I think that I summarized somewhere in the forums before but have updates.
I found that we can (and should) update the kindle dictionary. The updated one is far better!!
Yes kindle is far better than a phone for the screen size and battery, and backlight for kindle paperwhite.
But, I then bought a Kindle for the audio. This is my main go to now over the paperwhite. It has color, but mostly just for the covers of books, I can listen to the audiobook in the audible app and read along in the kindle app at the same time. Also, there is an autogenerated Japanese voice to follow along (text to speech) with any of the ebooks standalone (if there is no audiobook). This is more convenient because it is housed inside the same kindle app and highlights the words like Karaoke. The downside here is that the base dictionary is shit and it seems that it cannot be updated like the paperwhites.
I got my Kindle basic (ft. fitting bookstore collab nuigurumi. this is the best picture I had sorry)! I ended up looking at the Paperwhite irl in stores and immediately saw it was too big for my hands.
Thoughts:
I did actually end up using it on my commute and loving it! It fits in my coat pocket and I found myself continuing to read even after I get out of the no-connection zone on the underground unlike with the app on my phone
One of the reasons I wanted it was to have a lighter device after I was stuck in bed last year and found my phone too heavy to read comfortably. I’ve had/am currently having two bad episodes with my health (herniated disc with a lot of complications leaving me unable to sit/stand/walk for more than a few mins) and have found it useful for that. It’s light enough to not strain my wrist when I’m stuck in bed, and I’ve been putting it on my exercise mat to do 5 mins reading and then 5 mins exercises or walking as motivation.
Dictionary is just ok, slightly better than the app one. I found it amazing on the first few days as everything was giving me a definition before I started running into words with no definition. I’m not sure how to get a J-J dictionary or get a different J-E dictionary.
Battery is good enough for me and has been another nice thing to have while I’ve been bed bound, it’s surprising how stressful keeping things charged can feel. I think they should list it in hours instead of weeks though.
Thought I’d only use it for novels because of the ghost text effect (which took some time to get used to) but it actually really doesn’t bother me for manga, if anything the ghosting bothers me more for novels.
When I was using it every day before my health went downhill I was getting used to the fiddly selection but now it’s annoying me again. I often just give up as the selection starts selecting in the opposite direction that I want
I like the bevel a lot for not accidentally touching the edges of the screen but when specks of dust etc get on the screen I worry I’m brushing them off into the bevel where they’ll accumulate
I like the button you can hit to see the next six pages or so in a preview, it’s nice for checking if you’re at a chapter break soon or not
That being said I do still accidentally turn the page more often than I’d like
Glad I didn’t get the ad free version, the ad shown has only been the one in the picture above (which i don’t even consider an ad). As nice as covers may be in theory I don’t want BL manga covers to be out on display haha
I like that it saves your highlights into a little book, I think you can export them too?
Highly recommend for anyone else whose body just decided to stop working, the weight of this thing is so perfect for me.
Edit: The one thing which I did expect is that yeah it feels weird to listen to an audiobook on my phone (audiobook jp is so much cheaper than amazon audiobooks) while reading along on the Kindle, but I usually just listen without reading along anyway.
Orrr you can get a page turner and a kindle/tablet holder. They’ve been all the rage on TikTok recently and I can vouch for the page turners at least as I grabbed one recently and reading hands free is a lot more comfortable than I would have expected.
Screenshot of someone’s setup since I’m pretty sure TikTok is only available to people who already have the app at this point, regardless of where you’re trying to download it from…
I have a gooseneck tablet holder somewhere that I’m trying to find before I get a new one, but I’m definitely planning to emulate the full setup at some point.
Gotcha. I’d be surprised; I can see “Download to transfer via USB” vanishing because they think that’ll keep people from pirating their books, but I don’t see what they would gain from forbidding people to put things they already own (i.e. mobi files) on their Kindles. It would just make the devices less attractive.
So, fingers crossed it won’t happen.
At first I thought this would be a good idea, but then I realized that only like 5% of the time my touches are for turning pages, and most of the time it’s to select a word to open the dictionary. What can I say, I don’t know a lot of words
The current generation Kindles already have the feature you’re referring to removed (they never had it in the first place). So for anyone who bought one recently that change doesn’t affect them. File transfer via USB works like normal - and as @Legato said there’s no reason for them to consider changing it
I don’t disagree with either of these takes, but gentle reminder that Kindle e-readers are sold at a loss with the expectation that you will make up for it by buying Kindle books (or at the very least, in library fees for the books you borrow). If they think that side loading content from other, even perfectly legal, sources starts to eat into their profits, those features are on the chopping block.
Yeah, but they also want people to get Kindles in the first place (so that they buy Kindle books), and any cut features will make getting a Kindle less attractive. “We have to defend ourselves from pirates” reads differently to “We have to defend ourselves from perfectly legitimate uses”.
Which Kindle do you have? My threshold for slow/clunky tech is extermely low and I find the dictionary speed on my Kindle Paperwhite (2021) quite bearable.
Not sure though, whether it’s an actual feature or just a hack somebody came up with. If it were a feature there would be menu points to upload, remove, replace a dict and you wouldn’t have to do it manually as described.
A lot
Some of them are mostly mothballed, but of the two I use the older one is probably from around 2019/2020 and the newer one is more like 2023. The new one is definitely more snappy and the older one is juuuust on my edge of tolerance. Neither of them can compete with jidojisho on my phone though. So when I need a lot of lookups that’s where I still read.
Just throwing it out there re: no more transfer via USB talk. I used to use that for reading with Calibre + Yomichan in my browser but later moved onto downloading novels into a slightly older version of the Kindle for PC desktop app, in my experience that’s actually a lot easier to use with Calibre than the transfer via USB download files. If that’s still an option I recommend it (you’ll have to do some digging to find which version of the PC app it is you can still use).
Tbh I doubt it’ll change side loading dictionaries because they’re specifically stopping the downloading of your ebooks into an easier to convert and remove DRM from form, not uploading, but I’ll try to do the dictionary thing soon anyway.
The “copy things to ‘documents’ via USB” stuff is in the manual (“When you first connect the Kindle to a computer’s USB port, it will appear as an external storage drive or volume on the computer’s desktop. This Kindle volume contains a folder called “documents.” You can add Kindle-compatible files to this directory, and you can copy, move or delete the files that are already there”), and dictionaries are a compatible file type. It’s just how you add stuff that you didn’t buy on Amazon. It doesn’t need more UI to become an “actual feature”.
Yep, that worked in 2023, stopped working in early 2024, and seems to have started working (with updated tools and another app version) later in 2024 again.
can attest - sideloading the j-j dictionaries on the scribe works great! (do a search for them and you’ll find kindle formats of many of the common ones already available)
the only thing haven’t quite found an easier way of doing is loading more than a few on there, my yomitan (have 15 different dictionaries loaded) so something is always found in yomitan…(like how everything is searched simultaneously)
the kindle however …if something doesn’t come up then have to manually click to swap dictionaries. not a huge deal but mildly annoying (not as seamless)
also if you haven’t used it the pixiv dictionary has become one of my favorites (but haven’t found a kindle version to sideload) so it stays on the laptop/tablet
I also don’t buy anything from kindle store, mine was a gift so I load epubs purchased legally for from other sources. Then send to the kindle via the web and/or side load pdfs for writing on the scribe. If amazon ditches the whole usb xfer entirely…won’t have any heartburn ditching the device altogether (laptop and tablet with ttsu /yomitan work just fine) - and something i can’t do with the kindle is export to anki (vocab/sentence) for later exporting into renshuu or other systems.
for the audio. This is my main go to now over the paperwhite. It has color, but mostly just for the covers of books, I can listen to the audiobook in the audible app and read along in the kindle app at the same time. Also, there is an autogenerated Japanese voice to follow along (text to speech) with any of the ebooks standalone (if there is no audiobook). This is more convenient because it is housed inside the same kindle app and highlights the words like Karaoke. The downside here is that the base dictionary is shit and it seems that it cannot be updated like the paperwhites.
