Pocketbook Era With Koreader

I’d been looking for a new e-reader to replace my Kindle Paperwhite for quite a while. The PocketBook Era with KOReader has turned out to be the perfect solution for me.

Because I didn’t have this combo on my radar for a long time, I’m hoping this post helps others who haven’t yet reached the finish line in their search.

In short: In my view, the Era offers the best hardware right now but is let down by the software. KOReader is a fantastic e-reader app that you can install on the Era with just a few steps, and with a handful of targeted tweaks it resolves every issue I ran into.

My requirements

I was generally very happy with the Paperwhite. But on my now aging model (10th generation from 2018), the battery had already lost a lot of capacity. Current models also have noticeably crisper text rendering, which I hoped would improve reading comfort.

Newer Amazon models were out for me. The main reason is the (increasingly) closed ecosystem. The recently removed feature to download books from your own Amazon account was another red flag. Given the current political climate between the EU and the US, I’m also wary of having my purchased digital content tied to a US company account.

So the following points mattered to me:

• Independence from any store
• Excellent text rendering
• A slightly larger screen
• Smooth operation (both when paging and when entering notes)
• Good battery life

The candidates

I looked at models from several companies: PocketBook, Kobo and Tolino (apparently identical hardware with different software), Boox, and a few niche options I won’t go into here.

The PocketBook Era was the first I tried because my wife has one. Unfortunately, I was disappointed very quickly: the text looked excellent, but the performance was downright abysmal. You could see it at and after startup, and later when turning pages. Sometimes I had the impression the Era hadn’t registered my input and I’d press the page-turn button a second time - whereupon it would promptly jump ahead two pages.

That took it off the table for me at first, and it took me a while to wade through various reviews and YouTube videos of other readers.

I eventually checked out the Tolino line in a store, especially the Tolino Vision Color (practically identical to the Kobo Libra Color). But text rendering on the color devices just wasn’t good enough for me and, subjectively, couldn’t even keep up with my old Paperwhite. You’ll read and hear different opinions about this, but I’d recommend seeing color e-readers in person before buying - especially if you mainly plan to read text.

The solution

By chance, I stumbled upon KOReader in the context of Kobo devices. The website and screenshots look rather plain. But many enthusiastic voices on Reddit made me take a closer look. In particular, claims that KOReader runs significantly faster on the Era, among others made me reconsider my initial rejection.

In fact, KOReader officially supports the Era, and installation is trivial: just connect the Era to your computer via USB and copy over two folders.

PocketBook e-readers are very open and run a customized Linux. Without any extra tinkering, PocketBook allows you to install your own apps or modify system files.

After installation, you can set KOReader as the default app for e-books as described in the guide. With an optional plug-in, KOReader will even write your reading progress back into the Era’s library view.

The integration works very well: once you associate the file types in KOReader, the Era’s library automatically opens tapped books with it.

The result

Performance

KOReader takes a little longer the first time you open a book, but is all the faster after that. It seems to build a cache that persists even when you switch between multiple books.

If you also set the Era so it only powers off from standby after 48 hours, it’s noticeably quicker in all situations. Closing the cover immediately puts it into standby, and opening the cover wakes the Era instantly.

Battery life hasn’t suffered much for me. I keep Wi‑Fi off by default. I actually suspect that cloud sync is partly responsible for the sudden freezes. At least I haven’t seen them since I started using the Era primarily offline.

If you want to sync your reading progress across devices or otherwise use the cloud features, you might need a different setup.

Features

Beyond that, KOReader offers a number of fantastic features that have become indispensable to me:

• Remaining pages display per chapter
• Extensive display options (with sensible defaults)
• Extensibility via numerous plug-ins, dictionaries, fonts, etc.
• Excellent PDF rendering
• The Book Map, which visualizes the book’s structure, text density, my highlights, and notes at a glance (see photo)

The comfort boost from KOReader is so great that I’m not sure, in total, whether it has more impact on my reading experience than the new hardware.

Recommended settings

After installing KOReader, I recommend a few additional tweaks:

Dictionaries

Under “Magnifier” -> Settings -> Dictionary Settings you can install dictionaries directly from within KOReader. For English/German I use the dict.cc dictionary, GNU, and Wiktionary. That has covered every word I’ve looked up so far.

The location of this setting is a bit odd in my opinion. On the plus side, enabling Wi‑Fi for the download works right from KOReader, and the process is completely smooth.

Fonts

I installed a number of fonts. After giving several a fair shot, I landed on Atkinson Hyperlegible. You can see it in the photo at the top.

I also increased line spacing to 1.2x and bumped the font size up one notch (simple pinch-to-zoom gesture).

Via “Page” -> Document settings -> Save […] as default these settings will apply to all other books as long as you haven’t chosen something different there.

DRM

KOReader’s biggest drawback is that it only supports soft DRM. There are a few stores that also sell DRM‑free books. I primarily use eBooks.com.

Technically, it’s possible to remove hard DRM from books using Calibre and plug-ins like DeDRM if you have the DRM key (i.e., you bought them for your own account). However, removing DRM - even if you’ve purchased usage rights and only strip the protection for your own private use on the e-reader - is practically illegal everywhere (not legal advice).

So the simplest and only legal route remains DRM‑free books.

Final thoughts

According to the KOReader documentation, the software also works with other PocketBook devices. For example, I can easily imagine KOReader helping on the InkPad 4, which is often criticized for its performance.

The Era paired with KOReader is exactly what I was looking for. In the meantime, my wife’s Era also runs KOReader and she’s convinced. That shows the combination works well even for people outside the tech bubble.

Learning: if your hardware is good but your software can’t compete, having an open system might just save your product.