I came across a new listing for a mini ereader on Amazon called the OBOOK 5, and it has some interesting characteristics.
I’m not sure why they’re calling it the Obook 5 when it has a 4.26″ screen, but I guess they’re rounding up. It looks like it has an E Ink screen in the few photos that aren’t renderings, but they use the word “e-paper” in the description. It also has a frontlight. The screen has a resolution of 800 x 480, which equates to 219 ppi on the 4.26″ screen, but the listing says it only supports 4 levels of grayscale, which is weird since E Ink screens usually support 16. It looks like it’s using one of those Waveshare e-paper displays that are used on Raspberry Pi devices and such.
The software on these obscure Chinese imports is usually super basic, but this one looks like it might run Android so that could add some versatility. I wouldn’t bet on it supporting ebooks with DRM, but the following formats are listed as being supported: TXT, EPUB, MP3, MOBI, DOC, FB2.HTM/HTML, AZW3, PRC, RTF, TCR, CHM.
The Obook 5 also doubles as an audiobook player and music player. It has a built-in speaker that is guaranteed to sound terrible, but it also has a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The description says the device only weighs 94 grams, which is hard to believe even for a mini ereader. For the sake of comparison, the 6″ basic Kindle weighs 158 grams. The measurements are listed at 125 x 70 x 8.25mm.
The Obook 5 has 32GB of storage, a 1200mAh battery, and a USB-C port. It supports 2.4 GHz WiFi networks. It has volume buttons that can be used as page-turn buttons. The price is currently $109.99 with free shipping on Amazon. It’s being sold from a recently-launched store, but Amazon is the one doing the shipping so it’s eligible for their standard 30-day free returns.
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