Korean ereader advice

Korean Reading
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I am looking to buy an ereader for the first time and The Internet is making it look a lot more complicated than I had anticipated, so I am coming to you Wise Korean Learners for advice.

I want and ereader that:

  1. Allows hangeul as well as the Latin alphabet if I ever feel like reading in English.
  2. Is compatible with ridibooks since that is where I get most of my books
  3. Allows some sort of kr-en dictionary. I usually use Papago mini, but I am open to other alternatives.

And that is really it, I didn’t think it would be difficult to find but then I started seeing all sorts of things like DRM, issues with dictionaries, and I got confused. I did find a thread on here, but the conversation got too techy for me, and was mostly centered on the best set up for Japanese. Lucky for me I don’t need to look up kanji.

Does anyone have experience with Ridibooks + ereader? (Not the ridibook ereader specifically because it looks like it only allows Ridi ebooks). I found the inkBOOK Solaris, is that any good?

I’m really confused so any insight is appreciated!!

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You’d probably be safe with any android ereader that gives you access to the google playstore, although I have yet to own one myself :cry: As far as I understand, inkbook doesn’t give you access to the playstore, but it seems you can sideload apks, so that moght work as well.
A few brands that make devices with access to the google playstore:

  • Onyx boox. I think the devices are widely available and have a large range of options. I heard that screens used to break easily, I am not sure if that’s still the case.
  • Meebook: think it’s more difficult to find through common retailers depending on where you live. They can be bought on aliexpress (there’s an official store, forgot which one).
  • Bigme
  • …
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Oh, that’s helpful, thanks! If it’s only a matter of checking whether it allows access to the playstore, I can do that, it doesn’t seem so daunting :sweat_smile: I’ll look into the ones you mentioned and see if any is available here as I would rather not buy through Amazon or AliExpress.

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I own an Onyx Boox Poke 5 to read Korean! Access to Ridibooks was the main reason I bought it, and it works great. Happy to answer any other questions.

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Thank you for that!! I did end up going with an Onyx because I really wanted to make sure Ridibooks works. I’ll update with feedback for potential future interest.

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I was reminded of this thread, so I’ll quickly update:
The Onyx works perfectly fine, turns out the Ridi app had a built in Korean-English dictionary all along, I was just not good enough at Korean to find it before :sweat_smile: so although I was able to install Papago I ended up not needing it.
So, yes, good e-reader, black and white which was a bit of a shame for some books I read that had the occasional illustrations, but I can use the app on my phone to have a look at them. Look ups are easy, though that’s more to do with Ridi that the ereader itself.

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