Over the past two months we’ve seen two new ebook readers with color E Ink screens get released, the Pocketbook Color and Onyx Poke2 Color, and both have already disappeared from the market.
Did they just sell out faster than expected, faster than demand could keep up, or has Pocketbook and Onyx already decided to shelve their color E Ink experiments?
As mentioned in my color E Ink review, color E Ink has some notable flaws. Contrast is worse than regular E Ink screens, the color resolution is quite low, and there’s a screen door effect where you can slightly see the color filter as a tiny grid of dots over the screen.
Despite that, I still think that color E Ink has some potential. It’s nice having covers, images, and stuff like comics in full color, and unlike LCD screens, color E Ink screens look better under bright light instead of worse so you can read out in the sun without any issues, and battery life with E Ink lasts much longer than with LCD.
According to Onyx, their first batch of the Poke2 Color sold out in less than 24 hours. But that was nearly 2 months ago now and they have yet to restock, and their product page doesn’t mention anything about more being available soon.
The Pocketbook Color was available for a few weeks from Newegg, but for the past couple of weeks it’s no longer available either. Now the product page no longer even shows up under Pocketbook’s list of products.
Perhaps both color E Ink devices were more poplar than expected and both companies are waiting for a restock. Or maybe both companies have decided that color E Ink isn’t refined enough yet and is too much of a niche product.
It’s too early to tell either way, but I find it a bit odd that Onyx has just released another round of new devices and is taking pre-orders for the new Note Air, but as soon as the Poke Color sold out they stopped taking orders entirely, and there’s no mention of another shipment coming in. Meanwhile they’re already taking orders for the 2nd shipment of the Note Air.
The Pocketbook Color seems to be available at this link:
Sorry but that site is not to be trusted so I removed the link. They don’t stock anything; they just place orders elsewhere and charge extra for doing so. I realize the Pocketbook Color is still sold from some vendors in Europe, but Pocketbook has removed the Color from their official US Newegg store. If it was simply out of stock why did they remove the page from their list of products?
The right people to ask are probably at eink. Color readers sold faster than they expected too. It’s possible that for them it was just an experiment and they sold a year’s worth of inventory in one month. If I’m Onyx or Pocketbook and I’m looking at unknown lead times I wouldn’t take pre-orders either. That’s how you fuck up your reputation.
I think the best color e-readers are Kindle Fire tablets, but that may be because I have a 7 inch Fire. Yes, I periodically have to reboot it, but the colors are crisp and there is no sense of a color overlay on a black and white image. It is Amazon’s version of a iPad, but it still has a dedicated e-reader function with the Kindle app installed and ready to go.
Just my $.02.
>^.,.^<
The appeal to color e-ink is that’s it’s nicer on the eyes and the battery life compared to a standard lcd screen is phenomenal.
The PocketBook Color is easily available in Europe. I bought one and am very satisfied with it. You can read my impressions here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4035422&postcount=3
Is Pocketbook still selling it directly, or do some of their vendors just have leftover stock? Pocketbook is no longer selling it in the US from Newegg. The question is why, especially if they still have stock available in Europe.
Pocketbook Color is in stock and available for purchase both directly and via vendors:
https://pocketbook.de/de_de/color-moon-silver
and
https://www.komplett.no/product/1164875/pc-nettbrett/nettbrett-ipad-eboklesere/eboklesere/pocketbook-color-2020-16gb-moon-silver
Technically that’s a subsidiary branch but it’s still odd that they’ve already stopped selling it in the US. I was going to post a review but what’s the point if they aren’t selling it here anymore.
I think Onyx Poke 2 Color was made only for show – “we have color device as well!”. While PocketBook Color is still available on European market. There will be new firmware update for this device as well as far as I know, So it looks as a real product with long time support.
It definitely seems like Pocketbook is taking color E Ink more seriously than Onyx. Onyx sold the Poke Color for one day and then they’re like that’s it, good luck. They didn’t even bother to include any color content on the device, aside from the screensavers.
I’m assuming the link you deleted was goodereader based on the comment. I checked and it is indeed still listed as available. I ordered mine through them and recieved it about 2 weeks late. For reviews you can check my youtube videos at mrscionmessenger
Seems like it’s available now. I don’t think Pocketbook is very big U.S player so maybe they priortized stock for Europe? Or ran into shipping problems (not uncommon these days!)
https://www.newegg.com/pocketbook-pb633-n-ww-16-gb-internal-memory-6-e-ink-kaleido/p/0VG-00FH-00005