The Amazon Kindle and Kobo e-readers have experimental or beta internet browsers. They have operated them for over a decade, and since these basic browsers were introduced, the internet has dramatically changed. Websites have gotten bigger, with more video and multimedia enhancements. Large and small websites run advertisements; some are images and videos. Many images are optimized with the webp standard or use SVG, which serves up images in a next-gen format, which helps load quickly on mobile and tablet devices. The Kobo and Kindle e-reader browsers can do basic javascript and CSS but little else. I think it’s time that these companies get rid of their browsers or develop Chromium alternatives that are capable of modern web standards.
Amazon first developed the experimental browser back in 2009, with the release of the Kindle, 2nd generation. They have not made it better over time, and it’s the same software. If you decide to use the Experimental Browser to read news websites, tech blogs or your favourite forum, it is essential to disable JavaScript. It stops lots of code from plugins and scripts from loading and improves the browsing experience. When the browser opens, click on the three dots on the side and hit Browser Settings and Disable JavaScript. When this was done, browsing websites like Good e-Reader became much more robust and scrolled downwards quickly. Why is this the case?
Most websites have lots of code, especially ones that run content management systems, such as WordPress. The more plugins a website has, the more JavaScript is called locally or externally. This can result in long load times on the Kindle browser, and scrolling down, refreshes the code, and it loads again. By disabling JavaScript, performance increased by 70% on all the websites I tested.
Kobo launched their internet browser in 2011 when they first started getting into e-readers. The browser struggles with any complex websites with pictures. It does a fine job browsing around Google or Reddit. One of the significant advantages of Kobo e-readers is that the browser is suitable for reading academic articles online or checking out Wikipedia. Since the Kobo can read EPUB files, you can log in to whatever website you have storage, such as Google Drive. Kobo e-readers have native support for Dropbox, which is very popular for hosting ebooks. Kobo also has Pocket, which you can send web articles to your e-reader, and they turn into easy-to-read ebooks.
Most people with an e-reader have a smartphone that is always in their pocket or travel with a laptop or tablet. There isn’t a great need to have an internet browser on an e-reader; who uses it anyways? Likely, such as a small subset of users using the Kindle Experimental browser or the Kobo Beta browser, new features and enhancements are simply not a priority.
Although the browsers on the Kindle and Kobo suck, the same can’t be said about E INK tablets from Onyx Boox, Meebook, or Bigme. They all run modern versions of Google Android and have various speed modes to increase the browsers’ performance. This is done by increasing the refresh rate at the expense of image degradation. However, this is important for image-heavy websites. All of these companies have Google Play preinstalled so that you can download Firefox, Chrome, Edge or Brave; there are tons of browsers out there with way more functionality. Browsers on Android e-readers and e-notebooks make a lot of sense because these products have tremendous CPU power and 2-6GB RAM, so they can handle them. Whereas the Kindle and Kobo use Linux, only have 512MB of RAM and nothing more than a dual-core processor.
Do you use internet browsers on your Kindle, Kobo or Android E INK tablets? What do you like or hate about them?
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
