If you want to try an ebook reader with a new color E Ink screen, there’s now a second option available on Amazon.
The Pocketbook Color recently turned up for sale on Amazon for $229 with free shipping.
That’s the same price it’s has been selling for on Newegg for the past few months since it was released, except Newegg charges a little extra for shipping.
The Pocketbook Color has a frontlit 6-inch E Ink Kaleido screen with 300 ppi for text and 100 ppi for color. The device has a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage space, and it has a microSD card slot for expansion. It also has a rotation sensor and Bluetooth for added functionality, along with Wi-Fi.
Pocketbook’s software supports ePub and PDF formats, including ebooks with Adobe DRM, along with like 20 other formats.
I’ve been using the Pocketbook Color lately and I really like the lightweight design with the page buttons along the bottom of the screen, but it’s hard to get past color E Ink being a downgrade from regular E Ink screens when it comes to reading text—contrast isn’t quite as good because of the color filter, but the screen is still comfortably readable and it’s nice for color content.
There’s also the Poke2 Color from Onyx with the same 6-inch color E Ink screen, but it’s considerably more expensive. I like the Pocketbook Color’s design a lot better but Onyx has a big advantage with their open Android operating system being able to install Android apps, which is especially useful for color content.
It’ll be interesting to see if any other companies start coming out with new ebook readers in 2021 that use E Ink’s new color screens.
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