There’s this company, which makes ebook readers that don’t seem to be tied to any particular vendor:
https://shop.boox.com/collections/all
They have so many models, though, that I have no idea where to start with them.
I am very happy with my boox note 2. Use it to read books, manga, and take notes in OneNote for classes.
Been enjoying using my Boox Nova Air that connects to my Kavita through Moon Reader+. I just download my epub or PDF to read. That flow has been working like a charm to me.
Keep in mind that it’s an e-reader, so it’s black and white only. May be fine with you or you may want an iPad or an Android tablet for color and speed
EDIT
Have read also from my Kindle and Kobo library as it is an Android device and have both apps downloaded
On the Kindle, you can email yourself e-books.
Kindle doesn’t work with epub which is what majority of ebooks are
It does work with epub now. They changed it not long ago (afaik)
I run Koreader on a Kobo Libra 2. I just connect to my OPDS catalogue on my Calibre-Web instance. It’s not exactly a sync setup; it just gives me access to my library whenever I need to download something, and that covers my needs. There are several other sync options; check out Koreader’s features here: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki
If you like it and decide you want to it, go through the list of supported devices and see what sort of sync capabilities are available for them (support for Kobo devices seems to be the best/have the most options).
selfhosted ebook library
Is that what we call hard drives, now? :P
I have two android tablets, one 7" to read small books, and one 13" to read US Letter format books, I took the cheapest ones I found, disabled Google Play and installed F-Droid to install FOSS readers, and it just works perfectly. You really don’t need anything specific to just read text, you just want to make sure that you can display an entire page on your screen in a size you’re comfortable reading, otherwise PDFs becomes quickly insufferable.
These guys sell eink monitors: https://shop.boox.com/products/mira
@feitingen Huh, I stand corrected.
I have a Paperwhite 2015 version that I got back in 2016 for only $30 when they had a big sale on them to unload for their new version. Looks like on eBay that 2015 version goes for $30-50 today.
I transfer books to it via a USB using Calibre. It doesn’t need nor do I connect it to WiFi. Newer models might also be able to work via USB only, I don’t know, but I know my 2015 works that way.
I am very happy with my Pocketbook. Can easily install koreader (an ebook reader app) and connecting to a calibre server on my local network works very well.
Not the answer you’re looking for, but I have a self-hosted Calibre server and I stuck to a second hand Kindle I got. It would be neat to be able to browse my remote library like on the Kobo, but I’d rather buy what’s second-hand, cheap and readily available (lots of these perfectly working pre-loved Kindles and Kobos). Transfer lots of books at once and I rarely have to do it since I read slowly. If you use it for magazines/news/comics, then other more libre and open recommendations seem quite good.
I think the major ones are actually just android. If you were to jailbreak them I don’t see why you couldn’t just use any app then.
Check out the Onyx Boox which might cost a bit more but run a version of Android.
I used an Asus Android tablet (Android 7, it was OLD) with a giant SD card +& Moon+ Pro reader app. It syncs reading progress & bookmarks via Dropbox, WebDAV, or Google Drive. I moved to a Fire 10 that I added Google Play Services to. It can sync with my phone or any other Android device. I don’t bother with calibre-web as I don’t have a PC I can keep turned on 24/7 yet, so I just copy over my Calibre library to the SD card. 15k books, 512 GB SD card with ~300 GB left. Moon+ does take a bit to add new books to its database after I think 10k books.
