E-Readers

Kindle, Kobo and Boox, and where the books come from:

the screens look much alike, so the real choice is which shop a reader is tied to. A Kindle reads books bought from Amazon, and an EPUB only after it has been through Amazon’s Send to Kindle service. A Kobo or a PocketBook opens EPUB and PDF files copied straight across by cable. A Boox runs Android with Google Play on an E Ink screen, so the Kindle app, the Kobo app and a PDF reader share one device, at a higher price. That matters more here than in the United States, because Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s monthly book subscription, is not open to Guatemalan accounts, and a Kindle owner here buys titles one at a time. If your pile is mostly Spanish-language EPUBs from other ebook stores, or PDFs from a course, a Kobo or a Boox saves the conversion every time.

Screen size and the pen on an e-reader:

six or seven inches suits novels. Scanned PDFs and textbooks full of diagrams are another matter: a whole page shrunk that small is unreadable, and a scan cannot reflow its text the way an ebook does. For university readings, look at the ten-inch class: the Kindle Scribe, the reMarkable, Kobo’s Elipsa or a Boox Note. These take a pen for underlining and margin notes, and the pen is most of what you pay for. None of the recent Kindles or Kobos has a headphone socket, so audiobooks play through Bluetooth headphones. For video, apps and games, you want one of the tablets instead.

What a pen slate costs, and how much of that is the pen:

a new ten-inch slate starts around Q4,000, three or four times the price of a plain reader, and the difference pays for the writing layer. Second-hand, the pen holds real value: a replacement runs to several hundred quetzales, so a slate listed without one should be cheaper by that much. At the other end, an older basic Kindle with no front light still shows a novel perfectly well for a few hundred quetzales, provided it is recent enough to reach Amazon’s store, and it is the cheapest way to find out whether E Ink suits you before spending more.

Spotting a fake e-reader or a tired pen slate:

first make sure it is E Ink at all. Cheap “e-book readers” with backlit LCD screens are sold under names that sound like Kindle, and they tire the eyes like a phone. Switch the device off or let it sleep: E Ink keeps showing a page or a cover with no power, while an LCD goes black. On a pen slate, write from edge to edge and watch that the line follows the nib right to the borders, then tilt the screen against the light for scratches left by worn nibs, and ask whether spare nibs come with it. Kobo’s stylus needs its own charge, unlike the Scribe, reMarkable and Boox pens, so test it too. On a Boox, check the Android version and that Google Play installs an app, because an old version can leave current apps out of reach.

Listing an e-reader so the buyer knows what it opens:

most questions will be about files, so answer them up front: a Kindle tied to Amazon or a reader that takes EPUB by cable, the storage and the screen size. Many come up once a degree is finished, or from someone given a Kindle who drifted back to reading on the phone; say which, because it tells the buyer how hard it was used. For a slate, list the pen, nibs and cover. A photo of the device asleep, showing its sleep screen, proves it is E Ink better than any description. And offer to load a file the buyer sends beforehand, so someone coming in from Santa Cruz del Quiché sees their own book on that screen before paying.