Color E Ink has been out for over a year now, and finally the first ebook reader to use color E Ink is about to arrive here in the United States.
I’ve posted about it before; the device is called the jetBook Color, and is aimed at the eduction market, not the ebook reader market. It is more of an educational tool designed for textbooks rather ebooks, but it will display ebooks as well.
The jetBook Color is available for pre-order from Ectaco.com for $499, and is expected to start shipping on January 15th, 2012. It is available worldwide.
That is going to be a tough sale at that price, but new technology is always more expensive than it should be. That’s the price you pay for being an early adopter. Unfortunately that means I won’t be buying one. But I requested a review unit and Ectaco said that they would lend me one, so check back soon. You can subscribe to The eBook Reader Blog to keep updated.
The jetBook Color is a 9.7″ ereader. It features an E Ink Triton display that uses the same exact technology ereaders like the Kindle and Sony ebook readers use, but it has a filter over the top that gives the screen the ability to display thousands of colors instead of just black and white.
There are a couple of videos showing the jetBook Color in action on this earlier post.
JetBook Color Specs and Features
- Triton Color E Ink screen
- 9.7″ Display
- 1600 x 1200 resolution
- Load Your Own Content
- Support for: Adobe DRM 9.1, ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, TXT, PDF, FB2, djvu, JPG, Gif, PNG, BMP (more to come)
- Wi-Fi enabled with browser
- Fluent Text-to-Speech can read you any book
- 10,000 page turns on a single charge
- Support via microSD for up to 32GB
- Sleek protective carrying case included
- Underline and highlight text
- 50-state reading list
- Fully interactive SAT course
- “Overdrive” library access
- Wireless access to online textbooks, www.ck12.org and other resources
- Speed Reading course
- Talking Oxford Dictionaries
- Course of English and foreign language grammar
- Speech recognition and speech analysis Language Teacher and U-Learn courses that teach you a language step by step
- Pictured dictionaries for 38 languages
- Cross translator for 180 languages
- Vocabulary Builder
- Linguistic Crosswords
- Reference materials for Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and Earth Science
- Interactive Periodic Table of Elements
- Graphing and scientific calculators
- And much more!
Let the competition between to see which ebook blog will be the first to post a hands-on.
P.S.
We will settle for a review of the Onyx M92.
oops. let the competition BEGIN.
What impressive specs!
I know you didn’t comment on them, but the one that stood out for me was the resolution: 1600×1200. No computer or monitor that I use has such high resolution. (I am typing now on a big LCD display with 1360×768 pixels.) The 1600×1200 you listed is just awesome! This new color e-ink reader has more scans than 1080p video. What extraordinary clarity you can get with that display!
Compare that to the much cruder 1024×600 resolution offered by the Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and similar 8″ color e-book readers/tablets. Three times as many pixels! Can’t wait to see it.
But of course there is one troublesome issue with e-ink displays: flashing. Does this color e-ink display do away with the horrible flashing one sees on monochrome e-ink displays such as the one used by the Barnes and Noble Nook Touch?
If not, then this device is a non-starter. But if they have eliminated the clumsy flashing of today’s monochrome e-readers, then they have a huge advantage, which any user will appreciate after a minute or so of use.
Oops. Typo. I meant “7-inch” displays. (not 8-inch.)
Lots of oops lately 🙂 🙁
Awesome! Bought the Kindle Fire because I wanted color for my books…didn’t need all the other stuff. This Jetbook color e-ink reader is too pricey for me, but maybe it’ll speed Amazon along in this area! 🙂
I prefer an eReader to just simply read. All these other features are more of a distraction, even the color. Hope the B/W eReaders don’t go out of production. Lastly, the almost 10″ screen is too big, makes it heavier to carry around, almost like a tablet. Wonder if they will make them in smaller screens.
This is a student dream!! If OS was compatible with office extensions and could read word/excel/ppt would be awesome. I’m really looking forward to see a complete review of this jetbook and see the writing response of it. I’m afraid it will be too slow, but anyway great student focused gadget!!
I hope this new ereader to be the first one that start a new generation of big ereaders and cause a true go down of their prices.
I cannot find the source for it, but the 1600 x 1200 resolution is b/w, the resolution in colour is 800 x 600 (which is still not bad). The display uses an overlay (polarisation?) to display colour. If someone has an url supporting this or proving me wrong, please post it.
Just saw it in the article, but without the resolution for colour :-).
For those of you concerned about the large screen, it’s a necessity for reading text books. Textbooks have a lot of tables and illustrations which require more screen real estate. My 15 inch IBM Thinkpad has a 1600 by 1200 resolution screen and it’s fantastic. I can easily read on it, except the backlighting gets to be hard on the eyes. The next version of the iPad will have at least 1600 by 1200 resolution or higher screen. Once you have 300 pixels per inch in resolution you eyes will no longer see the dots and be very “happy”. If Apple is able to do a true Retina display on the next iPad it will be major “eye candy” and sell like hot cakes.
That was weird. I went to the company website and when I backed out of it I got a pop up to bid for a lower price than the $499. I don’t know if that was from Ectaco or a third party.