I am thinking of a present for my partner. Only a basic one as long as it has a backlight for night reading its ok. What is the downside of a kobo vs kindle? I want to not be tied to amazon. I can read kindle books on my phone so can you on a kobo? Looks like you can with a some conversion wit ha quick google, but do you need to? Is kobo library as good so its a non issue?

Also I imagine this is type of tech is pretty reliable and safe to grab a second hand one if a good one comes up? Anything to look out for?

I bought my wife a Kobo a couple of years ago. She uses it for books from the local library (free) using Overdrive (or maybe Goodreads?) I think she’s got an app on her phone that she can more easily browse and search for books and then they get synced on to the reader.

She didn’t want to have to get in to another Amazon subscription.

Seems to work well for her.

I bought a Kindle a few years ago. As a bit of hardware it’s very good. I was disappointed in not being able to use the library & overdrive. However a previous thread on here pointed me to Calibre software with De-DRM add on.

Now I can use the local library for reading books and overall it is very good indeed. Being able to browse book on the laptop, download via Overdrive & calibre and then email to the Kindle is very good indeed.

I’ve used my Kobo Clara HD pretty much every day for the last 3.5 years, and it is still holding up well. The hardware is much of a muchness compared to a kindle, and it is a delight to no longer be tied to amazon for my ebooks. I’ve bought about 75 books on kobo, and the only books that I’ve been unable to buy are the Bobiverse books. The audio books work so well for this series that this was not too much of an issue (other than having to use Audiable, booo)

Browsing for new books on the kobo is a bit rubbish, but I tend to just browse + buy them on the website.

thanks all. sounds like there is not really any significant cons (if any)