[soapdog]

I come from a different country (Brazil) but I am addicted to eReaders. I had a couple Kindles, they were always rock solid. Page sync was the most useful feature for me because I kept my Kindle in my home and read on the go with a phone.

The main pain point for me was the lack of Epub support in it. I wanted to buy the paperwhite but in an effort to not support DRM based solutions I started buying my technical books directly on the publishers website with non-DRM formats.

Then Kobo released the Kobo mini and that was the perfect pocketable size for me. I jumped in. All my Kindle notions and impressions were out of the door. The Kobo was a much better device in my opinion. The "Reading Life" feature was awesome and the UX and font selection great. Stopped using the Kindle.

Then I missed a light. I tend to read on the dark hours and something like the paperwhite became a need. eReaders are not cheap here in Brazil. A Kindle Paperwhite with cost you USD 200+. Since I was a fan of Kobo, I decided to check out the Kobo Aura HD. Heck the thing was the price of a laptop.

In the end a major book retailer here in Brazil decided to ship their own eReader called Lev. It had a version with light, it could read Epubs and other formats and it fit my budget. Also it had a killer feature the both Kindle and Kobo lacked: PDF Reflow. This small simple eReader can reflow text on a PDF to fit the screen and it works pretty well. I was sold. I am pretty happy with my Lev eReader now, I have all the features I could want from the competitors plus the ability to read old LISP book PDFs as if they were meant for that screen.

Moral of the story: Instead of jumping in and buying the new thing from gigantic retailer, shop around and see what the small guys are doing in your region. There might be an eReader there that fits your needs much better than the Kindle. (Still miss page sync though)

[noxToken]

Unless you're specifically trying to support small business, I'd go even further to say that you could just use eReading apps. This assumes that you have a smartphone or tablet in the first place. One less piece of tech to carry around that gives you the same functionality is always a plus in my book.

[soapdog]

E-ink displays goes a long way. LCD light hurts my eyes after reading for a long time. The E-ink displays are just too comfortable :-)

[scott_karana]

I wouldn't mind reading a book in the tub with a $50-$100 eReader, but I would certainly not read a book on a relatively expensive tablet or smartphone.

That, and battery capacity suffers noticeably (at least on a smartphone).

[mmm123]

I am able to use Calibre to convert epub to mobi (Kindle readable format)

[soapdog]

Oh yes, Calibre is the swiss army knife from the digital book world. In this case, I am voting with my wallet to put my money in companies that support open standards. The Lev can use that horrible Adobe DRM or open formats. The Kindle Format 8 with DRM is not something that I'd like to support even though its technically good.

[holychiz]

the Lev sounds perfect for me too. Do we need to learn Portugese to use it and are they available anywhere in the US?

[soapdog]

The Lev is a rebranded/reworked Bookeen Odissey Frontlight which you can learn more here https://www.bookeen.com/en/cybook-odyssey-frontlight looking at the pics, I think there are some cosmetical changes in the software side. You can probably get it on the U.S. :-)

PS: I don't know how far the differences go. The Lev might just be the exact same thing but translated or there might be some software differences. Looking at the screenshots I can see that the menu has different borders which in itself doesn't mean anything