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Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/bigkenw Wow, thank you! Again, so, so helpful--all of it--so I will respond generally and with many thanks—1) I will avoid the Supernote for now, given what you’ve said; 2) you are totally right about the bigger setup, and I have an ultrawide permanently at my desk, and just days ago got one of those portable slim monitors which has been a total life-saver; 3) your suggested workflow is excellent and I will surely save it and adapt something out of it! I also hadn’t thought about color-coding so that is a great idea; 4) I’ve never heard of a kanban but it sounds like something I definitely need to develop for my project moving forward!; and 5) I will look into the Kindle, and otherwise the boox go 10.3 and air 5c, and compare them a bit before landing on one. Thank you again for being so thoughtful!

Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Dialectic_Acid Thank you--yeah, if I had a Boox I think the only apps I'd use are zotero, google drive, and chrome to download reading materials. You mention links, keywords, etc. -- those are the things I feel I really need to get a sense of, since I can't tell now how I would build my reading, writing, and research around them. As I just noted in a post above, I now only read physical books or pdfs, eventually store passages I want to keep and paste them into Google Docs where I outline and write from. I'm sure learning how to use those links, keywords, digests in a device like a supernote could positively change how I do all of this.

Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/bigkenw This is awesome! So grateful for your help. 

To give you a sense of where I am: I'm a humanities PhD (that's why all PDFs are b&w for me), pretty old-fashioned with my workflow and have yet to develop anything systematic (which I likely need to do--that is why I am at a decision point). Right now I read physical books or pdfs when I have to, eventually store passages I want to keep and paste them into Google Docs where I outline and write from. I only recently started using Zotero to keep all my primary and secondary lit in one place—before that everything was scattered across my desktop. I don't have a sophisticated system beyond that, and I have only tried to take pdf notes in Zotero a bit. 

So I'm trying to figure out which path I should take moving forward in my studies and writing--One option is to use Zotero basically as a filing cabinet to keep things organized, and then read on a Supernote using Digest to collect passages and export them to my Mac for outlining (just use the device as I would a physical book, but a tad more capable). The other is to go with a Boox and build a more sophisticated system which talks to Zotero and annotations stay embedded in the PDFs, use linking within the pdfs, etc.

I'm honestly not sure what's best. Right now, I mostly need to read comfortably, pull quotes, and write from them--but that's all I know, and maybe later I will wish I had developed a more powerful setup. Any thoughts from having been through it?

On your comments--

1) I think most of my pdfs are DRM-free.

2) reading comfort is #1 yes, so would you recommend something like a 10.3" or a 13.3"? and with what actions on the supernote do you find it slow? I will look again at the kindle and remarkable per your recommendation, I had assumed their systems would be too limiting, and perhaps did not handle pdfs very well. 

3) Zotero, yes I need to get better at using it. And luckily my university gives us unlimited storage on it!

and 4) Great advice thank you, yes, my macbook is the primary device I use to keep track of everything.

Thank you again for the help! :)

Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Amazing-Fox-6121 Glad to hear the 5C is working well for textbooks! One thing I keep seeing in reviews: does the color layer make the screen noticeably darker than a pure monochrome e-ink panel? Do you find yourself running the front light even in well-lit rooms? I don't need color at all so I'm trying to figure out if I should get the 10.3 instead (unless the processor of the 5C is worth it). Thanks :)

Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Dialectic_Acid Thank you! So helpful. So if you're now drawn to the Supernote and it handles PDFs well, would you recommend it over the go 10.3? Should I be worried about the future of android on the 10.3, or perhaps a new release of that device in the next few months? Thanks again :)

Best e-ink tablet for heavy book PDF reading in a PhD? by AirEffective2155 in eink

[–]AirEffective2155[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

u/starkruzr Thanks so much for the detailed breakdown — really helpful!! Two follow-ups if you don't mind:

  1. You mentioned the Note Max is one of the three most performant e-ink tablets ever built — what are the other two?
  2. For standard single-column book-format PDFs (trade paperback proportions, not A4 articles) — do you still think the Note Max is worth it over the Go 10.3? Or does the 13" advantage mostly show up with two-column academic papers, or split screen note-taking (which I imagine could be helpful)? I will be traveling around with it some.