I’m looking to get an E-Reader to supplement my learning, being able to read stuff and look things up is great and it’s just a better way of reading than on a regular display, ideally I’d want a pen with it so I can also work on grammar practice with it.
But every E-Reader I can find with a pen is like €400 and quite big, I’d like it to be around the size of A5 for around €200.
Is there anything like it? What are your experiences?
4 comments
Im at a point where I stopped practicing and just watch japanese stuff. If you want it for fun go for it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to take too much time drilling grammar. The only way those concept stick is if you hear them a lot in action.
Those e-ink readers with a pen are expensive because they’re a fairly new thing. Especially in cheaper devices, e-ink displays are not fast enough for most things that are not just displaying a page in a book. And the devices themselves are also not very powerful because they’re optimised for weight and battery life. This is all still true for the ones that come with a pen too tbh, they’re just slightly more powerful and can do partial display updates better.
IMHO e-readers are not that great for learning in the first place though. They’re too focused on reading text. Text on my Kindle Oasis looks absolutely great, but looking up words is painful because the reaction time is so bad. If it doesn’t detect the word automatically it’s even more painful dragging those markers around on a slow e-ink device.
Anyway for €200 I think you have two options. One is give up on e-ink and get a regular tablet instead. There are decent Android tablets in that price range and a stylus for a capacitive display isn’t going to add much to the bill either. The display will not look as nice but you’ll have access to all those learning apps, web sites, better dictionaries, stuff like yomichan in the browser, and so on. It’s also much easier to buy Japanese content e.g. if you want to buy a lot of e-books, as access to different stores is much better than it typically is on e-readers.
The other is give up on the pen and most things that are not literally just reading a book, and get a regular e-ink based reader. I don’t think those ever cost more than €200 in the first place. It’s only the new ones with fast display and a pen that are expensive, or those fancy ones that are basically Android tablets with an e-ink display. The normal ones that are just for reading books are cheaper and there are tons of models that are small and light.
E-ink is always much slower to react than than a regular touchscreen. An e-ink tablet with a pen needs to be fast enough to be usable. Because of that, pen based e-ink tablet will always be higher-end and more expensive.
There are some Kobo ereader that are 7″. That’s good for reading manga. You may find second-hand ones for a reasonable price.
Check Onyx Boox. Best value for proce, although they still be a bit to large fir you