I'm a postgraduate student and over this summer will have a lot of reading to do and with the return of sunny weather I want to work outside again.

I need a digital device for note-taking, however. Mainly, I use little more than zotero and word on my PC at the moment. The other day I took my laptop outside and, as you can imagine, it was essentially unusable.

So all I really need is the ability to read e-books and pdfs and the ability to take notes somehow but without reduced screen visibility in the sunlight. This is something I wanted to get last year but never got round to it!

What are the options here? Any advice is much appreciated!

An umbrella or parasol. You can also buy a screen shield or screen shade.

"Kindle" works in the sunshine.

Do you have any experience with kindles as tablets (and using outside)?

Are they just reading devices or do they also have tablet functionality?

I doubt there is currently anything all-in-one that will work in that way.

The e-ink readers are s-l-o-w and unusable for note taking.


You will probably need two devices.

I have been informed it's possible to wipe the OS on a kindle E ink device and replace it with 'standard' android. I wondered if this would be the solution I am seeking?

By "Note taking" does this mean handwriting recognition or typing?

If it's typing then business class ultra-notebooks are likely to have models with a reflective outdoors colour screen.

I doubt there are many colour tablets with reflective screens these days. Unless very very expensive.


An 12.1" notebook/tablet from a few years back is the Lenovo x200t. Quite cheap these days (<£100) but I don't know if the outdoors readable screen is standard on every version.

Sorry, note-taking means typing.

Just want something I can use in sunlight, read and type and that's it. Wifi would be a preferable extra.

It's anti-reflective you want for a good outdoors screen.

Ambient light being reflected is what causes outdoor viewing problems for displays.

The only efficient way to read outside is with an ereader in mobi or epub format.
You can use Calibre to convert documents into these formats or to read a pdf or convert this. This will not work if you are a mathematician or engineer and the source document was not already in the ereader native format
I assume you have an on line library that allows access to journals etc and or have configured google scholar.

As to taking notes, then another device (as above) or pen and paper and write up after.

Possibly. There is a risk of bricking it and you have to make sure that the keyboard allows a suitable interface for what you need to do.

Devices with E Ink displays will likely be too small to comfortably type on.

edit: See above - beaten to it

The old Kindle Keyboard has a, well, physical keyboard you can use for an easier typing, but touch screen models will work okay too. You can annotate your documents, you select something and then write your comments. Extracting the comments is not straightforward, they are there somewhere in a separate file. Also Kindles are notoriously bad with PDF, if it's just text it's easier to convert the documents with Calibre to mobi or azw format. You get an excellent visibility in sunlight, if it's too much hassle you need to buy some screen protector for a tablet with a conventional screen.

Work indoors. Play outdoors. Simple.

Most tablets allow you to invert the colours which can make the display a bit easier to see in strong light, not ideal but it does help (I use a tablet for work and outside is a problem)

You could try anti reflective film over the screen, but I don't think anything will be perfect in strong light.

There no single device that does everything wonderfully. Even for a lot of money I don't think they exist.

My advice is get an e-ink ereader for reading and a 2nd-hand business ultrabook with an LCD reflective screen which are not bad outdoors.

I think the screens are really called transreflective since they also have a backlight for indoor use.

Two devices, but one single device will be a severe compromise and probably unusable.

I have an old Kindle with Wifi. That works fine outside.

Ipad, I need to use an umbrella.

I have rooted my kindle paperwriter, and I have added the kual launcher and have a fairly decent text editor installed.

I use a Nokia 2520 outside. Should be fine for your usage requirements. It has one of the brightest screens available.