Hello and welcome to Micromat Episode 2, a podcast where I take about five minutes and talk about whatever I want to talk about.

Today that’s gonna be e-readers.

Maybe not something that’s interesting to everybody but I think the small group of us who are users of e-readers are pretty passionate about it and have a lot of opinions and I’m I’m one for those opinions so let’s dive right in.

For a few years I used what everybody used just the good old Amazon Kindle and I went from the Paperwhite to the Oasis.

Both have a lot of strengths.

I believe that the Paperwhite is probably what most people should get but I managed to find an Oasis for for cheap using a trade-in program discounts and all that so I got that last year early last year and I really liked it.

It’s a solid piece of equipment, it fits good in my hands, I have large hands, I like the physical buttons for turning pages and stuff like that but at the end of the day I hated that it’s still charged with micro USB and there seems to be nothing on the horizon new in that department.

There’s no Oasis 2 that’s been rumored at least that I’ve seen so I decided to dive in and take a look at some some other things and mid last year I believe I read some articles and stumbled upon a lot of people who liked using Kobos so I decided I’m gonna I’m gonna take the leap.

After a lot of research I got the Kobo Libra 2 which just a couple weeks ago I think might have been discontinued for a color version but best I can tell the color version is not getting the best reviews so maybe I lucked out and got the right one because so far I really like it I think it the display is just as good if not better than the Kindle and Kindle Oasis so I’m happy there it does have the physical buttons that I like a lot I like the case that I got with it which is one directly from the the Kobo company but its integration with Overdrive or Libby especially in the United States is super powerful easy to use and directly on device now don’t get me wrong Amazon the Kindle it works good with with Overdrive and Libby it’s you see a lot of people say it doesn’t but it’s pretty easy you have to use an app on your phone but then it syncs to the device wirelessly pretty easy to do however directly on the Kobo you actually get basically an Overdrive or Libby app on the Kobo itself so you don’t need a smartphone or any other access to that you can just go to it straight on the device find a book from your local library download it right there and it’s ready to go no problem whatsoever and so I’ve enjoyed doing that especially just browsing because it’ll recommend books based on what you’ve done which is real nice especially if you’re reading a series and I’ve enjoyed it a lot in fact right now I’m reading the Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography which is a pretty in-depth book that is written at probably a level a little higher than what I normally read not that I don’t understand it I feel like I have the intelligence level to understand it but it’s one of those books that you really have to sit down process and make sure that you’re you’re taking it all in use the dictionary here and there to to look up words that aren’t normal day-to-day words because a lot of the content in this book was translated from old German to modern English and so there’s some some areas there where you kind of have to get creative in how you’re going to digest things how you’re going to interpret things in your own in your own right so having the Kobo and all the integrations and stuff has been really nice and one integration that I really loved about the Kobo and I think you can do this on Kindle too probably so so this isn’t special to Kobo but I like to highlight in books and not just in books I like to highlight on my computer or phone website articles and news articles you know things that I find whether it’s inspirational or important or just things that I want to remember I like to highlight them but for the longest times those highlights just ended up all over the place but and I’ll probably talk about this next episode this might be a two-part thing I was able to build out a system using my Kobo using a service called hypothesis using a service called readwise using obsidian all these things where it’s just kind of automatically all my highlights are built into one notebook one area that I can go I can read I can reference them digest them print them whatever I need to do copy and paste them for a lecture I’m giving it’s all there and it takes it from all these different sources but at the backbone of it that all started with the Kobo because that’s where I do most of my highlighting and then I was able to add things like web articles and stuff like that and it’s all seamless and I’m very proud of what I built because I hadn’t seen many people do it exactly like I did so maybe we’ll get into that in the next episode but if you’re into the e-reader space and haven’t looked into Kobo or you’re thinking about getting an e-reader I highly suggest look at Kobo first I think it’s better than what Amazon offers they’re developing a lot of things over time that I think goes a little beyond what Amazon is doing I don’t think Kindle stuff looks to be a priority for Amazon but the Kobo basically their business is built around it so anyway long story short I’m at minutes if you’re in the e-reader space and curious about Kobo I say go for it comes highly recommended for me