: Re: Reading PDFs on Kindle device I have many interesting books and documents in PDF format. Can I read PDFs on Kindle in comfortable way? My concern is, that PDFs are adapted to the print page

@Suzie

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Interesting question. I'm sure a LOT of folks have the same issue.

PDFs are what are known as non-reflowable formats. That is the text is printed at certain xy coordinates on the paper (gross simplification). When PDF was designed they never envisioned screen size to shrink to that of an iPhone. Hence the need to zoom/pan when reading PDFs. You just can't wrap the lines at a screen boundary. Tools exist but do a miserable job at it. In fact, generating a PDF is quite algorithmic in nature. Regenerating the original word file (say) requires complex AI algorithms and the like and is not 100% correct, unless the conversion itself was of a simple document with headers/text only.

So, this makes it all the more difficult on e-ink screens since they don't really have a screen refresh rate (e.g. 60Hz) like LCD screens. The PDF in essence shows up as the size of the screen on which it's displayed. If the screen is small, you have to pan/zoom. E-inks are horrible for that since they don't redraw the screen continuously. It'll be very jerky and quite irritiating. Single column PDFs with lots of text read fine, but you may have to change orientation of the device to see what fits best.

My previous Kindle was stolen. When deciding for the 'next' reader/tablet to buy my biggest concern along with cost/weight/resolution was ease of reading PDFs especially in portrait mode. Since I have a lot of papers/texts to read every now and then I needed something with a great PDF reading experience. This implies things with 16:9 aspect ratio is out since the screens are quite narrow. 16:10 (e.g. Nook HD+) or 4:3 (iPad) are really good at portrait rendering of PDFs.

I went with Nook HD+ (9) in the end and have been very happy with it. Bottom line: E-ink screens are great for sequential reading of content (e.g. novels etc.,) and single column PDFs having a decent font size/style. However, for a good PDF reading experience you should opt for an LCD tablet IMHO. It's not the fault of the e-ink reader that it can't render PDFs with ease, it's the fault of the design assumptions of the PDF format itself. Adobe is working on a new format to allow for this 'reflowability' but I don't know when it'll be out (it was code-named "Mars").

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