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572 points bookofjoe | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.63s | source | bottom
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pfooti ◴[] No.41864842[source]
I have a pretty old paperwhite. When it started deleting books i had side-loaded via calibre, I decided to get a kobo. I have a libra color, and I have to say: price notwithstanding, it's a great device. I don't have a lot of experience with more recent devices, but compared to my 2nd gen paperwhite, it is _amazing_.

Color is good enough to read comic books on it, the google drive integration means it's not too hard to get my CBR/CBZ files on directly. The annotation / notetaking featureas are nice (I haven't leaned into them yet, but they work well even on the small screen size), plus all the regular stuff with normal book reading. Also, since it's kobo/rakuten, the libby integration is better (search and select library books right from the device).

The actual reading app is maybe 90% as good as reading on the kindle (or a more specialized reader like perfectviewer on android). There's some annoyingly fiddly features- font size is kind of weirdly variable, when going through CBR files there's no "read next in the folder" gesture nor is there a "this is read/unread" state in the google drive ui, so you always have to remember which book you are finishing when opening the next in the series.

I tried out one of those boox readers with the android apps, which would be even better software-wise, but the boox hardware seems like garbage (for an N=1 at least). My display came with several rows of stuck pixels, and apparently it's a good thing that I ordered from amazon instead of the boox store, because the reviews indicate getting an RMA from boox directly is a pain.

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1. hresvelgr ◴[] No.41865699[source]
I will second that the Kobo Libra Colour is an excellent device. To me it's the perfect reading device. To anyone using Calibre with it, make sure you get the Kobo plugin that transforms epub into kepub when sending to device. It normalises text size, margins, and so on so the reading experience is consistent no matter where you uh... procure your library from. I reconvert all my epubs anyway, but that step is critical.
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2. pfooti ◴[] No.41866063[source]
Ooh, thanks for this. I was having all kinds of font and margin irregularities with my side loads, assumed I just had to power through and manually adjust the fonts in each book
3. alias_neo ◴[] No.41867700[source]
I use Calibre-Web (self-hosted web-UI for Calibre) with my Kobo Forma, and with a quick change of a config file on the device (by plugging it into PC) I can use Calibre-Web as an online book store and retrieve my books over my network, I'd recommend it for anyone interested in keeping a large library and wanting to manage what's on-device.

No jailbreak or anything required, just some config in Calibre-Web and replace a URL or two in a config file on the Kobo.

4. NoGravitas ◴[] No.41868830[source]
Does the Libra Colour support KOReader? That removes the need to convert to kepub and generally gives you better rendering, at the cost of having to do more setup.
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5. hresvelgr ◴[] No.41869038[source]
Well, their website seems to suggest it does. I will mention though, that plugin converts them automatically without intervention and does a pretty flawless job.
6. Larrikin ◴[] No.41870033[source]
I run KOReader and Tailscale on my Libra Color. I personally very much dislike Calibre for organizing my library and use it only as a metadata editor, since I don't need to actually convert formats anymore. With Tailscale I can connect to my NAS running Kavita over OPDS and browse my library with the organization I've decided on.

KOReader has some quirks, but Kavita is trying to work around them. Theres a PR for proper syncing so you can read on multiple devices and KOReader doesn't respect the specs for OPDS so doesn't always update after you add books, but it is fixed by a restart of KOReader.