Are you someone who loves to read? For me, there is nothing like reading a captivating book sitting in my favorite spot on the couch with a cup of herbal tea in dim warm light. But that’s just not practical to me.

With the pandemic and the work-from-home situation, I have been moving between my parent’s house, my in-law’s house, and our apartment.

To give you a little background, I fell in love with reading when I was in high school. I read a lot of Malayalam (my mother tongue)books and some English books then. And I started to get into creative writing.

But when I was in my tenth standard, my school wouldn’t let us borrow books so that we wouldn’t lose interest in our studies. Now that I think about it, it was so pointless.

Enough with the history, in 2021 I tried restarting the habit of reading. But how? All the good books are pretty expensive. I want to keep the books I read so that I can re-read them later. But I’m not settled in one place to create my own personal library. I had only one option, GO DIGITAL!

Then comes the other issue, what method should I choose? We are indeed bombarded with too many options 😁.

There is Kindle, Audible, and tablet/ Ipad that I know of. My confusion was in the area of which device to get, not which app. I was already using Audible on my phone and I love it.

So my choices came down to kindle or tablet. Which is better?

Understand Your Use Case

All of us have different requirements when it comes to investing money in a gadget. You may not need what your friend has. For example,

• I wanted something with a blue light filter since I read mostly before bed and I don’t wanna mess up my circadian rhythm.
• I didn’t wanna spend an unreasonable amount of money

Kindle

Kindle comes in a lot of variations like,

• Kindle paperwhite
• Kindle Oasis, etc

If you are serious about reading, kindle will be a great return of investment since it is,

• lightweight
• Compact
• Stays on for a long time in one charging
• Doesn’t look like, a screen since they use e- ink technology

But, Kindle Oasis which has a warm light costs almost the same as a Samsung tablet. You might be thinking why am I so obsessed with blue light. Studies show that white light exposure after sunset can disrupt our circadian rhythm. If you wanna read more about sleep check out my blog on how to build a perfect sleep routine and how to sleep better for a healthy life.

Tablet or Ipad

I don’t read an entire book in one sitting. I read a little bit mostly before bed. With a tablet, I get the extra feature to handwritten take notes. And if you already have a tablet then it’s easier to repurpose as a reading device.

• Buy a matte paper-like screen guard
• Turn on the blue light filter

The kindle app works very well on tablets.

Another advantage is that I can read articles and blogs on my tablet even if I’m not going to read a book.

Audible

If you are new to reading or hesitant to spend money on a Kindle my suggestion is to get Audible. With Audible, you can listen to amazing books in your free time. In my case, Listening to a book on Audible is faster than reading it on Kindle. But it’s hard to highlight or take notes.

What I do is if I like a book so much, I’ll go get it on Kindle and then speed read through it. Since I already know what’s in the book, I can quickly go through the book.

A simple hack would be to get the educational type books on kindle and fantasy or books you are just going to read casually on Audible.

The bottom line

I have a Samsung S6 lite which is a 2020 edition but that was the only one under my budget with an s pen so that I can take notes. Also, it was not too large or too small. There are newer models available now.

I would suggest trying out Audible even if you have a Kindle. It will help you to read more books.