I think it's only Amazon that does lock screen ads but since they have two-thirds of the market share globally (and a near monopoly in the US where the Verge is based) then whatever they do in the e-reader space is "normal"

You can buy "discounted" Kindle e-readers with ads, or you can buy them without ads for full price.

What do you need it for?

It isn't up to snuff for reading Comic Books or Graphic Novels, and it's worse experience than a good Non-Color E-ink display. Which is saying it's worse for the vast vast majority of books you will read.

I'm not sure why it exists other than it has to - in order for a better version to eventually come out. R&D isn't free.

A PPI of 92, but that screen is going to probably be between 2 and 3 feet from your face, vs the 150 PPI sitting 6 inches to a foot away... Doesn't mean it isn't good enough by any means, but it's certainly not a conclusive comparison

Install Calibre on a computer and use that. Browse online sailing forums for your favourite books and new releases. Then support the authors financially by buying their paper books directly from them or their publishers.

If you buy your books from them digitally use a DRM remover (Like the plugin available on Calibre) so you can forever own your books and move them to any device you want in any format you want. Forever.

That's kinda hilarious. Buying a product from its own competitor.

Bought a math book from them, they refunded it with no questions, after I read a lot of it, because some of the equations were unreadable.

I had a good experience with their customer service.

My Kobo bricked a few days after the warranty expired (it's possible I broke it installing koreader improperly or something) and they replaced it no problem.

Took a few weeks but I was happy they replaced it at all.

Keep in mind that only one company makes eInk displays. They're all using the same displays.

I have a Onyx Boox Nova C that has pretty much the same technology (Kaleido Plus) and would say that the color display is mostly just a neat gimmick that comes with some tradeoffs. Compared to a pure monochrome E-Ink display the contrast is much worse and colors don't really pop either. You basically always need at least a bit off background lighting to be able to read.

I'd recommend these types of display only if being able to read without background lighting isn't a must and even then only for stuff that's better with color, like notes, technical books or the occasional colored page in a book/manga. If you want to read something reliant on stunning colorful artwork like graphic novels I'd stay away.

I've had a Libra 2 for almost 2 years now and just yesterday I was thinking "it still looks great!". I don't feel the need to upgrade and colour isn't a must for me, so I'll just wait for a couple of generations until the colour technology is more mature and they add some kind of feature my Libra 2 doesn't have besides that.

PDFs are usually terrible for reading in this screen size. If they are plain text, you might be able to convert them to proper ebooks in Calibra.

You can easily load PDFs into kobo readers, at-least into mine. However, most PDFs will be unreadable. To reads PDFs properly on a e-reader you need a screen that is at-least as big as their render size. Meaning, that if the PDF was built for A4, your experience will be, in most cases, lacking on any screen smaller than A4.

I have no experience using such big eink and can't comment on their quality.

This guy reviews all kinds of e-ink devices. https://www.youtube.com/c/MyDeepGuide/videos

I watched his videos before deciding to get a large format BOOX Max Lumi (13") for PDF reading and note taking. I wanted the large one to split screen a PDF textbook on the left and notebook on the right. That was a few years ago, though, and I suggest reviewing some more recent videos to get an idea of what the current devices are like.

I agree with your sentiment, but the resolution on e-readers has been better than HD for about a decade now.

I don't understand why everything by Onyx is so much more money than anything else on the market. I want to try one because Kobo Software is 'meh' but I can't justify double the price for.... ???