Yesterday Pocketbook announced the release of a new ereader called the Pocketbook Inkpad 4 that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.
It has a 7.8-inch E Ink Carta 1200 screen and a frontlight with temperature control. It has 32GB of storage space, built-in speakers for audiobooks and text-to-speech, and it’s waterproof with an IPX8 rating.
Other specs for the PocketBook InkPad 4 include a USB-C port, a rotation sensor, a dual-core processor, it has WiFi and Bluetooth, and it has a 2000mAh battery.
The PocketBook InkPad 4 has a new flush screen design and the buttons have been relocated to the very bottom edge of the device (you have to look really closely to see them in the pictures).
The overall dimensions for the InkPad 4 are listed at 134 × 189.5 × 7.95mm, and it weighs in at 265 grams, which is 40 grams heavier than the PocketBook InkPad 3 Pro that was released in 2019.
Unfortunately it looks like PocketBook is going all in on flush front screen designs moving forward. Hopefully they do a better job than they did with the PocketBook Era, which had one of the worst screens I’ve ever seen because of the cloudy flush layer. They mention an anti-scratch layer in the press release for the InkPad 4 so that’s not a good sign for text clarity, but we’ll have to wait and see for sure.
The bright off-center PocketBook logo seems like a questionable design choice too, but at least you can put your thumb over it to block it out.
The overall design of the PocketBook InkPad 4 looks quite nice, though, with similar characteristics to the design of the PocketBook Era, which is actually really nice all except for the horribly washed-out screen. The newer E Ink Carta 1200 screens have better contrast, but it doesn’t matter when they add a cloudy flush front layer over the top of it.
Thanks. Seems interesting. Ticks a lot of the boxes for me, but yeah, anti-scratch screen screams potential text clarity issue.
Also BadEreader’s article says this model is forgoing page turn buttons 😂 I guess they didn’t look at the product image very closely.
I just hope it doesnt have a glass screen. Was the sole flaw of the inkpad 3.
All E Ink ereaders have glass-backed screens, with very few exceptions (the 13.3″ Onyx models and some of their previous Notes, and a couple older models like the Kobo Forma and PocketBook InkPad X).
I thought glass screens is a desired thing?
Glass cracks, plastic doesn’t. But it seems most people don’t want to pay more for flexible E Ink screens so there’s even less available now than a few years ago. Onyx’s earlier Note models had plastic-based screens, but their cheaper Note Air models seem to be way more popular.
How much is a glass screen cheaper than a plastic screen?
I’d rather pay 50$ more for a plastic screen
I don’t know but the Onyx Notes sold in the $550 range whereas the Note Air is like $480. The problem is these ereader companies are somehow magically exempt from covering cracked screens with warranties so they have no incentive to provide more durable screens.
I’m baffled there’s no more news, for example in Reddit, about craked screens., although the bending test of Kobo’s Elipsa impressed me.
I bought a touch HD 3 to replace my inkpad 3 after I dropped it about 30cm and the screen shattered. Before the inkpad I had a Sony 505 so haven’t really tried a lot of other brands.
If text clarity turns out not to be an issue : I would greatly prefer this over my current paperwhite 11 gen but it is hard to justify the expense currently.
It’s ugly as hell, especially the rubber back which will work as a dust magnet and deteriorate in time. The flush screen is a huge downgrade. And if it’s as slow as InkPad 3 Pro, then god help us. It takes up to 10 seconds to open a book, two seconds to flip a page, several minutes until it shows how many pages there are in the book etc. And the build quality of it is trash, several times the back panel went completely off when it fell from my bed (40 cm / 1.5 feet)… So no more water resistance I guess. I have zero faith that Inkpad 4 will be any better. Sorry to be a hater, I just really despise my PocketBook 😀
I had an inkpad 3 and was very happy with how it preformed (until I dropped it). My previous ereader was a Sony PRS-505 though and got a touch HD 3 after so don’t have other ereaders to compare it to.
Ugly is subjective but you are probably mostly right but I hate the fact that kindles are basically a glorified Amazon book store device and the telemetry is probably more insane , on a Kindle, but strangely the sheeple are not concerned about the latter. Just like the sheeple are not alarmed at the new Restrict Act e.g. section 5.
In German forums, Pocketbook claimed to have addressed the screen issues which only affected early shipments of the Era. Obviously it is a bit of an “own goal” if those dodgy models all ended up in reviewer’s hands…
Let’s hope their QA is completely on the ball for all the shipments of this model.
Hi, which forums are they? Thanks.
Sorry for replying late: https://www.e-reader-forum.de/