Product test

How the Tolino Vision 6 turned me into an ebook reader

20.9.2022

Translation: Katherine Martin

For a long time, I couldn’t really warm to e-readers. After a two-week beach holiday with the Tolino Vision 6, however, I won’t be buying any more print books.

There are a lot of books at my house. An awful lot. Our family are avid readers, and my wife is of the opinion that every book we read deserves a spot in our bookcase. Every single one. Unlike her, I’m not a book hoarder. After all, they take up space. And when it comes to packing a suitcase, it’s no different. That’s why the only reading material I packed for this year’s summer holiday was two slim novels – and an e-reader. The vacation was supposed to give me the answer to the following question: would buying an e-reader stop me from ever picking up another print book?

The device I chose to wean myself off of print was a Tolino Vision 6 – one of the best-selling e-readers on our site.

eReaders

CHF179.–

tolino vision 6

7", 16 GB, Black

It recently came out well in a comparison carried out by the German consumer organisation «Stiftung Warentest». Since Orell Füssli gave me the Vision 6 to try out, the digital bookstore’s shop was automatically installed. This isn’t just convenient for me as a user – it’s also a promise of future sales for Orell Füssli.

But before we get to the software, let’s have a look at the hardware. The Tolino has an E Ink display with a surface area of around 11 cm by 14 cm. That’s roughly the width of a paperback, though about four centimetres flatter. The right margin is wider, with two buttons for flicking through the ebook. On the side, there’s a USB-C charging port. If you prefer to hold the device with your left hand, you can simply turn it. This causes an icon to appear on the screen, which, when tapped, flips the content.

On the back, there’s a button to turn the device on and off. At just over 200 grammes, the Tolino weighs the same as a paperback. The material on the back of the Vision 6 has a nice feel to it. It’s structured and feels as if it’s been treated with rubber. This makes it easy to hold – and even if you spend ages reading, your fingers won’t get sweaty.

The back of the Vision 6 has a comfortable grip.

Thanks to a built-in light, the Vision 6 allows me to read in the dark as well. In the menu, I’m able to set the colour temperature and intensity. I only played around with this briefly before handing the job over to the stellar Automatic mode. It didn’t matter whether I was on the beach or on the terrace late in the evening – in every situation, I was able to read without any issues. Incidentally, if you’re a dark mode fan, you’ll be chuffed to hear that Tolino provides one on the Vision 6. Activating it means reading light-coloured text on a dark-coloured background.

Settings first, the joys of reading second

While I was on holiday, I read three books on the Tolino. The first one took the longest to finish – and not because the print volume would’ve been the thickest. Nope, it’s because it took a couple of attempts at fiddling with the settings before I had the text size, margins and line spacing the way I wanted them. The default «Publisher’s standard» setting didn’t quite do it for me. The font was too large and not easy enough to read. That’s definitely a matter of personal preference, though.

There’s a comprehensive set of page display options.

Things I’d never given a second thought to while I was still reading print books suddenly got interesting. There’s an art to designing a book – one that opens up plenty of potential to get things wrong. How many words should go in a line? How many lines in a paragraph? Should the text be justified or aligned? Which font should I go for? Which size? Everything I used to have decided for me in advance when buying a print book now had to be defined by me.

Despite my efforts to get as close to a «real» book as possible, the formatting stopped me from ever managing it. As a result, I need to put up with the fact that my ebooks will always have widows and orphans – that is, lost-looking lines of text at the top or bottom of a page.

Whenever that’s the case, I follow the mantra «keep calm and carry on reading». Turning the page works by way of a real-life button on the edge, or by lightly tapping the screen. Following a minimal delay lasting a few tenths of a second, the next page materialises on the screen. This doesn’t always work right away. Whether I’m tapping the screen or pressing the button, nothing happens. Flipping back a page and then forward again sometimes helps. The problem rarely occurs, and so far, I haven’t been able to discern a pattern to it.

As I was reading, I had to get used to feeling like I wasn’t progressing with the book. With a print book, the amount of paper in my left hand shows me what I’ve already read, while the right side reveals how much I’ve still to get through. On an e-reader, there’s no change in the way it feels to hold the book – from the first page, right through to the last. The only way to see my progress is by looking at the bottom centre of the screen. That’s where I can see the page I’m currently on as well as the number of the last page in the book.

While I used to need a physical bookmark when I took a break from reading, the Vision 6 allows me to generate a digital one by tapping on the right-hand corner of the screen. However, this isn’t really necessary. After all, whenever I turn the e-reader back on, it shows me where I left off anyway. It’s very handy.

E Ink beats OLED and the like – at least when it comes to reading

Before my ebook experience, I always read text on printed paper, on a monitor, or on iPhone and iPad screens. I think reading on an E Ink display comes closer to the experience of reading from a printed page than mobile devices do. It made reading novels enjoyable, and it felt right. Sure, I could also read a book on a tablet or in an ebook app, but I like that feeling of slowing down that an E Ink display offers. It’s a combination of content that isn’t endlessly refreshed, the slightly rawer feeling under your fingertips compared to the Gorilla Glass used by Apple and their ilk, and that the screen doesn’t light up. And no push notifications suddenly popping up on the screen.

Before taking it on holiday to test, I was still concerned that the Vision 6’s resolution wouldn’t be able to display the text sharply enough. I needn’t have worried. At 1264 × 1680 pixels, the HD resolution is definitely up to the job. It’s only when I get up close with the macro lens of my iPhone 13 Pro that slightly blurry contours show up. That’s despite the 300 ppi. I don’t notice it when I’m reading normally, but that might have something to do with my age and its deleterious effect on my eyesight.

With bright sunshine and a keen eye, you’ll notice a faint E Ink shadow behind the lines.

And if you get really, really close, the letters are a little fuzzy. Not that it’s noticeable when you’re reading normally.

The main advantage of E Ink is that it doesn’t use much power. While intensive use of a tablet has me reaching for a charger cable almost daily, the Tolino can hold out for more than a week. According to a German-language review by allesbook.de, the 1500 mAh is enough for 17 hours of reading time at 50 per cent brightness.

Reading material comes from many sources

As mentioned above, the fastest and easiest way to get a digital book onto the Tolino is via the pre-installed Orell Füssli store. With one of their customer accounts, shopping is almost as easy as on Digitec and Galaxus. (Sorry, I had to squeeze that in). You can also use other shops, but that’s slightly more cumbersome.

However, Tolino can also display books from other sources and in other formats, namely EPUB and PDF. TXT formats can be imported too. For my test, I gave reading newspaper PDFs a go, managing to read the EPUB version of weekly broadsheet «Die Zeit» on the Tolino without issue. That being said, I felt the absence of newspaper sheets between my fingers so acutely in comparison to reading on the iPad that my experiment with PDFs remained just that. Photos, for example, are displayed in black and white instead of colour.

This is how photos from «Die Zeit» look when I read the weekly newspaper on the Tolino Vision 6.

Things get really annoying when you want to use the online portal of a Swiss public library to borrow a book. Access to Onleihe – the joint portal for libraries – is only available on the Tolino’s integrated browser. I should’ve saved myself the bother of this experience. Surfing the web on an e-reader browser feels like surfing the web with a 14k modem in the nineties. Even the Tolino’s 1.8 GHz quad-core processor doesn’t do much to spur on the pre-installed DuckDuckGo. There are probably other ways of borrowing the books via a PC or Mac, changing the format, sorting out the issue of copyright protection and then transferring them to the e-reader (linked article in German). But I’m happy to leave that to my «PCtipp» compadres, who’re bound to have done more extensive research into those particular trials and tribulations than I have. They’ve created a German-language guide with good tips on the topic.

My verdict

The Tolino Vision 6 has worked its way into my reading routine. I do still read print books, simply because I bought them before trying out the e-reader. In future, however, I’ll probably download books to my e-reader more often – even ones from the digital library. Even despite the lousy user experience.

It’s an annoyance that’s offset by the benefits. I generally hook the Tolino up to the USB-C cable once a week for charging and am always able to keep on reading if I’m in the mood to do so. The e-reader is easy and comfortable to hold. Using the button or touchscreen to turn the pages doesn’t take long to get used to, and I don’t miss the feeling of leafing through a print book.

I just get the occasional pang of guilt when I see that the artistic book covers that used to adorn my bedside table have been replaced by a digital device. Although, it does look kind of cute when it’s sleeping.

A slumbering Tolino waiting for its next reading assignment.

PS: While I was testing the Tolino Vision 6, I also put the Kobo Libra 2 through its paces. It’s largely identical to the Tolino, but it also has Bluetooth. Here, you’ll find a product comparison on our shop. The Kobo has a different shop app pre-installed for buying books, and it’s also available in white instead of just black.

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Martin Jungfer

Head of Content

Martin.Jungfer@digitecgalaxus.ch

Journalist since 1997. Stopovers in Franconia (or the Franken region), Lake Constance, Obwalden, Nidwalden and Zurich. Father since 2014. Expert in editorial organisation and motivation. Focus on sustainability, home office tools, beautiful things for the home, creative toys and sports equipment.

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