Productiveness in eye-friendly colour with the PocketBook Eo e-note

The PocketBook Eo colour E Ink e-note introduced again in April is now out there. We have spent the previous few weeks being kinder to our eyes whereas makes notes, studying and planning – and have even taken the odd picture. Let’s have a more in-depth look.

People on the lookout for the complete colour studying and writing expertise whereas out and about can go for a pill or smartphone operating acceptable apps. However battery life is all the time a fear, glare whereas exterior may be a problem and the digital screens may be fatiguing for the previous peepers.

E Ink know-how may also help with all that and extra, and now that colour ePaper tech can assist greater shows the pretty latest inflow of grayscale productiveness targeted gadgets have been joined by e-note slates that may make your Manga extra fulfilling, assist highlighted textual content stand out and even add private messages or concepts to photographs.

PocketBook informed us that the Eo is the primary fruit of a partnership with China’s Bigme, wherein the Swiss firm has now turn out to be a shareholder and co-owner. In actual fact, the Eo {hardware} is strikingly just like the InkNoteX however the Swiss firm has “considerably re-worked and enhanced” the firmware and person expertise.

The person interface has been overhauled to make it extra user-friendly for people within the EU and US. The set-up wizard, settings and Notes utility had been reworked, and that Notes app was handled to efficiency and handwriting high quality optimization as properly.

A helpful send-by-email characteristic was added, permitting customers to fling Notes direct to their inbox while not having to fret about extra logins. The PocketBook reader app was added to allow syncing with the corporate’s cloud companies and on-line retailer. And the machine was not too long ago given OCR (textual content recognition) capabilities, too.

A glance beneath the hood

Earlier than we dive in additional, this is a more in-depth have a look at the important thing specs of the Eo. The e-note is constructed round 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 colour e-Paper know-how that has grayscale decision of 1,860 x 2,480 pixels at 300 ppi, and 930 x 1,240 at 150 ppi for colour – with a 4,096 RGB colour depth. And it is surrounded by a SmartLight that makes every little thing onscreen pop.

The machine goes with a large rectangle for the general form, which places an inch-wide stable bar down the left, fairly than place that block to the underside for the thinner/taller structure seen on the reMarkable 2 pill. In any other case the show is flush with the bezels for a sleeker look than others with a border along with bezels.

Inside is a 2.3-GHz octa-core processor supported by 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of onboard storage with microSD enlargement – the interior storage at first power-on confirmed 22% already utilized by the OS and pre-loads. The e-note runs Android 11 fairly than the extra frequent Linux OS, which is just a few steps behind the most recent iteration of Google’s cell working platform however is taken into account match for function.

Paul Ridden/New Atlas

The 4,000-mAh battery ought to final and final because of the E Ink show know-how, however precisely how lengthy will depend upon issues like digital camera utilization, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activation, how a lot the SmartLight is used, whether or not third-party apps push the processor to the max and myriad different elements. PocketBook reckons that customers might get round a month of productiveness per cost in response to in-house testing.

There are two audio system for audiobook or music playback, and 4 microphones for voice enter. A USB-C port is included for cabling to a laptop computer in addition to charging. The machine lacks a headphone jack, however helps audio by way of USB-C or pairing over Bluetooth. There’s 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi cooked in as properly.

The Eo lacks the 5-megapixel entrance digital camera of the InkNoteX however does include an 8-megapixel rear digital camera. That decision is not the very best out there on this planet of cell gadgetry, but it surely’s probably sufficient for this use case – with PocketBook telling us that “it is to not make high-res photos, however to make photographs of textual content pages or areas and make notes or sketches on them.”

It ships with a Wacom digitizer for touchscreen enter (the InkNote X talked about earlier comes with a distinct stylus enter that may double as an IR pointer). Usefully, this labored straight out of the field, with out the necessity to calibrate. However not like the reMarkable setup, this one does not magnetically connect to the aspect of the machine – which we discovered a helpful addition.

It is a easy, buttonless affair that incorporates a wonderful tip at one finish and a digital eraser on the different. There are 4 totally different enter emulation decisions, every providing 12 colour decisions in your “ink” in addition to line thickness management. Along with doodling or scribbling, the pen can be utilized to annotate paperwork, spotlight textual content, create notes within the margins and so forth. I discovered enter response to be just about prompt.

Getting all the way down to enterprise

PocketBook

Setup was a painless affair, confirming choices and coming into Wi-Fi credentials adopted by quite a lot of pop-up guides as every default utility is opened for the primary time. At first power-on, the Eo’s entrance mild is lively in Daytime mode however this may be modified to Evening, eye-friendly Bedtime or Different (customized) modes by way of the down arrow alongside the highest of the display screen.

Every mode may be tweaked for brightness and colour temperature, and the entrance mild may be disabled to save lots of the battery whereas utilizing beneath brilliant ambient mild or direct daylight. With the LEDs off, the colour E Ink’s white background has a considerably grey hue to it fairly than a brighter and cleaner white provided when the SmartLight is powered on.

The drop menu can also be residence to different settings/controls comparable to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Miracast display screen sharing, speaker quantity and E Ink adjustment. That E Ink Heart permits for tweaking of refresh charges, colour modes and picture high quality – with probably probably the most attention-grabbing possibility for avid be aware makers being the HD256 mode, which gives 256 ranges of grayscale as an alternative of 16.

Among the many preset modes here’s a video mode, which pushes refresh to excessive. Curious, I attempted to observe a YouTube video with this mode enabled, however I do not assume E Ink is sort of prepared for streaming primetime but. The audio by way of the onboard audio system was smartphone high quality (loud sufficient however a bit of skinny) however the visuals had been fairly poor, with some picture ghosting evident together with nasty pixelization.

Nevertheless, it is a good characteristic to have when you’ve acquired nothing else and easily should watch an internet tech explainer earlier than attacking an interview or hands-on demo at a tech expo.

Paul Ridden/New Atlas

Apps from the get go embrace an internet browser, an audio participant and folder full of Sherlock Holmes audiobooks, two e book readers, a calendar, notepad and digital camera. Customers can buy ebooks and audiobooks from Pocketbook’s personal retailer, or sideload by way of different on-line libraries (Adobe Digital Editions may be activated by way of the Pocketbook Reader app for protected content material). Operating Android additionally means entry to the Play Retailer for third celebration downloads ought to you end up wanting extra productiveness instruments.

Gestures comparable to swiping to maneuver to the subsequent web page and flick scrolling are supported, with choices enabled/disabled by the person. One of many out there sidebar instruments permits the person to learn workplace paperwork in docx, ppt, xlsx and so forth. And file switch over Wi-Fi is feasible, offered each supply machine and e-note are on the identical community.

In a latest replace, PocketBook added an OCR characteristic that enables customers to transform handwritten scribbles within the Notes app to textual content paperwork or PDF in just a few seconds. Fairly a timesaver. The machine must be linked to Wi-Fi for this characteristic to work, and the conversion defaults to English – although different languages may be put in. Despite the fact that my handwriting is absolutely scratchy, the characteristic acquired most of it proper and errors may be corrected utilizing the onscreen keyboard earlier than saving or sending on. Additionally price mentioning are quite a lot of Observe templates out there to assist maintain your jottings tidy, together with a clean black web page, a calendar grid, to-do record and plain strains with a margin.

The underside line

What you may get out of the Eo will rely in your expectations. In case you’re on the lookout for one thing that provides the type of visuals you may get on a 2024 pill or laptop computer then you definitely’ll be disillusioned.

However in order for you a conveyable machine for studying ebooks, PDFs and paperwork that is kinder to your eyes, comes with a number of productiveness instruments with the choice to hit the Play Retailer for the rest you want, brings some colour into the extra frequent grey e-note celebration and has wonderful battery life – then I might advocate giving this machine a attempt.

At US$599.99, the value of entry is on the excessive aspect, however Bigme’s InkNoteX rolls in even larger and hasn’t been particularly tweaked for western customers. The video beneath has extra.

Product web page: PocketBook Eo