Oh, and page turning swipes were hit or miss. that was annoying.

I bought it for the same reasons you allude to - open, not locked down, cannot enshittify something you don't have to update. I didn't really buy it for the pen.

I tried a 6" kobo klara 2E for a while. You can mount it as a USB device, but you have to hack it somewhat to get "sideloading" of books to work. Nice device, but 6" was a little smaller than I wanted.

But then I found the Pocketbook Inkpad Lite.

It is my primary reader now. 9.7" screen with backlight.

No account, no subscription, no hacking to get it to work.

Out of the box, just hook to usb, transfer yoru files, start reading.

Also, it will read most file formats directly - so if you want to use .mobi instead of .epub, that works. It also says .azw, but I haven't tried it.

note it doesn't do handwriting. But it is $185.