Technology

Yeah, I've had a couple Kobos. If you just want to put arbitrary documents on it to display, they work well.

I think that the problem is, though, that while eInk ebook readers are really good ebook readers, they're a specialized device in a world with a lot of general-purpose portable devices that people are already carrying.

They have extremely long battery life compared to an LCD or OLED display, and they work fine in brightly-lit environments like outside on a sunny day. And even if you want to use them in the dark, they have a soft backlight that can use very little power. And they're really light and thin.

But...I carry a smartphone. And a tablet. And a laptop. Maybe not everyone carries all three, but they probably have at least one of those. And so you gotta ask yourself whether you want a really good ebook reader that's only really good at reading ebooks (and can run a web browser or similar slowly and poorly), or whether you can tolerate using a device that can read ebooks and can also do things like browse the Web and play videos.

I'd only really suggest that someone consider a dedicated ebook reader if they're regularly carrying paper books around with them because they want to use those books outside or the like. I do that and I still don't think I'd get another ebook reader. It just doesn't buy me enough extra functionality.

I often want to use a non-ebook-reader device to refer to the Web or something to look up something related to a book that I'm reading, and if I'm doing that, I'm using a general-purpose device anyway.

By the same token, MP3 players can be really good MP3 players. Like, they can have really long battery lifetime, and be really small, have physical buttons, etc. But very few people carry dedicated MP3 players today, because they already have a general-purpose smartphone with them that can act as an MP3 player...and even if it isn't quite as good as a dedicated hardware device, it's still good enough. They still exist, but there's enough overlap that for most people, they probably aren't worth getting. Same thing for audio recorders. And I think that ebook readers are in that camp too, albeit maybe not to quite the same degree.