Recommend an ereader?

Caporegime
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I've never had an ereader but as I'm doing more camping and the nights are long and taking a book is quite bulky risks getting wet Im considering moving to an ereader.

I haven't a clue about them.

Is it true that kindles mean you are restricted to amazon's eco system? As I absolutely do not want that.

Did search for threads but they were ancient.
 
My wife has an old-as-hell Kindle and loves it. The battery lasts forever and as she's got Prime, she hasn't paid for a book in years. Loads of them are free, just check out HUKD. You add them to your library and they're yours forever. Can't go wrong imo.
 
I've got an old Nook which I've used for ages, that said, in the last year or so I've just been using my tablet TBH. Mainly because I'm lazy and CBA to carry a tablet and an ereader, and the tablet will do comics/videos etc and the ereader will not.

I believe Calibre has an option to export to a kindle and AFAIK it's the program to use for ebook management etc.

Edit: Since you've mentioned getting books wet, I don't think the kindles are waterproof, and I believe the kids one come with the same "you break it and we'll replace it" policy the kids tablets do. Might be worth investigating.
 
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I've got an old Nook which I've used for ages, that said, in the last year or so I've just been using my tablet TBH. Mainly because I'm lazy and CBA to carry a tablet and an ereader, and the tablet will do comics/videos etc and the ereader will not.

I believe Calibre has an option to export to a kindle and AFAIK it's the program to use for ebook management etc.

Edit: Since you've mentioned getting books wet, I don't think the kindles are waterproof, and I believe the kids one come with the same "you break it and we'll replace it" policy the kids tablets do. Might be worth investigating.
The paperwhite is waterproof
 
It’s all about Kindles. I’m on my third now, an Oasis and it's the best one I've had, I absolutely love the buttons to turn pages rather than having to touch the screen. Yes, of course Kindle is very tightly integrated with Amazon but you can upload books manually to it using Calibre.

same - 3rd kindle for me but that spans probably 15 years or something - literally unbeatable. Zero down side to Amazon integration, as above - can upload your own stuff etc.
 
I have a Kobo Libra H20 and I love it. Also if your local library gives access to Overdrive, it's integrated on the Kobo, so borrowing books is very easy to do. My biggest gripe is it can be difficult to discover new books via the device. If you read Manga, consider getting something that's colour.
 
same - 3rd kindle for me but that spans probably 15 years or something - literally unbeatable. Zero down side to Amazon integration, as above - can upload your own stuff etc.

I've had 2 kindles since I was about 15 . My current one is about 9 years old and now has a very short battery, I can't justify replacing it until it breaks completely but it's still soldiering on
 
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I joined the eBook era right at the start of widespread adoption, starting off with Sony PR-505 reader back in 2008 but quickly moved over to the Kindle and slowly upgraded through various versions (military life was hard on them :D) until my 5th and current paperwhite which I've had since 2013! I keep looking at black Friday deals as the battery in mine is finally starting to fail to hold a good charge, but for over 10 years mine has been fantastic and, as some have mentioned, there are ways to get "non-Amazon" books onto the Kindle.

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Another vote for Kindle + Calibre. My first was Kindle Keyboard, lasted forever until one day it just stopped. Now on a Kindle Voyage, had it about 8-9 years, use it daily 1hour+ and it's still going strong. The Voyage isn't slow at page turns, screen refresh etc. so can only imagine how good the newer ones are.

Storage wise, each book will be something like 0-5 to 2MB, depending on if it will have embedded covers etc. Even the lowest storage device will hold more than enough books for a multi-year campling trip.
Calibre is pretty extensive, handles book metadata, conversion if needed for sending to the device, and has a ton of plugins for collection management, editing, anything you can think of.

And the UI which on Kindle is fine enough. Pretty easy to sort books into collections on the device itself, search, bookmark, font resize, etc as you need.
 
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