I came across an ereader on Amazon today (two actually) that I haven’t seen before because it’s a European brand that isn’t normally available in the US, but if you’re looking for a cheap Kindle alternative it might fit the bill.
The Dickens Light 2 Pro has a few advantages over the basic Kindle, and the price is pretty reasonable at $118.66, plus $17.59 for shipping. But it appears to ship from Spain, so it might take awhile to arrive. It’s available in blue (Deep Sky) and black (Dark Matter).
The specs aren’t going to blow anybody away, but it does have a frontlight with adjustable color temperature and a microSD card slot, unlike the basic Kindle.
The Dickens Light 2 Pro has a 6-inch E Ink screen with a resolution of 1024 x 758, so it does have a lower resolution screen than the Kindle, with 212ppi instead of 300ppi. That seems to be the biggest drawback, but for a basic ereader that’s not bad.
According to the SPC website, it supports the following ebook formats: EPUB, PDF, TXT, HTML, FB2, RTF, MOBI, CHM, and DOC. It also supports Adobe DRM so loading purchased ebooks onto it shouldn’t be a problem using Adobe Digital Editions.
It has 8GB of internal storage space, with a 1500mAh Li-ion battery and a USB-C port. The dimensions are listed at 169 x 113 x 9mm. Battery life is rated at up to 1 month.
Here’s the list of supported languages: Español, English, Francais, Portugués, Italiano, Deutsch, Nederlands, Русский, Svenska, and Polski.
There’s also the Dickens Light 2 on Amazon (the non-Pro version), but it lacks a touchscreen and a warm frontlight, and there’s only a $10 price difference so I fail to see the appeal, unless you really like page buttons, but navigating is going to be tricky without a touchscreen—that’s just something you don’t see anymore these days, but some might actually prefer it.
I’’m Belgian. That’s as European as it gets but I’ve never heard about this brand either 😂
161 global rankings reported at Amazon UK for the SPC Dickens Light 2 with a score of 3.2 stars out of 5. 29% of reviewers give it 1 star. A cursory examination of those reviews seem to indicate that a large number of devices appear to be breaking.
That’s also the non-touchscreen model—there’s no way something like that is going to get favorable reviews in this day and age.