I would agree with all the stay away from kindles comments, except for the real easy emailing of books to yourself thing. They’re recent acceptance of epubs of a compatible format combined with libgen means it’s super easy, and doesn’t require a laptop to transfer books.
I recently bought a used Kobo Clara HD and installed koreader on it. So far everything works perfectly. I haven't really tested to see if using koreader drains the battery much faster, but I really only read at home so I'm always near a charger.
I use Calibre to manage all of my ebook files and with koreader have it set up so I can transfer books to my ereader wirelessly.
The newer version of the Clara HD is the Clara 2E, but unless it has improved there have been a lot of users reporting freezes and crashes when trying to use koreader.
Also koreader is not the same as installing a custom ROM on a phone. When you install the custom ROM every time you reboot your phone it automatically launches the custom ROM you installed. With koreader the stock software is still there and if you reboot your ereader you have to click on the koreader book again to launch koreader. But I rarely reboot my device.
The mobileread forums are a good resource for koreader and other ebooks stuff. That is where the devloper of calibre, kovidgoyal, posts and where the developers for koreader post. You can find installation instructions as well as all the files you need over there.
Another Kobo Clara fan here. I installed KOReader onto it and can transfer my books wirelessly from my Calibre server either directly or one at a time via ODPS.
The advantage of Calibre is of course, any books I have to get from the Land of Bezos I can strip DRM from, convert it to epub then transfer it.
I’ve actually been looking into this myself, and Kobo seems like the most ‘open’ option. The Libra 2 in particular fit my requirements for size and features. It supports quite a few ebook formats but I think it’s limited to Kobo’s own audiobooks only.
If anyone has one I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Got one today actually and after removing the DRM from my kindle books. I loaded it up in 2 seconds. I also installed the Amazon and Google ereader fonts because I love Bookerly. It’s great so far. Feels nice to hold. It’s snappy. 32GB of storage.
Unfortunately at the moment it does only support Kobo audiobooks but it does let you use Libby and borrow ebooks/audiobooks from your local library. I usually use Audible on my phone anyway so I’m not really bothered by that. Would be nice to have though.
Screen is just as good as my Paperwhite with a better eye-comfort mode.
My only annoyance so far is that it’s frozen twice which required a reboot. This might be because I’ve been using I a lot today and connecting and disconnecting from my laptop etc but it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.
Edit: hasn’t frozen again in the entire time since.
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