Last month I posted about the new AiPaper Reader from Viwoods. It’s a phone-sized ereader with an E Ink Carta 1300 screen that runs Android 16, and early reviews are generally positive.
Now Viwoods has released a color version called the AiPaper Reader C, and it has a 6.13″ color E Ink screen. It uses a Kaleido 3 screen like most color ereaders so the resolution is 300 ppi for black and white and 150 ppi for color. The description says it can switch between Color Mode and Black-and-White Mode, which is something not usually available on color ereaders.
For the most part, it appears that most of the specs and features are the same between the two versions, but one key difference with this color model is it includes a warm frontlight. The black and white version just has a regular cool-colored frontlight.
The AiPaper Reader C has a 2.0 GHz octa-core CPU with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space. It supports dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. There’s a rotation sensor and a fingerprint sensor. The battery size is 2580 mAh.
One of the unique features with these AiPaper devices is they have a SIM card slot. But they only support 4G. They mostly advertise the SIM slot for data, but there are reports of the original AiPaper Reader working as a phone with some networks.
The AiPaper Reader runs Android 16, which is the latest version available. Before these devices came along I’d never seen an E Ink device running a current version of Android. It’s open to installing apps as well so that opens up a lot of possibilities. It also supports different AI models, and there’s a dedicated hardware button for AI.
As far as reading features go, the default app supports common formats, including EPUB and PDF, among others, but I highly doubt it supports any type of DRM so you’ll have to use other apps to read purchased ebooks, or remove the DRM first and then sideload.
The new AiPaper Reader C is currently selling for $349 on Amazon, which is a full $100 more expensive than the black and white version. I’m not sure color E Ink is worth that much more, but it’s good to have options.
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