Remember the JetBook Color? I first posted about it back in early September.
It is a 9.7″ ereader and is the first to come with a color E Ink screen. It is currently available in Russia and Ukraine as part of a government subsidized project and is expected to come to the US and Europe in a “few months”, according to Jerry Cimadomo in the second video below.
The JetBook Color is being marketed as an educational ereader. It comes with several learning tools built in, like language and reading software, SAT study courses, talking dictionaries, and more.
This first video was uploaded last month and shows the JetBook Color in action. The color and image detail looks pretty good. The second video is from the Buchmesse 2011 show in Frankfurt, Germany and doesn’t do the JetBook Color any favors—the colors aren’t very visible in that lighting.
I’ll try to get my hands on one of these once it reaches the US, so stay tuned for more details.
Nathan, what I’ve noticed with e-ink screens in general is the limitation of the number of shades of gray that get displayed, 16 shades is not enough. If the e-ink screens could display 256 shades of gray (8 bit) then the pictures would appear to look like magazine quality. The same with be true with color. It appears from this video that at a black and white level, the screen can display more than 16 shades of gray which provides more detail. The issue with color is there won’t be enough color depth to make the pictures look like they’ve been printed in a book or magazine. Once the reflective displays can produce vibrant and deep color (millions of colors) then people will get excited about the e-ink screens. That’s the advantage the iPad and other tablets have over the e-ink screens. They have vibrant and deep color. And if the rumors are true that Apple will be producing a Retina display for the iPad then that will be major “eye candy” and the dot pitch will be so tight that the screen will look like a film picture.
The iPad and other tablets are also backlit, with glossy screens and tons of glare. Hard on the eyes. I can’t tolerate reading on ANY of them.
While a color e-ink screen would be nice, I’ll stick with the basic grayscale e-ink until such time as a good color e-ink screen comes out. 95% or better of my reading is in black and white anyway.
What I would really love to see is higher definition touchscreen e-ink. The iRiver story has wonderfully crisp text, got to see one in person. But it’s not touchscreen, and it didn’t appear to be a Pearl screen either.
At any rate, I don’t need “eye candy”, I just want to read comfortably. Something that so far, no tablet can give me. I’d be interested in a larger, color device like this for some books, especially cookbooks, but I’m afraid either the resolution won’t be that great or the cost will be prohibitive or both.