As someone who grew up on paper books, but at one time bought an e-reader, my 2 cents:
Ereaders will likely never be as good as the best paper books. However, they can be better than many printed books. I've owned printed books with poor bindings, poor typesettings, poor quality paper. The ereader was definitely better than those.
On the whole spectrum of quality of published (paper) books, I would rank my ereader to be right smack in the middle.
Then there's the obvious: Ereaders are much more practical on a plane, etc. My first one was 5 inches (which is small - would not recommend). It fit in my jacket pocket. Any time I was stuck somewhere (e.g. mechanic waiting for my car), it was quite convenient to take it out and read on it.
Finally, years ago I had nasty tendonitis in my arms. Holding a heavy hardbound book and reading was painful. The ereader was my constant companion through those months of pain.
Obviously, I still read printed books, but to me, on the whole, the two are roughly equal.
>The biggest disappointment with my e-reader is that reading PDFs is awful on that ridiculous display.
Ereaders suck for PDFs. To some extent, that's because the PDF format sucks. PDF forces a number of words per line, lines per page, etc. Essentially, PDFs force a certain page size on you. If you compare with physical books, that's not the case. When Stephen King writes a novel, it can be printed as a small paperback or a large print book.
Epubs is the way to go with ereaders.
As for the size of ereaders, it's a tradeoff. 6 inches has its shortcomings (frequent page turns), but they have their pluses (very easy to carry).
Sony used to make 9" readers, and I occasionally find used ones for very cheap at Goodwill (under $10).
The Kobo Auro One is almost 8" (about $250).
But yeah, if you want to read PDFs, ebook readers are not the way to go. Use a tablet instead (with all its screen fatigue, etc).
>Essentially, PDFs force a certain page size on you. ...
Not necessarily. Sony's early readers had automatic reflowing of text if you chose a larger font size. It worked really well for fiction or any other type of text without pictures/diagrams.
For modern e-readers, converters like the free Calibre software (https://calibre-ebook.com), will allow resizing & reflow of text in PDFs to a size more usable for any device.
>Sony used to make 9" readers ...
There are refurbished Sony PRS-900 units available (e.g. eBay) for around $50 and, unlike most e-readers, they have user-replaceable batteries.
>Not necessarily. Sony's early readers had automatic reflowing of text if you chose a larger font size. It worked really well for fiction or any other type of text without pictures/diagrams.
My first ereader was Sony's PRS-350. It had automatic reflowing, but it did a poor job on many PDF's. It did not take care of line breaks - so if I increased the font size, each line was 1.5 lines long (i.e. the original PDF's line would be 1.5 lines on the ereader - it would still respect the line break).
I haven't tried the conversions in recent versions of Calibre. I did try it for PDFs over 5 years ago, and the results were less than satisfactory. I pretty much decided not to use small ereaders for PDFs.
If you're like me, you've spent many times that on books. E-readers often have books at a discount or even free. So its a value proposition: how many e-books over what time make it a bargain?
Ereaders will likely never be as good as the best paper books. However, they can be better than many printed books. I've owned printed books with poor bindings, poor typesettings, poor quality paper. The ereader was definitely better than those.
On the whole spectrum of quality of published (paper) books, I would rank my ereader to be right smack in the middle.
Then there's the obvious: Ereaders are much more practical on a plane, etc. My first one was 5 inches (which is small - would not recommend). It fit in my jacket pocket. Any time I was stuck somewhere (e.g. mechanic waiting for my car), it was quite convenient to take it out and read on it.
Finally, years ago I had nasty tendonitis in my arms. Holding a heavy hardbound book and reading was painful. The ereader was my constant companion through those months of pain.
Obviously, I still read printed books, but to me, on the whole, the two are roughly equal.