After a couple hours of searching I have come to the same conclusion about android readers, and the Poke3 has caught my interest. Also your answer about its dictionary capacity is very helpful !
I think it’s just a shame that the Poke is a bit small, and that upgrading to the bigger Nova means twice the price for features I don’t need. I wonder how 6" feels when reading novels and manga.
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You mean on the Android device? I tried the Kindle app on my iPad before I bought the Kindle Oasis, and I did not find the dictionary implementation nearly as friendly. I also think it was hard to get a vocab list out without some serious nerd power. Who’s got the time anymore…
There is a free website called Fluentcards that lets you easily dump vocab from a physical Kindle, but it does not include definitions. I couldn’t find anything like that for the app.
I’ve heard good things about the Boox e-readers. I’m looking at maybe getting the Nova because I really LOVE e-ink screens and having a full Android OS with that plus the notetaking features would be awesome.
For now, I read ebooks on a Kindle Paperwhite (I picked up the special manga edition while I was in Japan a while back), but use the Kindle app on an old 10" Samsung tablet I had lying around for manga, because I found that trying to read manga on the Kindle was difficult if I didn’t know all the kanji as the furigana were too small to make out without zooming in.
Amazon is still the only marketplace I know of for Japanese ebooks, so you’ll likely be using a Kindle app on whatever device you choose anyway (although some books can be converted to other formats), so I’d say just choose a device you like the features of and go with that. I have heard there are other sources for manga, and the Kindle device’s locked-down OS wouldn’t be great for that.
Also, do be aware that most devices can only be linked to one Amazon account at a time, so you cannot use the same device for both your regular Amazon account (assuming you have one) and Amazon.co.jp account without having to reset and re-download your library each time.
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I remember reading that Kobo/Rakuten blocked foreign cards not too long ago. Is that still the case?
I bought a couple of books from the Japanese bookstore using a Canadian credit card over Christmas - I did use a fake Japanese address generator so… it works, but with a catch. Switching between Japanese store and Canadian has been doable, but a bit of a pain. If you plan to use seperate accounts (as you would have to use with kindle) it might be less hassle.
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The only issue with 6" screens is Manga is kinda… annoying. Novels and such are just fine and since you can adjust font size, pretty easy to match a regular print novel in size. Mostly.
As a test, open the Kindle app or Book Walker app on your phone. Doesn’t matter if you have 4.5 or up to a 6" screen, it will give you a feel for how things work on a 6" screen. Find a free Manga or a preview (Book Walker offers free previews). See how it works for you on the phone. It’s not a 1:1 but will give an idea.
As others have mentioned, and I think I did as well, 6" screen is kinda annoying for Manga in English. Add on furigana and you spend a LOT of time zooming in and out on Manga on a smaller screen.
If your main goal is digital Manga, I would very, very highly recommend you save up for something with at least a 10" screen. I have the Kindle Oasis which has a 7" screen and I can read manga in English with minor zooming; switch to Japanese manga and it’s a zoom fest (until I get the kanji down better I guess).
I would read novels in eng/jp but manga would be exclusively in jp. I never really count on furigana to be honest. They rarely help me understand a word, just make the lookup easier. Also, manga is a secondary objective for me, novels being the main one.
With furigana, just remember sometimes you will get them for things that the author expects you to read differently than you may have learned.
It’s not a usual use case for it so likely you would be fine zooming every once in a while as needed.
Fun article about wrong readings becoming pervasive. Not totally relevant but sort of relevant:
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I found an image of a manga display on an now pretty old 6" reader if anyone is curious. The reader is a iRiver Story HD from 2011 with a resolution of 1024×768. By comparison, the Poke3 from 2020 is 1488 x 1072. I’m trying to imagine the same size but with better lighting and crispness and I’m left with a good enough impression of what reading jp manga on a Poke3 would be. Granted, if one’s main use of readers is reading manga, this still isn’t optimal, but for very casual manga reading, looks decent to me!
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Just remember that while the size looks good, furigana is absolutely a pain on small screens.I know you said you don’t need it but when you do, you will have to zoom. Since manga isn’t the main purpose, probably you are good to go!
Something else to think about; where you buy from.
Returns.
If you can find somewhere that offers hassle free returns, might be worth going that route. I say that because paying $200ish for something, only to be stuck with it if you find it’s less than ideal, would suck. Say in the first 30 days you find that, for whatever reason, you want to read manga all the time instead and the larger screen would be better. Would stink to be saddled with a $200 device followed by another $350+ device on top of that, etc.
I hope you are happy with the Poke 3. I wish I had thought more about what I was buying before I went to the Kindle Oasis…
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Furigana is also used to tell you how to pronounce names, which can be very unusual pronunciations of those kanji.
But yeah, if manga isn’t your main use of the e-reader then you can probably go with anything.
If you already have an Amazon.co.jp account and a device for testing, you can also get samples of a lot of books and manga sent to your device. I also like to do this with ebooks before buying to see if they are at about a level I can read.
The Nova does look good, but it’s veeery expensive for a 7.8" in my opinion. The price is inflated because of the inducive screen and the whole “taking notes” feature, but for someone like me who has zero use for it, it sounds like a waste of money. I wish they had a 7.8" purely capacitive reader for an intermediary price.
Okay. I’ve been trying to find a way to buy books that allows me to download them and convert them to epub, so maybe I’ll give this a go at some point.
Yeah, definitely agree. I would use the note-taking feature (especially with Kanji practice sheet PDFs to practice writing), but the main thing holding me back from just buying it right now is the price compared to other devices.
But I already have both a B&N nook and the Kindle and while the size is nice for stuffing in my purse for travel, and doesn’t get heavy during long reading sessions, I’d like to try something a little bigger.
Maybe this would work more to your tastes then?
I do not know Likebook as a company so I would suggest digging into them a little before buying, but 7.8" for $220 is pretty dang nice…
Argh, I just upgraded my Kindle to an Oasis, and am now regretting giving my Paperwhite to my sister because of this thread 
Japanese bookstore as in Kobo’s JP store right? And not Rakuten ebook store?
Aw man the ipad with the Kindle app connected to a Japanese amazon account is great! I live by it.
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Kindle imo with an amazon.jp account is unbeatable imo (ok i haven’t tried anything else but it works insanely well).
I have the Oasis but really you don’t need a fancy one like that. You could probably pick up a used Paperwhite for around US$100 I reckon.
Amazon.jp’s selection of novels and manga is incredibly vast. I’m yet to find a book (even really old one’s written pre-war) that doesn’t have a kindle edition.
Also has in-built dictionary with support for importing your own dictionaries (the oasis comes with Daijisen but I’ve imported my Daijirin and Shinmeikai as well as JMDict).
It’s kind of complecated but there is also a way to fairly easily convert your highlighted sentences into anki cards as well.
All in all right now the kindle is pretty much my #1 tool for Japanese…
ps. I’m about to head out to the city and have a 40min train ride and looking forward to reading on the train lol
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Android based e-Reader will get you access to the Kindle app and also tons of other apps like Bookwalker… that’s the best of both worlds. From my limited experience though, device wise, not much matches the quality of the Oasis though…
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