- A portion of this video is sponsored by Surfshark.
Despite tablets, phones and phones that turn into tablets,
e-readers are still a big deal for those who seek escape
or education in the world of books.
But this video isn't about a new e-reader.
It's about the 2020 technology behind it.
Technology that suddenly makes every Kindle,
Kobo and Nook of the world seem as antiquated to my eye
as the old, black and white newspapers they now resemble.
I'm Mr. Mobile and I've just spent a week
with one of the world's first color e-readers.
Join me for a closer look.
(upbeat music)
Okay, there are actually several color e-readers out there,
but this particular one is the PocketBook Color released
by Switzerland-based PocketBook International in June, 2020.
It's a fairly buy-the-numbers reader.
You've got a six inch touchscreen anchored by a handful
of physical buttons with Wi-Fi for syncing,
Bluetooth for audio books and 16 gigs of storage,
which can be augmented with a Micro SD card.
I appreciate that because as a product
that's not marketed in the US,
the PocketBook's onboard marketplace
isn't exactly teaming with the titles I can easily find
in Amazon's Kindle store.
While there is a Dropbox-based wireless transfer option
that works well for loading your own PDFs and e-books,
transferring files via Micro SD is much faster.
So again, I appreciate it.
What I don't really appreciate is that other micro,
that one that should have been left back in 2016.
Yeah, I'm talking about the micro USB port.
As with most e-readers the pocket book colors battery
should last a while between charges.
It took me a week to even hit 50%,
but to have to dig out a special cable
when you do need to charge is a letdown, for sure.
(gentle upbeat music)
Okay, the basics are covered so let's get to why we're here.
This six-inch display is powered by a brand
of electronic paper called E Ink,
that's capital E, capital I,
a corporation headquartered in Massachusetts,
which I actually visited back in my pocket nowadays,
to learn about the technology behind these displays.
Technology that really hasn't changed all that much since.
Here's how it works.
In an e-ink display, black and white pigments
are suspended in tiny spheres.
And let me emphasize tiny,
each is about the diameter of a human hair.
The pigments inside carry an electrical charge,
and the capsules are sandwiched between two electrodes.
So if you wanna change the color of a pixel,
it's as simple as giving it a positive or a negative charge,
which brings either the black
or the white pigment to the top.
I'm simplifying a little bit here,
but do that across several million capsules
on a six inch diagonal sheet and bam,
you've got an e-paper display.
And here's what's cool about it,
unlike a conventional LCD or OLED e-ink
doesn't need any power to keep an image on the screen.
The only time it uses energy is to change state.
That's why e-readers can last as long as they do
on fairly small batteries.
And it's why they're so easy to read in bright sunlight.
Chun a laptop or tablet,
you need a powerful backlight or very bright OLED elements
to overcome the sunlight and e-paper relies upon
that very light because physically
it behaves more like, well, paper.
(plane engine roars)
Now to add color to the mix,
E Ink has tried several approaches in the past,
but the one we're looking at here is the newest,
called E Ink Kaleido.
And don't worry, the foundation is exactly the same
with the black and white pigments inside capsules.
The new element is the color filter
that's added on top of that foundation.
It's a thinner and lighter color filter
than previous attempts,
which means devices like the pocket book color stay just
as portable as previous e-readers while now being able
to display up to 4,096 different colors.
So book covers, textbook graphics, magazines
and yes, comic books can finally come to life
as they do on a tablet while preserving the battery life
and readability advantages of a proper e-reader.
This is a monumental accomplishment,
and there's a lot of excitement for this technology
from bookworms to futurists eager
to see it proliferate in other categories.
But after the break,
I'll share a few observations from my week
with the PocketBook Color. That give me pause.
(plane roars)
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(gentle upbeat music)
As fun as exciting as it's been to experience
the PocketBook Color, I gotta admit,
I'm not gonna be too sad to send it back to E Ink.
Part of that is just a by-product of personal preference.
The past year I've spent diving headlong
into foldable phones has made me very comfortable
with reading books on an OLED screen.
I know a lot of people complain of eyestrain
in that situation, but I tend to read
at bare minimum brightness with white on black text.
And it's been just as comfortable for me
as reading on my Kindle Oasis.
Now, maybe I'm doing some long-term damage
and I'll come to regret that, but the other thing is,
the color just isn't that great.
Putting it alongside the Galaxy Fold 2 and iPad Pro,
you can see exactly what the Verge's Sam Byford means
when he writes that E Ink Kaleido
kind of looks like a newspaper
that's faded after a few days.
What's more?
The resolution drops to 100 PPI
when you switch to color content on the PocketBook.
And even if you're just viewing text
at what should be a full 300 PPI,
the color filter above the capsule layer
creates a subtle screen door effect
that makes for a fuzzier image than you'd get
from a monochrome e-ink display.
(light melodic music)
And finally, the other stuff
that color could make more compelling,
like the handful of apps and games
the PocketBook ships with, or the web browser,
well, the advantages of color are mostly nullified
by the disadvantages of e-paper,
like a very low refresh rate
that makes scrolling frustrating,
annoying image persistence or ghosting,
and the need for e-readers that leverage it
to use a built-in front light in the dark,
which affects the color depending on
how bright you need to make it.
(gentle upbeat music)
Now, let me be clear, I still respect
the engineering achievement here.
I continue to appreciate the benefits of dedicated e-readers
and I will be one of the first
to pre-order the color Kindle whenever that might come out.
E Ink embracing color is good news,
no matter how you slice it,
but until the quality of that color
and the responsiveness of the interface improves,
I think most folks will continue to prefer their phone
or tablet when they need to consume colorful content.
(gentle upbeat music)
This video was produced following six days
with a PocketBook Color review device on loan from E ink.
Mr. Mobile does not accept compensation
from manufacturers in exchange for coverage though,
neither PocketBook nor E Ink was offered copy approval
or editorial input into this video.
They're seeing it for the first time right alongside you.
Please subscribe to the Mr. Mobile on YouTube
if you'd like to help me make more content like this.
(gentle upbeat music)
Until next time, thanks for watching.
And if you can't stay home then at least stay safe
and mask up while you stay mobile, my friends.
(upbeat music)