When we reviewed the PocketBook Color last year, we loved the device and the fact that true e-readers could finally show color, but its six-inch screen made it difficult to use to read comic books and magazines that work much better on tablets. The new PocketBook InkPad Color tries to fix it with a larger 7.8-inch screen that uses next-generation E-Ink color electronic paper technology.
The larger screen on the InkPad, which makes it look more like an iPad Mini and less like an Amazon Kindle, is what will attract more people to paint electronic ink devices because it allows documents that can’t be easily changed (change the text size and can be resized to a screen, but this is not an option with illustrations) that can be enjoyed without having to constantly zoom in and out to make the text readable. On a device running on a 1GHz process and only 1GB of RAM, zooming and panning large documents isn’t the smoothest experiences, so while InkPad isn’t as pocketable as the original PocketBook Color , the actual reading experience be greatly improved.
PocketBook is the first company to introduce an electronic reader with E Ink’s new Kaleido 2 display technology, but it’s 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, you can only get a third of that resolution, only 624 × 468 pixels at 100 PP. Color reproduction is also limited to only 4,096 different tones, compared to the 16 million colors that an LCD screen can play. But according to those who have done so disappeared 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 may be minor, but they apparently make a big difference to the eyes.
Other enhancements to the new PocketBook InkPad include an improved color filter (the technology that makes color electronic paper possible) that is optimized for the device’s white LED side lights so that colors still appear while reading in the dark and a port USB-C for charging and syncing, although documents can also be charged via a microSD card that allows you to infinitely expand the 16 GB of internal storage of the tablet.
G / O Media may receive a commission
In North America, at least, PocketBook is not as well-known brand as Kindle or Kobo, but if you do not receive your e-books through online stores like Amazon or Rakuten, or if you mainly use such devices to review the work or academic documents, is a brand that may be worth considering, as it supports almost every digital document format imaginable: including EPUB, MOBI, CBZ, CBR, and PDF. The InkPad also includes Bluetooth to play audiobooks or any digital audio file on a pair of wireless headphones, as well as a text-to-speech feature that works in 16 different languages.
The original PocketBook Color was $ 230, but due to its larger size and screen, the new PocketBook InkPad is slightly more expensive at $ 329, now available in online stores like NewEgg. We’ll be working with the tablet next week to see if InkPad is the perfect e-reader for comics and magazines, so stay tuned for our full review.