I got myself a Kobo e-book reader after some intensive reading (The Expanse series) on my handphone. My eyes hurt and watered after some time.
After a few Twitter discussion with @infernoxv , I bought a reconditioned Kobo Aura Edition 2 released in 2016. This is a ‘refresh’ from the first edition released in 2013. Edition 2 has a 6 inch Carta E-Ink display with 1024 × 768 pixel display or 212ppi, a 4 GB internal memory, The battery life is 2 months.
Personally, I have found that the battery life lasts about 1-2 weeks. The display is quite insensitive to touch. You will need to use your thumb to flip a page. The left edge screen brightness control stopped working after a few weeks.
To resize the size of the text, the e-book must be in epub format. It seems that PDF format locks the file right down to the margins. If the e-book is sideloaded or manually copied in, you need to wait for the Aura to scan through the book before it can be opened. To speed up the process, you can turn it off and on. Another quirk is the beta browser. On entry of the first URL, you may need to tap on the body of the browser, tap again in the address bar and press enter for it start working.
Other than the above, reading books on it is great! It is lightweight at 180grams, easy to carry around. I can read while waiting for things to happen and not drain out my handphone battery. The number of books I have loaded ranges from sci-fi, thriller, tech to self-improvement.
I should have got this way earlier. The full price is daunting, but the reconditioned price from Aliexpress is much better.