Context
I’ve been a long time user of the Amazon Kindle, starting with the first ever one with the physical side buttons, all the way to the Paperwhite 8th gen. While I had been very happy with it, a few things happened recently that pushed me towards getting this:
- The whole issue with Reddit kind of made me realize that I didn’t want to trust a company with all my books, no matter how big or trustworthy the company seemed. All my eBooks so far have been bought from the Amazon store, and read on my Kindles.
- I bought a Note Air 2 Plus a few months ago, and it was a really good device for my needs
- Onyx released the Page
Initial thoughts on Onyx Page
- It’s very light, and very thin. It doesn’t feel cheap or anything, but it feels lighter than my Paperwhite despite this having a slightly larger screen
- The page turning buttons are really nice, and having a side bezel I can hold on to while reading is also very comfortable
- The back is a bit glossier than I would’ve liked. It’s just smooth, and a big fingerprint magnet
- The graphical art they have on the back is not indented or whatever the opposite of indentation is. It feels more like something they’ve etched onto the surface
Closing thoughts?
I’ve spent the last few hours trying this and that, downloaded the Kindle app to read (probably) my last Amazon store bought Kindle book. I will be spending the next few hours porting my Kindle books into Calibre, removing the DRM and storing them in my personal cloud :)
I don’t think there have been any reviews out there yet, so feel free to ask me anything regarding this, and I’ll try my best to answer them.
Where do you plan on buying books now? Since I use kindles with my note air 2 it kinda locks me in but I’ve thought about grabbing a kobo one day.
It’s a good question. For now I’m still working through a few books that I had in my backlog that are available on Project Gutenberg.
I’ve been looking around for a few ebook stores that sell books in epub format, but am struggling to settle on one. I do want to buy and not pirate them as much as possible, but most people seem to point me towards ebook piracy sites whenever I ask.
How does it compare to the Amazon Kindle? Would you prefer the Kindle or the Onyx Page?
For comparison, I downloaded the Kindle app on the Page and loaded up the book I’d been reading on my Paperwhite just last night.
The Page definitely feels lighter, and the bezel with the page turning buttons makes it much more comfortable to hold than the Paperwhite in my opinion. This may change though, as I haven’t been able to do an extensive reading session with the Page yet.
The screen also feels quite on par with the Paperwhite. When I installed the Kindle app on my Note Air 2+, I couldn’t get the text to look as crisp as the Paperwhite even with the display optimization settings dialed in, but the Page’s text looks as crisp. I’m thinking this might have something to do with the NA2+ having that extra pen input layer between the front glass and the eInk panel.
One of the big reasons I bought this even though my Paperwhite is still perfectly fine was because I wanted to have total control over my device and media. While I could’ve just read DRM removed versions of my eBooks on the Kindle, I had a great experience using my NA2+ with Syncthings and Obsidian that I decided a new device would be worth it. The Page also lets me read from websites at night, while Kindle’s browser still feels really sluggish.
How do you use it with your obsidian?
I’ve Obsidian Sync set up so that my Obsidian vault is synced across all my devices. I don’t do much input into my vault on the Page, but mainly use it to view notes I’ve already written, or to keep my TODO list open while I do other things throughout the day.
