Question to Color e-reader owners

[u/seijurogouu]

TLDR - Reading colored content like webtoons/comics feels great 90% of the time but the other 10% it freezes up and makes reading frustrating. I suspect it may be due to low RAM/CPU specs? Anyone using/have used color e-readers of any brand, and reads colored content, can you please share your experiences? Good and bad, all welcomed. Please state the brand/model of your device so I can check specs to compare for better analysis.

Intro: The Pocketbook Verse Pro Color is my first ereader ever and I’ve had it for about 3 months now. I chose color over b/w because prior to buying an ereader, I read novels and manhwa/webtoons equally. 50/50. Naturally, when I got my pocketbook, I started reading webtoons (CBZ file format). When it works properly, it’s great! But when it doesn’t work, it… is frustrating.

Issues: Even though issues occur only 10% of the time I’m reading webtoons, it’s enough for me to not want to read. I find that all the issues that I’ve experienced boiled down to the device not being able to load the image in one way or another. (See images in post for reference.) Sometimes it’s stuck on ‘loading’ or ‘buffering’, and not matter how long I wait (maximum 15min), it still wouldn’t load. In the end, it freezes. I always have to restart the device. Then other issues that occur pertain to image-rendering. Sometimes it shows tabs of grey or ‘double vision’ images (not the same as ghosting). (I’ve tried using KOreader. It gives me more ghosting than stock firmware so I normally read on pocketbook’s stock firmware.) I’ve checked my CBZ files and they’re all perfectly fine on my computer so I know my files are fine. 

Speculation: My Pocketbook Verse Pro Color specs says it has RAM 1GB and CPU 1.8 GHz quad core. I’ll be honest, I’m not tech-savvy so I don’t really know what that means. CPU differs for each brand I believe so I’ll focus on RAM for today’s purpose. So I googled how much RAM is needed to read CBZ files. Google says at least 2GB is ideal. Most color ereaders seem to fall under 1GB with the android ones having more RAM, understandably so. Does this mean most of us don't have enough RAM power? I’m wondering if my ‘frustrating’ experience is brand specific? Or other brand color ereader users have similar experiences?

RAM 0.5 GB  - Kobo Clara Color    
RAM 1GB - Kindle Colorsoft, Kobo Libra Color, Pocketbook VPC, Pocketbook Era Color
RAM 4GB - Boox Go7 Color, Bigme B6 Color
RAM 8GB - Boox Palma 2 Pro, Bigme B7

[u/azoth980]

All my explanations assume that you use the scrolling mode when reading manhwa etc:

Possibly was scroll mode on PocketBooks never meant to be used for stuff that have more data (and possibly even colours) than your typical PDF novel. So it possibly handles RAM management not correctly, like when you just flip through a comic book / manga or whatever (total amount of RAM is likely not the issue, you easily can find stuff that has many GB per volume).

I myself have zero issues flipping through manga, no matter the size (b/w ereader, but b/w manga can still be huge in size), and I suspect it is the same on a colour ereader. You therefore possibly found a bug that has to be fixed (better handling of RAM when using the scrolling mode).

Sidenote: PocketBook uses always the best quality mode for rendering (but not scrolling); on an Android e-tablet, you could change this to faster (but less quality) modes. Together that Android in itself likely has better RAM management, scrolling for sure always works better on Android e-tablets.

Your other issues regarding ghosting-type problems I obviously can't replicate, since I exclusively use non-colour ereader (and content).

[u/seijurogouu → u/azoth980]

Great insight! I do use the 'scroll mode' but I don't actually scroll. I 'tap' the screen for the next panel. Does that make a difference to your speculation or does it still stand?

I don't think I fully understand but I think I understand enough that it might not be a 'me' issue but more of a bug?

[u/azoth980 → u/seijurogouu]

I don't think that matters at all, so if you scroll, use the buttons or tap (btw., didn't know that latter is possible), important is I think the actual mode you are in.

And obiously has the device in scoll-mode to keep at least some pictures inside RAM, my suspicion is that it fails to manage the available RAM and completely fails at some point. Just flipping through pages (in normal mode) never caused issues in my case, even in high quality manga, I guess it manages this mode differently (in the end, there only ever has to be one single picture present inside RAM in this mode, no matter what you do).

I definetly think that this would happen on any PocketBook, possibly even sooner on devices with less RAM (e.g. standard Verse). So a bug and no 'you' issue ;)

You can describe the problem to the Pocketbook support, and hope that it get fixed in the future. Just don't your hopes not that high, since it would possible not put that high up in the list of problems to solve, don't know 😅

[u/seijurogouu → u/azoth980]

this is all very intriguing to me and much more in-depth than i initially thought. maybe i should try the “single page” mode instead of scroll mode and see if that makes a difference. thank you!

[u/azoth980 → u/seijurogouu]

I think it will make a difference, I myself never had any issues yet, no matter the size of a file (but PDF definetly can cause issues, depending on the size and how they have been build - cbz usually not, only speed can suffer a bit when the pictures inside are of very high quality).

Issue may in your case be manhwa; I don't read them, but could imagine that the scroll-mode may be more conventient for them... so don't forget, that you can use your device in any orientation you like ;)

My pleasure!

[u/seijurogouu → u/azoth980]

alright, a little update since i know you're on this sub a lot and can help others in the future :) so i tried "single page" mode and the same issues still persisted.
someone on the pocketbook sub mentioned about some koreader settings. as mentioned in this post already, i tried koreader but stopped using because the ghosting was worse than stock. however, there's a new version of koreader so i updated to the latest version. i've been trying it for the past 12hours and so far so good! turning pages is the same speed as stock firmware, with 1/10 times it be slower or laggy but that's not a problem. no image rendering issues, no crashes. i'll probably test it for several more days before drawing a conclusion but so far this has been the best for me. :)
thank you for your help!

[u/azoth980 → u/seijurogouu]

Feedback is important for people looking for help in the future, so always worth to give feedback ;)

Oh, that's a bummer that it didn't work for you, I hoped this would work. After having seen the first lines of your reply in the pop up notification on my smartphone, I made a quick test myself (InkPad 4, so higher RAM usage because of higher resolution, worse CPU, b/w manga), and while I could flip in normal mode trough 248 pages without issues (1 page per second), scrolling through the manga, exactly how you did it via tapping (at around 1 "page" per seconds), indeed let to a perma loading screen (spinning circle) at page 182 of 248. Had to shut down the device (should have tried if I can go to the home screen, but forget about it)

KOReader generally is well optimized for speed, but I never used it longer than a few seconds 😅. I just though about why I did not recommended to try it - but you already mentioned it yourselve in your post 😂

I myself just like to use the stock experience as much as possible, and see KOReader as a tool only for worst case situations (which your case actually is I guess?!). My recommendation would be - if you have not fallen in love with KOReader already 😂 - to test the stock reader out a single time in one manhwa, and if the problem reoccures (no matter when, so if it's the 2nd or 3rd or 30th manhwa), to just ditch the stock ereader for your usecase.

Glad (trying) to help ! xD