I Picked An E-Reader

In my last post (published last night, so technically today) about my E-Reader search I wrote at the end:

I gotta look more at Kobo devices, I think. But yeah, that's where I'm at with this.

Well, so I did and then I ordered myself a Kobo Libra Color (or Colour). With a stylus. I decided to go white this time (and a blue cover).

I think that the Libra is a good compromise between all the competing wishes and requirements for this new thing. I mostly wanted something better than my first gen Kindle Scribe that I received as a gift from my employer a few years ago. It's not like I had a clear list of things I wanted in my mind (my post on Mastodon was the closest I got to something like that), but after reading about E-Readers a bunch, looking at reviews and general comments (f.x. on the r/ereader subreddit) I discovered what I wanted:

(Here's a good comparison between the two devices.)

• smaller size - The Kindle Scribe is just way too big to read comfortably on it for me if not sitting at my desk and honestly even then it's kind of a bad experience. I always thought that it would nice for reading PDFs or things with diagrams/figures but I find that I actually read those on my laptop directly most of the time. For the kinds of books I read, I don't need this big a form factor.
• less weight - The Libra Color is about half the weight of the Scribe which should mean I can actually read using only one hand. That is also kind of important when using a stylus as that naturally means holding the stylus in one hand and the device in the other.^[1]
• stylus compatibility - We'll have to see how this one goes, as smaller tablets naturally mean less real estate to rest your hand on and just simply write, but I assume for some basic note taking (I am more of a typist regardless) and annotating this is probably still pretty nice.
• physical page turning buttons - I owned a few Kindles over the years. The Scribe, a 6th gen paperwhite and before that (I believe) a Kindle Keyboard. And what I actually started to miss from these newer devices was the pager turning buttons from my first Kindle that I ever owned. The Libra has page turning buttons, so let's see if the nostalgia for them was justified.
• no subscriptions - I understand that some extra features for hardware devices cost money to build and maintain. I begrudgingly pay for my Oura subscription for example, although it also has added some features (like sleep debt) that are of real value to me. However with the E-Reader I don't need another cloud sync service or whathaveyou. The Libra Color can be used with Dropbox for example and I will probably drive this thing using Calibre most of the time anyway.
• not too many bells and whistles - I want to get back into reading and therefore I am wary of things that can do more than that. This is why I didn't go with the Boox Palma 2 Pro as it is basically a fully fledged E-Ink smartphone (minus the phone call ability, at least out of the box).

Now I wait patiently for the device to arrive at my doorstep and then we'll see how it feels to read with this thing.

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