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Whatever happened to cheap eReaders?
- mynegation 1y agoEnd of ZIRP is what happened. Money are nknlonger cheap enough to buy your way into the market hoping for the profit from books and subscriptions.
- neom 1y ago"I'd love a £8 eReader. Something I could throw in a pocket and not worry about damaging. An eReader which was the same price as a hardback book - around £20 - would be amazing." Personally I already think ewaste is out of control, imo this sounds like a recipe for disaster.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoReminds me of those one-time use battery banks you can buy.
- notpushkin 1y agoThen crack it open and get yourself a decent battery for a project! (or more likely find one lying in the streets somewhere)
- Yossarrian22 1y agoUsually the battery chemistry does not allow recharging
- evilduck 1y agoDepends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI Though the UK did just recently ban some of the worst offenders https://www.gov.uk/government/news/single-use-vapes-banned-from-1-june-2025 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/single-use-vapes-banned-f...
- notpushkin 1y agoThe ones used in these “single use” devices are almost universally just standard Li-Ion. In vapes it’s almost certain, as other battery types just don’t work very well for this application. Also, many of these come rechargeable now (but not refillable). In “emergency chargers”, you could in theory use something different but usually it’s lithium too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lflk6iY56w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lflk6iY56w
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- Ghoelian 1y agoE-ink is already pretty expensive as a display technology, no way anyone can make a decent e-reader that you can "throw in a pocket and not worry about damaging" for £8. Maybe if it has like 8 "pixels" total.
- pooper 1y ago> E-ink is already pretty expensive as a display technology but why? is it because of patents? Shouldn't this technology get cheaper with time?
- TeMPOraL 1y agoApparently so. I recall this explanation back from 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 Supposedly, a core patent for the technology expired a year ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/1e3icaz/any_company_developing_eink_since_the_patent/ https://old.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/1e3icaz/any_company_d... It's probably too soon to easily tell whether that's enough to make e-ink screens cheaper and more available.
- lozenge 1y agoIf only there were some article on the topic of why there are no cheap ereaders... I hope somebody posts one to HN soon.
- fortran77 1y agoThere are patents on nearly every active component in the cheapest of electronic devices. I don't think it's patents. There are many tens of millions of e-Ink store shelf-edge price labels around, for example, and they're a cheap commodity item.
- moolcool 1y agoOn this line of thinking though, I miss gadgets which patina nicely. Consider the iPod Classic: the shiny back scratched incredibly easily, and after a few years it looked better than it did new (like an old leather wallet, or well worn jeans).
- cianmm 1y agoI remember some blog (maybe HackADay?) suggested sanding the back to give it a brushed aluminium look and that ended up looking so cool. Those early iPods were all-time-great products.
- roenxi 1y agoAll the iDevices of Apple in their prime. I still have an old broken iPhone 4 as a reminder of what peak mobile phone design looked like. I miss being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago> I miss being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb. This. Oh, so much this. I have hated every phone after my OG iPhone SE so much because of this lunacy in design. It's ridiculous that we can't use our phones one-handed. I know-- people don't want small phones. >sigh< I wonder if we're getting to the point that most phone users have never actually used a phone with a screen they can reach across with one hand.
- lowercased 1y agoMoved from SE to 12 mini, now a 13 mini - just bought used last year. Will likely hold on for another year or two. Desperately want a small screen. There just seem to be no options. Re: thumb - I have found some gesture to pull the screen down halfway so you can reach the 'top' part without moving your hand. It's close to OK, and it's almost second nature now, but still annoying.
- angled 1y agoI keep a working iPhone 8 in a drawer for the same reason.
- cortic 1y agoI purchased one for £24, 11 years ago, and still use it. Ironically from amazon (code B006GTOYDS) - can't find it in way back machine still have it in my purchase history. Before they started killing the competition. Miles better than the kindle to read in daylight and battery life still lasts weeks... cheap isn't always throwaway. In contrast, i know people who have went through many kindles in this time and spent a small fortune on them.
- pegasus 1y agoKudos to you, but most would not be wise enough to know the difference (between cheap and throwaway).
- carlosjobim 1y agoHow do you imagine that people would not notice if a product they use is good? Why would they consider it throwaway if it works well?
- b112 1y agoSadly, for a lot of people, a "friend" mockingly saying "that's crap" would suffice.
- pegasus 1y agoBecause they could always buy a replacement for cheap. Sadly, our consumer goods prices do not correctly reflect environmental externalities, so in a way a higher price is better for the environment, even if the difference doesn't go in the right pocket.
- nisegami 1y agoI don't think they would have a choice. In a scheme like this, publishers would lock it down so they can sell it to you again. Perhaps even only allow a particular book to be read.
- organsnyder 1y ago> Miles better than the kindle to read in daylight Are you comparing it to the Kindle ereaders or their tablets? Standard (non-tablet) Kindles such as the Paperwhite series are like you describe (though they cost more than $100 and come with all of the lockin issues).
- whywhywhywhy 1y ago> Also, that £8 price was the subsidised price when purchased with a mobile contract So there never was an £8 reader, it was more likely a £30+ reader that's cost was hidden in the mobile contract or the hopes of you using their book store as it sounds from the wiki that it was a proprietary format > The internal format seems to be basically uncompressed Bitmaps of 3 or 4 bits per pixel. Font size can be specified in the source book but not changed after the transfer. If you could make an e-reader for £8 presumably including profit in that price so it doesn't have to be subsidized by vendor lock in book stores or mobile contracts you wouldn't want to use it. The screen would be underwhelming, the plastic creaky, file transfer slow and possibly wired only and the processor slow. It would be ewaste before it's even off the production line. There is nothing wrong with spending money on nice quality versions of things aligned with your tech ideology, and if you do there will be more things like that in the world. Cheapo disposable tech is actually bad because it all ends up having to be subsidized by exploitative practices like data selling or ads to actually profit from it.
- naravara 1y agoI also don’t understand the anxiety. One of the reasons eReaders are expensive is because they’re designed for durability in light of how people actually use them, which seems to be getting thrown around loose in a tote bag or in environments hostile to electronics such as hot tubs or by the beach. I’ve had my Kindle 2nd Generation since it came out and it still works. I don’t baby it, and at this point its biggest problem is that the battery life has shrunk to only last a couple of days.
- devilbunny 1y agoYMMV. My wife used at least five Kindle second-gen devices. Every one of them failed, all but the last one under warranty. Both our Kindle third-gen devices are still chugging along happily. We only use them for reading outside - indoors, we both use tablets. But in sunlight, you need that e-Ink.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoYeah, at £20 it becomes throwaway, that's in the same price range as a physical book; you'd see publishers selling these e-readers with a single book preloaded on it, possibly even locked down so you can't get anything else on it. E-readers don't need to become cheaper, ebooks do, and at the moment there's still a huge gap between "pirated" or "borrowed from the library" and "bought". That, plus DRM and lock-in makes people think twice about buying ebooks. I had to find a source, but [0] shows that physical books out-sell ebooks by a huge margin still. I think this chart would only change if ebooks are as readily available for cheap as streaming music. Come to think of it, I remember now; during that time, tablets also quickly became popular and were the direct competitor to e-readers. The low-cost e-readers were often regular tablets with LCD screens, since both then and now, e-paper is expensive. But you can buy a tablet for cheap. [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/24709/e-book-and-printed-book-penetration/ https://www.statista.com/chart/24709/e-book-and-printed-book...
- ljf 1y agoJust bought a Nook Simple Touch from ebay for £9 delivered - I already have one that I bought new for £29 delivered back in 2014 - but a second one felt useful. Getting an old but useable ereader for £20 or less is very doable right now - plus you can get the Nook simple touch to run (very old) Android.
- eth0up 1y agoI was so enamoured with the original gen2 Nook I acquired a pile of them. The batteries, unfortunately, are all dead and I've found no reliable replacements. Then there's that slimy rubber thing that happens after so many years, and that makes anything intolerably miserable to handle. I sure did adore the old black n white Nooks, which I could load as I pleased with any file of my choice, often converting text and PDFs to ebook with Calibre.
- ljf 1y agoAliExpress now sells the batteries - about £9 delivered. I haven't bought one yet (both my nook last over a day before needing a charge and that is fine for me for now) - and I still have a battery somewhere from my very first nook that I tried putting in my pocket then cycling to the station. Not a good idea, no idea how that battery is - I really should charge it to see. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32867625480.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32867625480.html
- theptip 1y ago> ewaste is out of control What’s the specific harm that you are worried about?
- neom 1y agoMostly leachate. The 11th generation Kindle weighs 158 grams, £8 reader with 30 g polymer: 100 M units, assuming a 1 % annual leach rate, that is 3t of bromine and phosphate compounds per year entering groundwater, that is actually close to the total UK industrial discharge of the same chemicals. Then there are the heavy metal ions.
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- Semaphor 1y ago> Unless you're prepared to get technical, you can only read Amazon books on your Amazon Kindle paid for with your Amazon wallet. That hasn’t been true for a very long time? Unless by "technical" you mean sending an email with the file in question attached. E-Book platforms sometimes even directly support sending that mail. > Other than Kobo and Amazon, no book retailer … in the UK. From what I’ve heard, Tolino devices are decently popular in Germany, they are made by an alliance of booksellers.
- Tomte 1y agoTolino is a rebranded Kobo with modified firmware, I think.
- paxys 1y agoI don't think it was ever true. Even way back you could always plug in your kindle via USB and drag and drop whatever books you wanted on it. As long as they were .mobi format they would read perfectly fine.
- Semaphor 1y agoYeah, but I’d have been willing to count that as "technical" for extremely untechnical people ;)
- paxys 1y ago$80-100 is incredibly cheap for any mainstream tech device when you factor in design, manufacturing, marketing, shipping, software, support. eReaders are already sold at or below cost because companies are hoping that you will buy books to make up the difference. Wanting one for the price of a paperback so you can throw it away once you are done is absurd. I got a Kindle Paperwhite for ~$100 in 2016 and still use it almost every day. Easily the best value gadget I have ever owned.
- zzbn00 1y agoI agree. And the cost of ebooks is often very reasonable, Amazon are selling lots (more than one can read in a lifetime) of superb stuff in the $1-$4 range. (Makes things really difficult for the modern authors though). Also a paper book you'd carry every day with you for a year will look in much worse state than a Kindle. Reading e-books is an affordable past time...
- ornornor 1y agoTo be pedantic, Amazon sells you a license to read the book but you don’t actually own the book like you would a real book. They can remove the book anytime and there is nothing you can do about it. They’ve already done it in the past, the book just vanished.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoIf you are really worried about this, you can pirate the book from the usual sites and side load it onto your kindle.
- paxys 1y agoYou can strip DRM in one click using Calibre. That way you can support the author and also own the book forever.
- GolfPopper 1y agoYep. I don't mind paying authors and published for ebooks, but I draw the line at Amazon controlling my library. It seems like one solution might be to buy the ebook via whatever platform the author says is best for them, and then acquire a copy you control via other means.
- joshstrange 1y agoAm I crazy or is a $100 kindle not “cheap”? It’s not like it’s a single-use product. I don’t understand the desire for a $8 e-reader, it’s effectively a one-time purchase (maybe once every 4-5 years at worst?).
- Wilduck 1y agoAgree! I bought my kindle in 2016 and have read hundreds of books on it. The cost per book at this point is in the pennies. It's not like you have to buy a new device every book, or even every few years. Also I was very confused by the assertion that ebooks are a niche market. By the authors math more than 20% of people in the UK use e-readers to read on a regular basis. That seems like a very healthy market to me!
- porridgeraisin 1y agoDo 20% really use e-readers? Sounds like a huge number. Do 20% even read frequently? I'm not from the UK, and I'll admit my current reading habits are a sad excuse for what they were in my childhood and teens, so there might be some selection bias here.
- devilbunny 1y agoProbably "20% of readers..." I can say that out of the people I saw reading during my last beach vacation, almost all were using an e-Ink reader. They used to keep a small library of "beach books" you could read; that's gone. Casual readers have moved on to something else; people who read a lot have moved to e-Ink for outdoors.
- apwell23 1y agoi got my scribe for $250 and its my most used device after my laptop. great value.
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- MallocVoidstar 1y ago
- iLoveOncall 1y agoThey're on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. I've bought a bunch of old generations of Kindle devices for less than £15 and they work perfectly fine.
- maccard 1y agoI realise “cheap” is in the eye of the beholder, but a new kindle is £95 today and is probably one of the best bang for buck spends for hours spent. I’m using my wife’s kindle from 2013 and other than a decade of cosmetic damage it works just as well as it did on release. At a certain point them being “cheap” makes them disposable not accessible. If you can afford a few new books a year you can afford a new kindle. If you can’t, they are readily available for about 90 minutes of minimum wage work on eBay.
- snalty 1y agoI mostly read on an old iPad mini. The screen is good enough for me that I don't feel like I'm missing out by reading on a non E-ink screen.
- rs186 1y agoBattery life. It becomes very important when you are on a trip and can't easily charge your devices. (Of course personal circumstances differ.)
- grues-dinner 1y agoHow did you manage to get it to not bog down in speed? Every tablet I've ever had has become barely functional by year 3, and that includes the iPad Mini. But yes, even the first gen iPad Minis were really nice screens and form-factors. Meanwhile my Kobo Clara is just trucking along with no obvious change in battery life or responsiveness (despite the standard e-reader application processor with its power-sipping weediness).
- Finnucane 1y agoI have a pretty old (going on eight years) iPad and it still works well enough to read an ebook. I mean, how much power do you need for that really?
- grues-dinner 1y agoMinutes to start and get the book open, and stuttering when doing things like choosing a book and turning pages was eventual my experience on all the devices: iPad Mini, Nexus 7, and a Samsung Tab 10.1. To be fair, someone else I know had an iPad Air for years and it was completely fine, so maybe they're the only tablets that actually work (or the Mini was a lemon and Androids just are bad?). Or maybe tablets are better since then: it's been a very long time since those devices went into a drawer, never to be used again.
- atemerev 1y agoWell, I read a lot. I have two e-readers and stacks and stacks of paper books... ...and, I still read 90% of my books on my phone. It is good enough. It is fast and responsive. It is always with me.
- nmcfarl 1y agoI read a lot, I have 2 e-readers and stacks of paper books, and an iPad Pro. And it has been at least five years since I read a book on the phone, or iPad, though a couple years ago I read part of a PDF book on the iPad. I think this stuff is really down to personal preference. And the kind of reading you do and where you do it. My iPad never leaves home, and as such, it’s always going ahead to head against the e-reader, and losing except in the case of PDFs. I do occasionally find myself with too much time and in a place with just my phone and not my laptop case (which almost always has e-reader in it, along with my laptop), and in those cases, I generally read hacker news. Paper books get read when I cannot find an electronic version - which is fine, better than any other form except the e-reader. But that’s me and my devices and my usage patterns and hangups. It’s not my wife, It’s not my kid, and it’s probably not most of you.
- transcriptase 1y agoI find it amusing that after all these years we’re still supposed to believe it’s economics of scale, low demand, or costly manufacturing behind the reason a 2 inch epaper module costs $25 CAD even on aliexpress. Meanwhile physical retailers are installing them by the tens of millions on store shelves complete with microcontrollers and OTA updates for unit costs in the $4-6 range, meaning the actual eink module cost with profit margin for the manufacturer is a fraction of that. It was believable 15 years ago.
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- lesuorac 1y agoAren't the supermarket labels controlled by subscription software? I'd bet Amazon would be pretty willing to give away kindles that only work with a prime subscription.
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- jdietrich 1y agoThey're under $3 on Alibaba. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SAEF-2-13-Inch-High-Resolution_1601092836679.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SAEF-2-13-Inch-High-R...
- squigz 1y agoThis is a relatively recent price drop though, right? There was a patent that ran out recently or something?
- numpad0 1y agoThat's in the sizes used for price tags, and it's just the panel without the drive circuit, let alone a battery optimized one.
- transcriptase 1y ago
- Zak 1y agoI think the main answer is smartphones displaced them. It's the same thing that happened to cheap digital cameras. > As I understand it, Google requires Android devices to have colour screens and, so I've read, won't certify eInk eReaders for newer versions of Android. Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that a phone without its proprietary libraries and SafetyNet attestation will not be palatable to mainstream consumers. An eReader is not a phone, and consumers do not have the same expectation that it will run every app in the Play store. Some Boox brand eReaders use Android on monochrome displays, but those are far from the author's definition of cheap at $200+.
- PaulHoule 1y agoTablets too. I should be shocked that nobody has mentioned the aggressively low pricing of Amazon's Fire Tablets, but somehow Fire Tablets are invisible to the technorati. (e.g. people used to ask "Why are Android Tablets dead?" and the answer is that Samsung can't compete with half-priced tablets subsidized by AMZN any more than your local taxi company can compete with half-priced Uber rides subsidized by Softbank) Not only are the fire tablets priced aggressively but they can be used to watch videos, surf the web, listen to music, play games, use remote desktop, all sorts of things. And if you lose one you are out $30 instead of $300 or so for an iPad.
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoCan’t speak for others but the bizarre Android fork Fires run is a big part of what makes me rule them out. That, and I have an Android tablet that was ~$250 when new that has various aspects about it that are somewhere between awful and underwhelming, and I can’t imagine a $30 Fire tablet to be any better in that regard, subsidized or not. That said my tolerance for electronics being bad in any capacity I feel on a day to day basis is low.
- PaulHoule 1y agoI've had a lot of tablets. iPad is better than most of them but my feeling is that tablets are sorta disposable, even if you don't intended them to be disposable. [1] If you want to read the web, read PDFs, it doesn't really matter that you're running AMZN's fork and using AMZN's gimped app store because you need like: a web browser, a PDF viewer, maybe ssh and RDP clients and that's it. The only (relatively) high end Android device I had was a Google Pixel, everything else has been a medium Samsung, BN Nook, I even had a $99 Windows tablet that was "good enough". A lot of people who would want a Kindle would be pretty happy with a Fire, it is not so easy to read in peak daylight and the battery life is worse, but the value is good enough that AMZN has driven quality affordable Android tablets out with very little fanfare. [1] I can't believe anyone gets an iPad Pro, but if I did I'd get an expensive case for it and treat it like a laptop. What I like about tablets is that I can take them places where they might get smashed.
- smeej 1y agoOne possible way to get them closer as cheap as paperback books might be to make them per book. Like, if you didn't need an OS or networking or anything but a charging port, because the thing only ran one app and came preinstalled with one book, you could theoretically get the cost way down. The only market I can really think of for these would be airports, or maybe libraries, for something you'd borrow and give back shortly thereafter. But then I don't know how they'd be enough of an advantage over paper books to be worth it.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoI'd had to be like lending a book or renting e-scooters; otherwise it'd turn into a huge e-waste issue. This makes me think of Star Trek's PADD - i.e. an iPad imagined some 20 years before the first one was built. Unlike real iPads, PADDs were used more like pieces of paper or individual books - people would exchange them, they'd submit reports to their commanders by leaving a PADD on their desk; one could easily have half a dozen of those PADDs spread around when researching something, etc. There's a lot of merit to that idea - 15 years since iPad came out, it's becoming clear that a single expensive screen for everything is not a way to go, at least not for productive work. But I feel that, beyond dirt-cheap hardware, it requires a closed organizational ecosystem. On the show, it's plausible. A starship is like an office building (except people don't live it for months at a time); PADDs can circulate freely around it, going from person to person, changing purposes along the way. Some get lost or broken and need replacement, but it's a neat, closed system of same-ish hardware in constant flow. But try to do that as a regular consumer product/service in the real world, and it stops making as much sense. It's a problem similar to various tool sharing initiatives - they technically exist, but they aren't really "a thing". People prefer to own stuff to ensure it's available and in working condition.
- naravara 1y agoMy kid was recently gifted a Yoto Box which plays aIndio and he loves it. I can’t help but think that putting ebooks on scannable cards might be a seriously underrated form factor. At that point you don’t need a file browser, networking, or anything. You just need to be able to read text and images off the card. The Yoto itself does need networking because the card is just an NFC tag that points to a file in a database somewhere that the player has to download. But something similar to a video game cartridge instead could probably work. IIRC a Nintendo Switch game cartridge costs about $10 per unit and in this use case you wouldn’t even need them to be that small so you could maybe get them cheaper.
- Yeul 1y agoWait the Amazon Kindle not cheap enough? Amazon is actually subsidising it in the hope of making it back on their store (nice try Amazon I just use it for library books).
- bschne 1y agoI haven't crunched the numbers, but my hunch is that my kindle is easily the best price/use ratio tech device I ever bought, by far, even considering I upgraded to an oasis and gifted my still-working paperwhite to a relative at some point.
- black_13 1y ago[dead]
- rs186 1y ago> As I understand it, Google requires Android devices to have colour screens and, so I've read, won't certify eInk eReaders for newer versions of Android. The linked article says "[Device implementations] SHOULD support displays capable of 24-bit color graphics.", contrasted with "MUST" in other bullet points. So I'd say Android shouldn't be a blocker. That doesn't necessarily mean Google will happily license Google services including Play Store (possibly for a fee), but there are manufacturers that build their own app store, or just let users sideload apps. Worst case, just put AOSP on the device. The experience isn't going to be perfect, but it's usable.
- paxcoder 1y ago[dead]
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoI do find the really old android versions to be quite frustrating. I don't particularly know what I'm missing, but it feels so not good buying a device and seeing that under the hood it's Android 11 (2020). I suspect it's mostly that e-readers tend to use pretty old chipsets, & that no one has bothered updating support in a long long time. Maybe perhaps possibly there is some technical gotcha but I expect its more an issue of neglect. Whatever the case, incredibly discouraging. I've looked at Boox Palma's and others but heck no I'm not buying such a clearly unsupported unloved system.
- pliuchkin 1y agoThats even worse than not having cheap ereaders, many countries are nowadays Amazon Kindle's hostage. Brazil for example, used to have many others competitors in the market like 5 to 10 years ago (Kobo, Lev Neo, etc). Now it is just Kindle. If you want to read ebooks, you "have" to buy a kindle.
- woodpanel 1y agoWhile you’re pondering this important question the author raises, I‘d like you to zoom out for a moment and remember how, when Amazon first released the Kindle, the entire World (especially the majority here) would have betted the farm on paper books being extinct by now. But instead, we read an enthusiast‘s blog post lamenting the innovation‘s niche-of-a-niche status, which it cant leave neither through super cheapness nor through feature improvement, since that would be too expensive. Keep this in mind when the next technology (crypto, ai, …) is sold to you as this fatalistic all eclipsing event (on which you have got to spend money on now or else).
- pmontra 1y agoI do read ebooks, even of books that I own as paperbacks or hardbacks. I never bought an ereader because I read them on my phone because in that way I always have them with me. No need to have a separate device. Of course I could read both on my phone and on an ereader but why bother? I imagine that other people read on their phones too.
- b3lvedere 1y agoSeveral years ago i bought a 2nd hand Pocketbook Touch Lux 2 for around $50. It still loads every format (epub, pdf, etc) i throw at it. The device is pretty slow, but works for lazy reading. My wife couldn't read of it, but loves her (way more expensive) Kobo reader. If i had to purchase an eReader right now i guess i'd go for some 2nd hand Kindle, since they're all hackable these days.
- Simulacra 1y agoI feel like the industry sort of gave up on them
- dewcifer 1y agoThis thread perfectly exemplifies what happened to cheap eReaders. People were willing to pay more for them, so they now cost more. I have a paper white from years back. I've thought about getting some eInk displays for projects.. it's really dumb how much new [device that has an eink dislpay and displays a file/PDF] cost. But it's also infuriating that people pay for emojis and sound boards on Discord and the like. The world we live in.
- kkfx 1y agoIt happened mostly that available devices fails to target a reasonable usage and industry do not want it anyway. The reasonable usage means A4/B4 size, to read most common pdfs, to be loaded locally via USB or LAN not by some third party proprietary service, driverlessly, no app needed. A FLOSS base to let's say synchronize with Zotero or some personal note tool, that part developed by a community thanks to the FLOSS base. Another reasonable usage is 6-7" maximum for those who want paper like notes, again locally sync-able with a desktop/mobile not needing any third party or special software in the middle. A third reasonable usage is as a desktop secondary monitor to be used to read without burning our eyes, or with raster graphic apps no special software needed as well, just a standard displayport/HDMI.
- davedx 1y agoI read a lot. I used to have a Kindle. Eventually it broke. Kobos seem even less reliable, my wife has been through 4-5 of them so far. After my Kindle broke I switched "temporarily" to using the Kobo app on my iPhone to read. Although the form factor isn't ideal for reading, it's just so convenient that I never bothered buying another eReader. It also has all the advantages of a modern smartphone: touches to turn the page are instantaneous; controlling brightness is familiar and easy; I can copy and paste text into Safari to search anything I'm interested in. About the only environment where an eReader wins is bright sun, and well, I live in Northern Europe. So yeah, I think I would say, although they're a nice idea - eReaders just aren't strong enough in their own niche to beat out smartphones for a lot of people, which means that niche stays pretty small and prices stay quite high?
- gman83 1y agoThe main advantage for me of a dedicated e-reader is that I don't get distracted and do something else, which happens to me constantly when I try to read on my phone.
- appointment 1y agoPut it in airplane mode?
- jen729w 1y agoOh, sweet child. Airplane mode can be disabled as quickly as it was enabled. As can Raycast's 'focus mode', which is why I'm typing this (on my laptop) and not reading my book, and why a thread about cheap e-readers immediately caught my attention.
- naravara 1y agoOne of the most popular eReaders with the BookTok crowd is the Boox Palma, which is an eReader with the form factor of a phone. It’s actually just an Android phone with an eInk screen, so you can run any android app on it. It’s just that eInk is terrible at everything but displaying static content so it’s not good for much besides being an eReader. Though you can also pull up a PDF reader or read emails if you really want to.
- sebra 1y agoI think one reason for the eReader market not being big is that they're so good and sustainable. I bought my Sony PRS-T2 in 2012 and am still using it to this day. It has battery life for weeks, storage space for 100+ books and works just as well as when I bought it. It's really hard for me to motivate buying a new one when the only interesting "new" tech is backlight and I guess it's the same for most eReader owners. The ~90e I paid for it back in 2012 was for sure good value!
- entuno 1y agoI had the same issue with my Kobo, which I've had for about 8 years. I was looking at the replacements, but they're quite a lot of money for...what? Slightly faster page turns? A screen that might look a little bit better? So I just didn't bother.
- coliveira 1y agoI know ebooks are nice, but for me it is a waste of money. I prefer to read from my smart phone and even from my computer when I'm at a desk.
- carlosjobim 1y agoI don't like IPA beer, should I have to seek out discussions about IPA and tell everybody?
- coliveira 1y agoIf I, hypothetically, thought your comment to be completely useless, should I really spend my time and say it to everybody?
- carlosjobim 1y agoMy comment added nothing of value, now that I think about it.
- strogonoff 1y agoHas anyone used Kobo? I have seen a model on display that seems quite similar to reMarkable (maybe some newer Kindles, but I stopped following their evolution a while back), with a nice pressure-sensitive stylus that works with little lag. If it is less locked-down than alternatives, it seems like it could be a good value.
- jjice 1y agoI switched from a Kindle Paperwhite (2023 is the year I got the Kindle, not sure what model that is, but it was the most recent version at the time) to a Kobo Clara BW right after it came out (pretty sure it's the same as the Kobo Clara 2). I personally really value the "sideload" mode on the Kobo where I have no internet connection and can drop my files onto it via USB without any work-arounds. That's enough for me to keep using the Kobo. That said, the Kindle Paperwhite's display is incredible and the store is pretty good (you risk losing your book "license" on all platforms), plus the extra small bit of screen size on the Paperwhite is just the perfect size IMO. But the Kobo is the one I use most. I connect it to the internet like twice a year to get an update and then turn it back off. It's absolutely perfect at showing me text of files, which is all I need.
- maxsilver 1y agoI still use my old Kobo and love it. Works perfectly, despite being like 8 or 9 years old now. I've read dozens upon dozens of books on it, it still works like new, still syncs well, has multi-month-long battery life, is lightweight enough to keep in a bag at all times. Works perfectly with OverDrive for eLibrary stuff as well. My only complaint is that it uses the old micro USB cables to charge (it's the only thing I use regularly that doesn't work with USB-C). The new Kobo's look nice (and now support color, and bluetooth audio, and such). But I wouldn't actually use any of that, my old one still works just like new, and it feels silly to buy a whole new e-reader just for a minor USB-C charging convenience.
- strogonoff 1y agoGood to know. I do not really care about colour and the rest, but the ability to take notes and write/draw with a pressure-sensitive stylus is very enticing.
- jqpabc123 1y agoeReaders are really just a specialized version of a tablet. Specialized devices have to be either really, really special or really, really cheap to make it in the marketplace. Otherwise, they get absorbed into a more widely usable device. The smart phone is a good example. It can replace multiple specialized devices --- a phone, a watch, a camera, a flashlight, a GPS navigator, a TV --- and yes, even an ereader. It may not be as good as a specialized device for any of these tasks but the real selling point is that it can do all of them reasonably well in a pinch. It packs a lot of functionality into one easily portable device.
- silcoon 1y agoThat’s the marketing that they do, one gadget to replace them all. In reality I’ve an analog watch at my wrist, I’ve a powerful flashlight (mostly using my smartphone tho), I’ve a dslr camera and TV. One friend of mine his into boats and has multiple GPS devices properly adapted to boats. So the one fits all is good for generic users, but if you rely heavily of certain technologies, specialised gadgets are better, less distracting and more reliable.
- constantcrying 1y agoEReaders are special, their screens make them an entirely different product category for an entirely different market.
- carlosjobim 1y agoeReaders are really, really special. It's the only usable electronic display when you're in a bright environment.
- poisonborz 1y agoBuy used. Same argument could be made for smartphones but the used market is so big that price is no issue, homeless people have smartphones. A quick search says $30-40 for mid-aged devices, I saw paperwhite models for $10 on flea market (got a few for smart home use).
- silcoon 1y agoI think ereaders are cheap if you used them heavily. I read on it every day and I take it with me wherever I go so I can read instead of scrolling of my phone. I’ve hundreds of books on my Kobo and is really the best tech gadget I have, and it cost me around $130 if I remember well. If you compare the cost for example to a gaming console, is it justified? Probably depends how much you play video games. There are heavy players and people that play video games only occasionally. Same for readers. Yes the price is slightly increasing but still justified for people that used them frequently. With a good cover they become pretty resistant and the battery stays for weeks. P.S. Interesting insights in the article about the price factors and patents.
- sandblast 1y ago*what ever happened I hope I’m not the only one.
- WithinReason 1y agoI've found this giant comparison table for e-readers, cheapest is €60: https://comparisontabl.es/e-readers/ https://comparisontabl.es/e-readers/
- major505 1y agoI guess most poeple that really dont care in reading in a device instead of paper, endup buying cheap tablets. Yeah, the experience is not the same, but ereaders are fragile as fuck (i broke 2 of the damn Kindles), and very limited. Even if the the experience of reading is worse in an active iluminated screen, even a shit android tablet can be used for multiple tasks, like watching youtue, listening to music or checking e-mail. ALso they have colored screens. I used a terrible samsgung android for 1 stuff only: reading old comic books, something that I could not do in my kindle.
- ruined 1y agothrift stores. root, flash koreader. add a hosts file to restrict network activity to your sync server, or keep it in airplane mode. i have never paid more than $10 for an e-ink device until boox palma. that one sits in a drawer and i went back to the thrifted kindle.
- abricot 1y agoI've never seen an ereader at a thrift store
- phendrenad2 1y agoThey call it "Economies (sic) of scale". Smartphones became necessary enough to modern life that nobody has need for a separate reader device.
- rdlw 1y agoWhy the (sic)?
- Orange1688 1y agoI used to read paperbacks a lot. Now, I almost exclusively read on my Boox Tab Ultra, which I got used for ~300€. It's rather expensive when compared to regular eInk devices, but I feel that it is worth it for me to be able to take notes in the margin with the physical pencil that comes with it - just as I used to do in physical books. That being said, given that high quality eInk readers can last for many years, it has come out cheaper for me to get this rather expensive device when factoring in the price of ebooks vs physical books. Also, I read a lot of literature in the public domain, which is of course entirely free to download. If you read frequently, get a reader.
- donatj 1y agoBack in I want to say around 2012, maybe earlier I got some sort of eReader for super cheap, less than $30. As I recall it had some sort of non-backlit color LCD, similar to the GBA but easier to see. It was ok in direct sunlight but not great. It was exceedingly incapable. Could only open a very limited number of formats if I recall, laid them out very poorly. I'd wanted to try to convert my collection of CBZ comics into some format it's color screen could display, but there was no way without intensive manual editing to make them readable on its roughly 4 inch screen. Insanely slow and most of all unpleasant to use. I used it a handful of times before it went in a cabinet. Years later I threw it out, I almost always try to resell things or give them away, but I genuinely didn't think it was worth anyone's time. My ideal device for reading disappears in my hand, and that is something that my kindles achieve. I have never seen a cheap eReader that can achieve this. I've heard good things about the Kobo devices but I've never used one. Update: I found the order and it was a Kobo ER430 and I got it for $19.99 on Woot. Well I hope Kobo has improved! They'd almost have to.
- bArray 1y agoI think the answer will just be to have low-power LCD panels, you can get a 6" display for about £12 [1]. On bulk you might be able to build an entire device for £15 - £20. [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32805684970.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32805684970.html
- constantcrying 1y agoI bought a 110 Euro Boox eReader, it is great. It has the size of a slightly larger, but very thin, paperback, the display is extremely crisp and I can easily use alternative software on it. It has Bluetooth, wifi, USB-C and basically everything you can expect from an android tablet of that size. Sure, 110 Euros isn't 10 or 30 Euros, but it is obviously very affordable to anyone living in the west. I do not know what the point of these cheap readers would be? To create throwaway trash? If you read somewhat regularly a 110 Euro eReader is a very good investment.
- frm88 1y agoSame here. I bought a boox poke for € 130 a couple of years ago and it's a vast improvement over my (at that point 9 year old) kindle paperwhite. No ads, no spying/data transfer to amazon, and I finally OWN my books and don't have to sqabble with amazon over them deleting books from my library. I buy books as files and sideload via USB (another thing amazon stops you doing). I read a lot - 150 TO 200 books/year - and de-DRMing every single one year after year just isn't an option. The poke is smaller than the paperwhite but crisp in display and has the same features you noted including tts. It's 4 years old and I expect it to last another 4, so I come to the same conclusion: cheaper readers would certainly increase electronic waste since people tend to take less care of objects that are cheap and easily replacable.
- stared 1y agoI would argue that e-readers are cheap. My Kindle has been the single most value-per-dollar device purchase in my life. Nine years ago, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite 3 for $259.49. It still works. It still does just one job—and does it really well. Unlike many other devices, I'm not tempted (or pushed) to get a new one every few years. Apart from reading books, I send longer articles (using https://www.pushtokindle.com/ https://www.pushtokindle.com/) to read on eink, in a distraction-free, eye-friendly mode. However, what does bother me is that eink displays are expensive in general. I had considered getting a few for my home, for dashboards (e.g., my quantified self health stats) and my favorite web strips. But these are really expensive. And, in this scenario, I'd ideally want to have more than just one display.
- casenmgreen 1y agoHow much data collection do Kindles perform?
- delecti 1y agoI can't answer that question exhaustively, but they do have a USB drive mode* and airplane mode, if that's something you care about. Though the models with ads (basically all of them) do track impressions of all the ad placements around the device, which includes the lockscreen (the display shows ads when it's in sleep mode, both before and after you press the power button), and a banner on the home page. * - Amazon removed the ability to download books from them to put on your Kindle, but the new ones do still have a USB drive mode
- jay_kyburz 1y agoI switched to Kobo when the cable to my Kindle failed and I found out it was proprietary. I also wanted to switch to epub format.
- delecti 1y agoWorth noting that only the first Kindle, released in 2007, used a proprietary charger, and plenty of devices used proprietary chargers at the time. All of them since have had USB charging.
- Havoc 1y agoThe book drm is a much bigger problem than the readers Being locked in is near unavoidable if you don’t want to accept a more limited library.
- wing-_-nuts 1y agoTo be honest, I've never really understood the need for a stand alone reader. I read a lot of ebooks, but it's almost all on my laptop with calibre. I tuned the color scheme to be easier on the eyes at night and it's honestly fine. I used to have a kindle, but I lost it in a move long ago, and haven't really missed it.
- Havoc 1y agoIt's a matter of preference I guess. I do find eink substantially easier on the eyes though. Plus the form factor is better for lying in bed while reading
- vel0city 1y agoDifferent strokes for different folks largely. My e-reader mostly languishes in a drawer. I'll maybe use it on a trip or around the pool but mostly do my reading on regular computers and my phone as those are what I have handy. My wife loves her e-reader and uses it daily but doesn't really bother spending much time on a laptop or desktop outside of work. To her, it's a better device more catered to precisely the needs she's looking for, while for what I'm looking for its too constrained.
- drbscl 1y agoI bought a used kindle paperwhite for £15 last month, and spent about an hour to mod it (which really wasn't all that difficult; it just involved copying files). I'd say that's pretty cheap. I suspect the reason why there are not more new devices for the budget pricepoint is that the market is saturated. Unlike phones, there isn't really a compelling reason to upgrade regularly. My mother has used her kindle for years at this point, and probably will use it for years to come.
- Avamander 1y ago> I suspect the reason why there are not more new devices for the budget pricepoint is that the market is saturated. Unlike phones, there isn't really a compelling reason to upgrade regularly. My mother has used her kindle for years at this point, and probably will use it for years to come. I think e-ink patents are holding the ecosystem back in terms of possible designs (and trade-offs). I'm sure we'd see more and cheaper e-readers if the tech was freer. The software still seems like the biggest let-down in terms of progress though. I've used like five different readers over the past decade, all from different manufacturers and they all have something that really annoys me. Things like one missing notch on the brightness slider, no custom software option or just poor UI button placement.
- riskable 1y agoI want to know why—in the 21st century—the Kindle app still doesn't support the interrobang or many other completely normal, not-that-obscure characters. I sent feedback to Amazon about it: "Why TF don't you support the interrobang‽" The other e-readers use normal, free fonts and thus, support nearly the entire unicode spec. Yet Amazon—with all it's enormous resources—can't seem to pull off supporting basics like the interrobang.
- Avamander 1y agoI can't wait for an usable open-source e-reader software for this reason amongst many others. I had to jailbreak my Kindle just to run Syncthing on it. Now I finally have an always up-to-date library. Why is it this annoying I don't get.
- aposm 1y ago> Moore's law is supposed to drive down the cost of electronics The core of the article is this complete misunderstanding of Moore's law. From there, all the rest of the confusion follows, unsurprisingly leading to the author's claim that ~$100 for a long-lasting device is unreasonably expensive.
- matthewfelgate 1y agoGood question. A while back I looked for a phone-sized eReader and was surprised there were none about at a decent price.
- ben7799 1y agoI think he's just using the wrong date range. 2012 things had already matured. 2009-2010 eReaders were a lot more expensive. The "Kindle 2" in 2009 launched at $360. So basically by 2012 prices had tanked, and there's a limit on how much cheaper they could actually make them in the years since.
- ljf 1y agoThis - the Nook Simple Touch was £29 in 2013 - https://pomeroy.me/2013/05/review-nook-simple-touch-ereader-from-barnes-noble/ https://pomeroy.me/2013/05/review-nook-simple-touch-ereader-... Was (and still is) a great epub reader - I still do most of my ebook reading on it. Same that Libby won't work on this version of android as I'd love to read current magazines on it.
- genewitch 1y agoI think I wanted to say elsewhere in the thread, but probably did not, that my first Kindle was $35, brand new from Amazon. No keyboard but it did have hardware buttons for page turn at least. It lasted until I ran it into the back of my heel backing away from my desk in an office chair, and amazon gave me $15 for it toward a new kindle, which were on sale the week I broke mine because a new kindle was being released, so my new kindle cost $45, but was originally over $120 new, if not $150. Paperwhite.
- guestbest 1y agoNo one bought MP3s from Apple through iTunes. Audio was in their native format. Apple even had a page about importing MP3s into iTunes, so not exactly a walled garden there even for iPod. And the iPhone could play MP3’s in the native music app since it was first released. https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/choose-import-settings-itns2965/windows https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/choose-import-setting... Also, while eink might be more expensive when assembled into an ebook reader, why not use a color android tablet with brightness set on low? Why are the hardware specs so restrictive? I understand the preference for long battery life, but it’s not like power outlets are in short supply. It seems like tablets are much more open as a device than an ebook reader
- geor9e 1y agoI blame the average customer. They don't know what they want, so they buy the option that's trying to do too many things.
- glimshe 1y agoAre there people with eye floaters here? What e-reader would he most appropriate for people with moderate central-ish floaters, one of the reasons I vastly reduced my book reading? (PS: this is a great thread, an example of "good HN" that reminds me of Usenet)
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- theknarf 1y agoEInk have the patent on eink technology and their essentially a monopoly. As such the prices for EInk screens are never getting cheaper. You can buy "cheap" EInk devices [1] with an ESP32 and flash your own software on it, an ESP32 costs less than 5$, so the rest of the price is all down to the price of the EInk panel and controller. [1] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5papers3-esp32s3-development-kit https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5papers3-esp32s3-developm...
- stopthenonsense 1y ago> EInk have the patent on eink technology and their essentially a monopoly. As such the prices for EInk screens are never getting cheaper. That's not why. Volume.
- os2warpman 1y ago> But it got me intrigued. Moore's law is supposed to drive down the cost of electronics. Moore's law only observes that the density of transistors within an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. It does not comment on the cost of the individual transistors, or other electronic components. Often, increasing transistor density can lead to significantly increased costs in the short term as production issues are ironed out and massive investments in new technologies are recouped. There are transistors in an electronic paper display, but they are an irrelevant portion of the cost of the panel.
- t0bia_s 1y agoOnyx Boox are quite capable devices. I use one over a year, with drgoogled android and togather with Calibre I have completely DRM free experience both for ebooks and sheet music.
- uslic001 1y agoI would rather have an eReader that does more like my two Kindle Scribes, but costs a lot more. I will never go back to cheaper eReaders after using the Scribe.