I find this mini reader very interesting, maybe a bit too barebone.
- 114 x 69 x 5.9mm (4.5″ x 2.7″ x 0.2″)
- 220 pixels per inch
- no front lighting
- 650 mAh battery
- ESP32 microprocessor: Wifi, bluetooth, usb-C port
Got this bad boy some months ago and I’m very happy with it. Its software is open source but unfortunately it’s in a Chinese sort of github and I don’t understand much.
Changing the font size is a weird experience since you need to use a Chinese-only program from said git repo, compile the font and its size on your computer, and then transfer the generated binary to the eReader. You can keep said binaries in your eReader later to change fonts on the move.
The formats (my few months old firmware version) supports well are epub and txt, but unfortunately things like italics or bold don’t display on epub files, so I’ve found myself taking the epub books and converting them to txt with markdown notation for bold and italics using Calibre.
Other than those inconveniences, it’s a tiny, lightweight, well-built piece of hardware, the screen resolution is really good, and it’s truly the most portable or pocketable good quality eReader I’ve seen.
why not just use your phone to read?
i read my stuff on my phone and i wonder what i’m missing out by not using an ereader.
E-ink is said to be better for your eyes, and importantly, it works well under direct light or sunlight without losing contrast
do android ereader apps not do this somehow?
Thank you, that’s very useful to know.
Do I understand well that the reader renders well markdown formatting, but the same formatting in epub is ignored?
Are embedded images rendered?
Do I understand well that the reader renders well markdown formatting, but the same formatting in epub is ignored?
Sorry, didn’t explain myself correctly. It doesn’t display the bold or italics themselves, it’s just my workaround to know when text is supposed to be italics or bold. I’m simply displaying txt files with the raw markdown, i.e., instead of seeing this, I’ll be seeing
*this*meaning the asterisks are displayed and I know it’s bold.
Are embedded images rendered?
I can’t answer to that right now other than book covers do display on the first page on .epub files when you open them. I’m not in my home country right now and forgot to bring the little thing, I can check on that and make some review in a few weeks if people are interested
I can see the use of a small firm factor e-reader I can take with me everywhere. I often find myself in situations where I could read a few pages of a book to keep myself busy, but I find the reading experience on a smartphone to be generally awful and I can’t be bothered to whip out my regular e-reader in those situations.
What I would absolutely need however is some way to synchronize my reading progress with my other devices so that I can use it as a backup reader rather than being forced to go through the whole book on a single, sub-optimal reader. From a quick glance on their website, it unfortunately doesn’t seem like it’s an existing feature
Years ago some Russian phone maker became mildly famous for their phone that had a regular LCD screen on the front, and an e-ink screen on the e back. I so wanted one, but I think its supported frequencies had minimal overlap with American ones,
“Yottaphone” or something like that? It seemed really cool for the time, maybe even for now.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I’m pretty sure the e-ink screen was full usage, too - you could use it as your primary screen if you wanted to, instead of being limited to just an e-reader like this. That would save a lot of battery power if you weren’t watching video or playing action games.
Oh sick, now I can have a sub-phone-screen-sized device on which to read books that is only accessible when I also have my phone! This will definitely be used by human people!
actually you can use it on its own, detached from the phone. keeping it with you phone is just a possibility.
Well sure, but I always have my phone is the point. I already have my ebooks on my phone for all the situations in which I would use this.
Granted the display is nicer than a phone screen, but again smaller and size is the thing that sucks the most about a phone screen for reading so it’s kind of a wash
