I can't really recommend the Pocketbook Lux 4. It's about $100 on sale, and seemed like an excellent, privacy conscious option for people like me, who often read books that are politically or socially controversial. Why does that matter? Well, the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook, and the Rakuten Kobo all analyze and share your titles and book content with their parent company and with sellers, along with authorities. If you're like me and might own copies of the Communist Manifesto, you can understand why, in the political climate in which we live, I might want to protect my privacy, and especially my reading list. Enter PocketBook's line of e-readers, and in this case the Lux 4. These e-readers are sold as privacy solutions. They don't monitor your books, they don't share your reading data, location data, or anything like that. You don't even have to make an account to use them. The problem? Several. 1. No lock screen. What good is privacy if anyone can pick up your reader and see what you're reading? The Lux 4 has no privacy lock screen, and when you turn it off, it stays on the last page you were reading, letting anyone read it. 2. Odd menu system. You can only change fonts, formatting, and other features in each individual book. There is no master setting, which presents a problem if you're like me and have thousands of books. 3. No Bulk Categorization You can't mass import books into categories. I like having collections for Star Trek, a collection for political texts, a collection for non-fiction, and so on. While you can make collections in the Lux 4, you must do it one book at a time. Again, thousands of books. 4. Backlight. The backlight is okay, but it's a whiter type of light, and even turned most of the way down is still a little painful for reading at night. The Kindle Paperwhite does a far better job offering softer lighting, and it's only a few dollars more. 5. Loading Times. There are loading times for a book. On my Kindle Paperwhite, clicking the book title instantly loaded the book. On the Lux 4, it takes about 10 seconds for the book to load, and sometimes in between page transitions, which is not good at all. 6. Text PPI (pixels per inch). The PPI for text on the Paperwhite is 300. For the Lux 4 it's 212. That may not sound like much, but believe me, the text is much smoother, and easier to read on a Paperwhite as compared to the Lux 4. Sometimes the text doesn't even look like it fully prints, almost like an old paperback when the ink starts to fade at the edges. So I cannot recommend it. I will keep mine (as it took 4 payments to get it and I can't really refund it anyway) as a backup, in case my Paperwhite fails, but I am seriously let down. My privacy matters to me, and I hate how everything digital has turned itself over to the surveillance state. I should not have to be concerned who is looking over my shoulder while I read the books I want to read. If you're in the market for a privacy conscious e-reader, I cannot recommend the Lux 4.
Given that some of the ebook readers out there run on Android, I'm fairly certain somebody's figured out a way to root the devices and block them from contacting the mothership, as it were.
Oh, I'm sure of it. I may have to go that route eventually. What's frustrating is that these issues with the PocketBook Lux 4 are rookie mistakes. The Lux 4 Touch, the one I have, first came out in 2018. My Kindle Paperwhite 2 is from 2013. There's no reason why a new e-reader shouldn't have a lock screen, profile security, or a decent backlight that doesn't hurt your eyes as standard features. So, yeah, I may have to resort to hacking my Paperwhite. :/
I just want them to display the time at the top of the page. I'd love to be able to whip my phone (or an ebook reader) out on break and read something without having to worry about checking my watch or exiting the app to see the time. (That might be coming in future Kindle versions though, as I happen to be FB friends with a guy who works on Kindle development at Amazon and when I mentioned this to him, he sent me a shot of the screen of a prototype that had the clock at the top.)
