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I am considering buying an e-reader and my friend lent me a Kobo to have a go (and buy if I liked it), but I found I could not highlight PDFs. Clearly that is useless to me. I see Mendeley has a Kindle sync. Does anyone have experience with this?

I wonder if I am better off with a tablet despite the eyestrain.

Ian_Fin
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Jennifer Ball
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  • What do you mean by "highlight pdf"? You cannot display them or you cannot add notes, marks etc? – Crowley Oct 31 '16 at 13:28
  • I see no indication from the KinSync website (I assume this is what you are referring to) that it's capable of syncing annotation. What I suspect it actually does is to just send the PDF in your Mendeley library to your Kindle. Being able to sync annotations would be a pretty desirable feature. The fact they don't advertise it leads me to believe it won't do this. – Ian_Fin Oct 31 '16 at 13:37
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    @Ian_Fin If kindle's notes are stored in-device (hidden metafile, perhaps) it will be hard to export them back to PC. If they are embedded in the pdf, downloading the pdf back to PC should work. I have never tried it, though. – Crowley Oct 31 '16 at 13:51

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I have the standard Kindle (the cheapest one) and it lets you highlight both pdfs and epubs.

However putting pdfs in your ebook can be quite annoying as the size of the page may not match the size of the ebook and it forces you to zoom and move constantly.

I've seen classmates being a bit more efficient than me (struggling with Kindle pdfs) with their iPads combined with both GoodNotes and Adonit Jot Pro.

danielsto
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  • I'll second this -- I purchased a used Kindle to try and read papers (in PDF form), but I found it ridiculously hard to get the PDFs formatted properly. Tablets are the way to go here unfortunately (I'd love an e-ink screen). – tonysdg Oct 31 '16 at 16:48
  • @JenniferBall if that solved your problem you can validate the answer :) – danielsto Nov 21 '16 at 01:00
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I have used two Kindles, one the basic, and also the Fire H10 [borrowed]. I found the basic Kindle would never highlight anything. The more advanced one would only highlight reluctantly and unpredictably, in pale yellow, ONE line in any text of any length. As soon as you move on and highlight a second line, the first highlight vanishes, and when you close the text, even that vanishes! So altogether it's a very poor quality device.

Kindle user
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I have Kindle Paperwhite, Firmware 5.3.4, and I am able to higlight text in pdfs or add notes to higlighted text. I can also browse my marks and notes there.

To do so, you just tap and hold or tap and swipe the text you want to higlight / make comment on. In context menu you can choose Add Note or Highlight option.

I don't know if the highlights are in-device notes or in-pdf notes.

My conclusion: It depends on the device you have.

henning
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Crowley
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  • I believe they're in-device. I also believe that the highlight will sync with the desktop Kindle software. The latter point may only be true for epub and not pdf though. My experience is with a much older kindle keyboard – Chris H Oct 31 '16 at 16:52