When we reviewed PocketBook Color last year, we liked the device and the fact that real e-readers might eventually display color, but its six-inch screen made it hard to use for reading comics and magazines that work much better on tablets . The new PocketBook InkPad Color is trying to fix this with a screen larger than 7.8 inches, which uses next-generation E-Ink color electronic paper technology.
The larger screen of the InkPad, which makes it look more like an iPad Mini and less like an Amazon Kindle, is what will attract more people to color E-Ink devices, as it allows documents that cannot be easily resized (change the text size and it can be remade to fit a screen, but this is not an illustration option) to enjoy without having to constantly zoom in and out to make the text readable. On a device powered by a 1 GHz process and only 1 GB of RAM, enlarging and panning large documents is not the best experience, so while the InkPad is not as pocket-sized as the original PocketBook Color, the reading experience real should be greatly improved.
PocketBook is the first company to introduce an e-reader using the new E Ink screen technology Kaleido 2, but it is not a quantum leap for color electronic paper. In black and white mode, the InkPad screen offers a resolution of 1872 × 1404 pixels at 300 PPI. But in color mode, it can get another third of this resolution, only 624 × 468 pixels per 100 PP. Color reproduction is also limited to only 4,096 different shades, compared to the more than 16 million colors that an LCD can reproduce. But according to those who did he rolled his eyes with the new InkPad, with Kaleido 2 E Ink has improved color accuracy and screen saturation while improving black and white mode performance. The changes under the hood could be minor, but they seem to make a big difference to the eyes.
Other enhancements to the new PocketBook InkPad include a color filter matrix (the technology that makes electronic color paper possible) optimized for the device’s white LED side lights so that colors appear while reading in the dark and a USB port. C for loading and syncing, although documents can also be loaded using a microSD card that allows infinite expansion of the tablet’s 16 GB internal storage.
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In North America, at least, PocketBook is not as well-known as Kindle or Kobo, but if you don’t receive your e-books through online stores like Amazon or Rakuten, or if you generally use these types of devices to look for work or academic documents, is a potential brand worth considering, as it supports almost every digital document format imaginable: including EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, CBR and PDFs. InkPad also includes Bluetooth for streaming audio books or really any digital audio file to a pair of wireless headphones, as well as a text-to-speech function that works in 16 different languages.
The original PocketBook Color was $ 230, but due to its size and larger screen, the new PocketBook InkPad is a little more expensive at $ 329, now available from online stores such as NewEgg. We’ll go with the tablet next week to see if InkPad is the perfect e-reader for comic books and magazines, so stay tuned for our full review.