bigger screen and are easier to read in full sun without glare washing it out.
Phones increase eye strain. Books don't. Books, though, suck at changing the text written on their pages, so an ereader is the best of both worlds.
If you don't feel the eye strain/don't read for too long at a time, then a phone is generally better, yeah. But it's a nicer experience to use an e-reader, in my opinion.
Battery on my e-reader lasts months, no distractions/alerts, it's a bigger screen so I can use a increased size font without destroying the layout, I can load a few GB on there without taking space from apps on my phone, and more comfortable to hold for long periods especially if I've been on the phone often that day already. Phone is a pixel 5, e-reader is a Kindle 6.8", and I have a cheap old 10" tablet for reading comics and scientific papers, but I haven't been using that as much for comics since Amazon killed comixology.
Technology Connections did a really good video a few years ago explaining how e-readers and eInk works and what draws people to them. It's really informative, goes over a bit of the tech history of it, roughly how it works, and whether it may or may not work for you.
https://youtu.be/dhRgw0HfrYU
Removing tracker: https://youtu.be/dhRgw0HfrYU
Love Technology Connections!
I mean, if it works for, you, no need to consider an eBook reader. But my eyes get fatigued really quickly if I'm reading on a normal screen, but the eBook reader screens are effectively fatique free.
They also don't use much energy. You can do a lot of reading on one charge.
I'm light sensitive and suffer from migraines. The eye strain and fatigue from back-lit screens is real for me. E-ink is so much easier for me to read.
Ah, so u have an LCD screen? Have u tried OLED screens? There's no backlight.
The downside to that is that you have to be reading white text on black background, otherwise it's the same as if it was backlit, and the text itself is lit up. E-ink displays require external light sources.
I use both lcd and oled. While oled is better, it's still self lit vs lit from an outside source (like paper and eink). That self lit portion is what bothers me after awhile. And yes I use dark mode with blue light cut and pretty dim screen.
My wife, meanwhile, has the light of a thousand stars in the palm of her hand, and it doesn't bother her.
You've gotten a few replies from people who are talking about e-ink, which I can't comment on without having used an e-reader, but I nearly universally prefer to read things on a screen bigger than a phone. I guess it'll depend a bit on your phone's screen size (mine is on the small side for recent phone generations), but it always feels like the screen is closer to my face than I want, the font is too small to be comfortable, and/or I can't fit enough on the screen. Plus the aspect ratio of modern phones is very tall, meaning each line of text is pretty short which is kind of annoying for long-form content like books. If you have a big 6.5" screen that's similar to a small e-reader's screen size anyway then I guess it might not be as much of an issue though!
Yeah, I get the short lines issue. It's especially a problem for me for books with figures in them (like textbooks). Too much of scrolling necessary there.
For normal mostly text based stuff, it's alright for me. But again, I do have a large-ish phone. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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