The kindle's value prop is that it has existed for a while and I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I hadn't left it on a plane. So I bought a used one from a friend and that's been working for many years. I see no reason to upgrade e-readers all the time.
I'm not telling you or anyone to buy a Kindle, but from a VERY quick look my Kindle cost half of what a Kobo costs (tolino seems to be available around the 70-80€ mark though and so far has worked fine although the default seems to be some nasty Adobe ebook management software). Maybe 150 or 200 is worth it to you if you use it all the time, but for me it was mostly 1-2 books a month, which weren't necessarily cheaper than on paper.
> I'm pretty sure my 8y old model would still work if I hadn't left it on a plane.
Can confirm - I am currently using a ~12 year old Kindle 3rd gen, with no problem at all. In fairness it hasn't seen very heavy use but even for the battery and electronics to have held up for that long, often being stored in sub-optimal conditions, is fairly impressive IMO.
I strongly dislike Amazon and its walled garden but I dislike waste more so I have no intention of upgrading before I have to. I mostly use my ereader to read free ebooks downloaded from Gutenberg/Standard Ebooks/etc anyway.
Are you German? Tolino eReaders are basically just rebadged Kobos at this point with a different software stack for a few European countries.
I can get a Kobo Nia for $130 CAD (about €100), a base model Kindle is $120 CAD. They are very close in price and on the high end the Kobo is cheaper and offers more.
I didn't make up the numbers above, I just quickly looked at geizhals.de for a comparison - maybe Kobo-branded Kobos are exceptionally expensive here then.
I don't have a tolino myself, but gave support to a family member in the recent past, that's why I've held one and used the software. That one was sold by a physical book store chain.
But overall that doesn't change my main point - or maybe Kindles have gone up in price, I'm pretty sure I paid closer to 70€ than 100€, which is still 1/3. Could be that it was a sale, and they don't even have that base model anymore, but as I said I was 100% happy with it.
I'm not telling you or anyone to buy a Kindle, but from a VERY quick look my Kindle cost half of what a Kobo costs (tolino seems to be available around the 70-80€ mark though and so far has worked fine although the default seems to be some nasty Adobe ebook management software). Maybe 150 or 200 is worth it to you if you use it all the time, but for me it was mostly 1-2 books a month, which weren't necessarily cheaper than on paper.