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Post by BarefootRoot on Jan 17, 2015 8:08:07 GMT -5
so this might be a tough question, but I thought I would ask around and maybe someone would have some suggestions. the bulk of my comic pull is hard copy, but I have a HUGE comixology collection as well as a growing pile of HD PDFs from humble bundle (image 2 and valiant). I currently read them on an old ipad 2. the screen is about the perfect size for me (any smaller and I would have to use guided view, which I have found can take away from appreciating an entire page as a piece of art). the problem is, I have pretty bad carpal tunnel and holding that 10 pound dinosaur of a tablet really stresses out my hands. an example is last night: I spent the evening reading Shutter volume 1, and this morning my hands feel like they were hit by a truck. I am wanting to go a little more digital (space concerns) but holding normal paper comics is just so much easier on my hands. are there any good tablets out there that give a good balance of screen size and weight/unwieldiness? thanks for you help everybody!  |
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spydes
Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fighting the nerdy fight!
Posts: 56 
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Post by spydes on Feb 4, 2015 23:11:57 GMT -5
*bump*
(I'm interested in exploring digital comics and have many of the same questions, bare. So I thought I'd try to shed new light on this thread. Anyone have any suggestions?)
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 5, 2015 5:42:29 GMT -5
here's some numbers I discovered Spydes:
ipad 2: 10" screen, 1.3lbs + cover (this is what I have, with the cover clocks in a 2.1lbs)
ipad air 2: 10" screen (9.7 actually), 0.98lb + cover
ipad mini 3: 7.9" screen, 0.73lb + cover
galaxy tab s: 8.4' screen, 0.65lb + cover
galaxy tab s 10.5: 10.5" screen, 1.0lb + cover
galaxy tab 4 7.0: 7" screen, 0.61lb + cover (my daughter's clocks in at 0.88lb with the cover)
galaxy tab 4 10.1: 10" screen, 1.1lb + cover
this is just 2 brands, but I have looked into others and it's pretty typical across the industry that a 7-8" screen = ~0.7lb and a 10" screen = ~1-1.5lb
now the 10" screen is just big enough that I usually don't have to use guided view and can see entire pages, except for splash pages which I need to zoom in a little to read. I got my daughter the galaxy tab 4 7.0 with a lightweight cover for christmas, which she reads comics on, and I found the weight much easier on my hands. however, the 7" screen is small enough that an entire page becomes unreadable and you either need to zoom in or use guided view. My daughter likes guided view because she doesn't have to figure out how to navigate a complicated page layout.
my one gripe with guided view (or maybe it's 2 gripes) is that it doesn't always show you the entire piece of art. panels will sometimes get clipped a little (problem 1) and sometimes the page layout itself is a big part of the art which you miss if you're guided (problem 2).
so I guess my thoughts right now are that if you don't mind guided view a 7" tablet with a lightweight cover isn't too bad. if you want to see entire pages without zooming you have to get at least a 10" tablet, which today are generally about a half pound (33%) lighter than the ipad 2, and grab the lightest cover you're comfortable with. A 7" tablet is light enough that it generally shouldn't wreck your hands to hold while reading, while a 10" tablet really shines when reading at a table where you can use your cover's kickstandy features to prop it up and read it, but will wreck your hands if you wind up reading for an hour+
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Post by harmonica on Feb 5, 2015 5:56:14 GMT -5
i read digitally on a 7" google nexus tablet and love it i dont mind the smaller screen because it perfectly fits into my jacket/bermuda pocket. i dont use guided view and dont zoom in 90% of the time either.
when i was searching for a good tablet the only thing that i found really important was an HD display. i really wouldnt try to save money on that its just easier on the eyes, also newer displays dont flicker like a lot of old ones do.
in the end, like i said, i ended up with the nexus 7 because i found it was just the most bang for my buck and i didnt want to carry a bag with me everywhere.
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 5, 2015 7:51:04 GMT -5
i dont use guided view and dont zoom in 90% of the time either. you have way better eyesight than I do! My eyes aren't too bad (i.e. I don't need glasses or anything) but it just gets too small on the little screen  I agree 100% on the HD screen. Comics look good on my ipad 2, but they look a lot better on Mirei's galaxy 4 (even with the smaller screen). |
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Post by tundra on Feb 6, 2015 7:48:18 GMT -5
I also read almost all my comics on a Nexus 7 and very rarely need to use guided view (normally only for splash pages). It really does have a very nice screen!
btw, probably something you already know, but just in case other people reading this aren't aware you can set guided view to display the whole page on entering or exiting the page, which can be a pretty good compromise between ease of reading and still getting to see the complete page.
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spydes
Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fighting the nerdy fight!
Posts: 56
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Post by spydes on Feb 6, 2015 8:37:42 GMT -5
Thanks everyone for all the great info on tablets for comic reading. I had been leaning towards a 10" screen, just for the big and bold display, but it would seem that many of you are able to get by quite nicely with a 7".
One off-comic concern that I have is how compatible the various tablets are with iTunes. I have had an iphone for several years and as such have amassed many songs, movies, and various other media in my library. My experience has been that Apple makes it painful for you to port their formats for audio/video into more universal forms. I like the iPad but it seems overpriced for the market and I'm by no means an Apple fanboy. Has anyone had success using iTunes on a Kindle, Nexus, Samsung, or other non-Apple platform?
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 6, 2015 8:57:28 GMT -5
yeah, based on others' comments I will need to try my daughter's 7" tablet some more and see if I'm imagining things. I would love to upgrade my tablet and get the hell off iOS 6 (everything else I do revolves around android these days) and if I can gdo it for less than $200 it would be great as far as I know itunes doesn't exist for android. my way around was to basically upload my entire itunes library to google play. all my itunes files (AAC?) converted to whatever it is google uses (MP3?) automatically and works perfectly fine. I can download or stream my entire library and personally I think it kicks butt. there is another way that I found to be less elegant a solution. google an app called easy tunes (or something like that). you load the app on your android phone/tablet and install a small program on your PC. You fire up the PC program and it allows you to bring things directly from itunes onto your android. I used it maybe once and then discovered the google play thing and haven't used it since, so I'm not sure how well it works long-term. |
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Post by tundra on Feb 6, 2015 9:07:51 GMT -5
I've always rather liked the idea of a 10" display for comics reading, but wound up using a Nexus 7 for two reasons:
- one is that I find the portability of the smaller device more valuable than the larger screen (I read a lot whilst commuting)
- the other is that I have so far been given three 7" tablets as promotional items through work, which is a substantial disincentive to buying a larger tablet!
I know of an app which claims to be able to sync iTunes music and video to an Android device painlessly from a Windows or Mac computer - synctunes wireless - but I've never used it myself. Don't know of any way of accessing your iTunes library without using a computer, though...
<edit> also, what barefootroot has said about converting and uploading to Google Play is a very good solution for music.
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 6, 2015 16:41:05 GMT -5
<edit> also, what barefootroot has said about converting and uploading to Google Play is a very good solution for music. you don't even need to convert the files. google does it automatically for you when you upload them. |
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spydes
Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fighting the nerdy fight!
Posts: 56
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Post by spydes on Feb 7, 2015 14:10:05 GMT -5
Thanks for the tips on translating various forms of media, guys. I'm beginning to think that when you buy an ipad you're paying an extra $200 for an Apple logo.
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 7, 2015 17:09:26 GMT -5
well, not to sound like a hater, but that's kind of how apple has always been I did bite the bullet and grab a 7" galaxy tab 4 for myself today and so far so good. I loaded Marvel Unlimited on it and for the most part the pages read fine. guided view in that app is atrocious, so I don't recommend it, but you can zoom in and out easily so it was no problem. Comixology works great, full pages seem pretty good and the guided view is great (I found that setting to see the whole page; awesome). now for PDF comics like I've been grabbing from the humble bundles, I grabbed an app called Perfect Viewer that seems to be what I want (it even has a comics mode and a TON of adjustments you can make), but I haven't tried it out yet. there were a couple others that seem to have some buzz around them but this one was highest rated in the play store. a lot of them had no support for PDFs though which seemed odd to me. Perfect Viewer required me to install a plugin before it would do PDF, but it was all free so no bigee there. |
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Post by tundra on Feb 8, 2015 9:29:16 GMT -5
I use ComiCat for my non Comixology reading. It does handle pdf, but I normally get cbr from bundles when they're available. It has a bunch of nice features including syncing with cloud storage that can be very useful given the volume of comics you can get in a humble bundle - or a Comixology backup, for that matter!
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Post by BarefootRoot on Feb 9, 2015 22:31:15 GMT -5
ooohh it's also worth stressing file format. I had the valiant bundle and image 2 bundle in HD PDF and the performance was super sluggish on my brand new galaxy tab 4 while turning pages. just to make sure I didn't drive myself mad, I went and tried the CBZ files humble bundle had available and the difference was night and day. for even more of a performance boost, I recommend turning off page transitions as well. this is one thing iOS had over android I think. on my ipad I used comic flow and it transitioned smoothly even with the huge HD PDF files, which hasn't been possible on the android... or at least this particular one |
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Post by BatFonz on May 13, 2015 7:00:25 GMT -5
I have a Samsung 10.1 tablet which has the S Pen built in and has the Wacom technology built in, I've found the screen is a nice size for reading so when I upgraded to a more powerful tablet for home I kept this and use solely for digital comics.
I use PerfectViewer for file management and viewing and I find it really easy to use. The only addition I made was to dig deep for a good size SD Card [128GB] which with the existing internal memory gives me 144GB which I have about 60% filled so I have a huge amount of my collection available to me portably which is fantastic.
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