Kindle, Kobo...
we decided on Kobo over Kindle, particularly with the pre-Christmas price drop, and based on various comparison tests. Having tested what went to a relative, I'm quite happy I didn't get one for myself. Yes, it's ok, and probably less locked down than Kindle, and with epub support. But the 4-way navi pad is a pain and being rubber covered you never know if you press right (and you often get it wrong, going "up" instead of "right". Yes, I would prefer a hardware button on the side. Bundled software is crap, and why the f... do I have to register to install it? Yeah, so they can push their s*** back at me, and then probably lose my data to some hack. Fortunately I stumbled upon the obvious software choice that Kobo decided to keep shtum about - Calibre does the job well enough and there are even plug-ins for those, who want to unlock their DRM-chained purchase.
It's all a bit of a f*** with all the formats and conversions (why the f**** can't they read common formats such as rtf?).
And then, there is a matter of handling contents, when I loaded the device with some 300 Mb (not that much, huh?) of the books I had scanned and read, the device would get so sluggish that it was hardly possible to navigate the menus. Sadly, it seems to automatically scan for and "tag" whatever you drop into its memory. And then, the flash every page, or every 4 pages, depending on your settings, this is annoying. Yes, it's the nature of e-ink, but you won't find a word of this "feature" mentioned by any of the e-book reader manufacturers, nosir.
And, on top of everything, you need a source of light to read them, so no more wasted eyesight reading off a lit screen of a "smartphone".
But the price is just about acceptable, considering the (non-removable) battery life and the decent quality of text display. Give them another year or two and they'll drop to 50 quid and become less clunky.