09-06-2011, 07:36 PM | #1 |
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PocketBook vs. Kindle - Legibility contest
My PocketBook 902 has just arrived. It actually looks better than on the pictures, feels solid and smells nice, seriously. The screen is actually bigger than the whole Kindle, nice. The bezel seemed too wide when I looked it up on the Internet but it makes holding the device easier whether in a portrait or landscape mode (the screen rotates itself!) and is actually spot on for my hands.
Pleasantly surprised (I didn't expect much from this device) I couldn't wait to see it in action. I've tried all the menus, a game, a music player and the speakers and all was good, a bit basic at times, but good. The preloaded EPUB books looked fine too, although by default they were displayed using a massive font size. However, when the time came to fire up a PDF text from Safari Books that sent shivers down my spine - I was reading and not feeling very comfortable. I tried another one and had to strain my eyes again even though the font wasn't very small. I thought this was it as I intended to read mostly PDFs on my ereader. As you may have guessed I also have a Kindle that arrived not long before. With its screen smaller than the smallest paperback novel that I have in my library it's totally unusable for my purposes but the rendering of text is much better. I can open the same book that I tried on the PocketBook and reading is a pain but only because the letters are so small, they are small but perfectly legible. There is no contrast control in PocketBook and it's badly needed. Text on Kindle looks better even at the default setting and you still have two higher levels of contrast available. It's not just that it's darker, it also seems fuller so the thin lines in letters are well visible. Don't get me wrong, it's not a showstopper, you can still read from the device and I'll most likely keep my PocketBook but if there was Kindle 3 DX available I would go for it instead just because of the issue I described. So developers, do something about this core feature instead of improving silly things like Bluetooth connectivity, something that prompted me to write all this. A picture is worth a thousand words. Below you can see a comparison of the two readers (PocketBook on the left, Kindle on the right) as good as I could make it with my simple camera at night with artificial lighting. There are all three levels of contrast in Kindle shown, starting with the default one. The pictures are as they came from the camera, no photoediting apart from cropping and resizing. Click for bigger ones. Edit: removed dead links to images Last edited by machinogodzilla; 09-03-2018 at 04:58 PM. |
09-06-2011, 08:21 PM | #2 |
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Pocketbook is still using the old generation screen for their new models. I guess the contrast issue can be solved with software but not sure if pocketbook is doing it or now. There is no firmware update for months
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09-07-2011, 02:43 AM | #5 |
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No, Coolreader doesn't read pdf files.
I've always found it unjust to compare the screen of the Pocketbook 902/3 with pearl screens as one year ago Pocketbook simply had no possibility to build a pearl screen into their devices, thanks to Amazon. But now, a year later, I can't understand the reasons why they offer their new devices without a pearl screen. |
09-07-2011, 03:07 AM | #6 |
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Actually, yesterday when I was writing this at one moment I asked myself if my eyes got used to this screen or has the screen suddenly got better as reading PDFs from the device became possible. I thought that I was just tired but then I did something, opened another PDF and it was barely readable with jagged text again. It's back to the 'ok' mode at the moment. I will investigate and provide more pictures when I notice it another time.
Anyway, the pictures above show the screen after it 'fixed' itself. While the blacks are washed out compared to Kindle it is usable enough for me to keep it. Thanks for the suggestion Notrite, I'll give that reader a go later on. jshzh, I've seen some comments here that appeared to come from people from PocketBook (dealers? developers?) and the German PocketBook website points to this forum. Do you mean that you don't hear from those people any more at all? My reader came with a seal saying 30.03.2011 so I got a bit puzzled what was going on... |
09-07-2011, 04:01 AM | #7 | |
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poor contrast in PDF
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The poor contrast in PDF (in no reflow mode) is the only reason I'm hesitate to buy Pocketbook 90x. |
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09-07-2011, 04:06 AM | #8 |
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So now you are confortable reading PDF (in no reflow mode) ? in reflow mode you lose formatting but gain better contrast so I'm interested only in no reflow mode.
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09-07-2011, 05:07 AM | #9 | |
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Quote:
BTW the video link of the interview is here. |
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09-07-2011, 07:25 AM | #10 | |
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font antialiasing
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09-07-2011, 08:44 AM | #11 | ||||
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09-07-2011, 02:26 PM | #12 |
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@machinogodzilla
You seemed to me shocked about the difference between PB and Kindle. Did you worked with pearl devices and now you faced for the first time a vizplex display so that's why you might be so surprised ? Analyze yourself well, many are influenced of what are you gonna say . |
09-07-2011, 03:49 PM | #13 |
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09-07-2011, 05:52 PM | #14 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
When it comes to blacks the text is not looking great but is readable, the colour of it is kind of very dark grey. However, when it comes to greys (or colours) this is when the real trouble starts, as the colour gets closer to the grey of the background and the text becomes hardly visible. Example with 120% zoom on the PocketBook and comparable size on Kindle: (I haven't set up my 'studio' properly this time so the pictures are a bit darker than they should be) As you can see monospaced fonts used in the literature tend to be thinner so even if not displayed in a box like in the above example, they will still look very unclear. Compare the "Or you can boot..." line with the "AnnotationConfig..." in the first picture. |
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09-08-2011, 02:21 AM | #15 |
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Kindle font anti-aliasing, pocketbook visplex
You are right, it's a huge difference. It's all about font anti-aliasing so it's a software problem. Kindle has the capability of correcting this with it's software (in pdf has that function of darkening the font I think it's doing something about anti aliasing) but pocketbook hasn't. It's a pity to be this way; I think this function would make pocketbook a really good device for reading technical pdf despite it's visplex display.
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