Quote:
Originally Posted by PhillipA82
I read about the pocketbook 360. How is it for you? I am interested in buying one.
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I've been mostly very happy with the Pocketbook 360. It does have its problems.
There is a new model, the 360+, which has wifi and more RAM, but I have no experience with that. Both models are still available new.
Things I like:
Much better pocketability/portability than any Kindle.
Even though the K2 and pb360 screens are both Vizplex, text on the pb360 looks darker to me. Maybe the K2 gave up too much contrast to get faster page turns and more gray levels compared to the K1. I also think that the default pb360 font may look darker and sharper because it has less anti-aliasing. In addition, maybe late 2010 Vizplex is better than early 2009 Vizplex.
To my surprise, the 6" Kindle 2 screen and the 5" Pocketbook 360 screen have about the same number of words on them when I set each to the most comfortable text size for me. I think that this results from them both having 600 x 800 pixels at 166.6 and 200 dpi respectively, the PB360 devoting more of the screen to book text, and the better (for me) default font. Even with a smaller status area, the pb360 shows the time, updated each page turn, and blacked out if it has gone stale.
I like the size, balance, weight, and page turning ergonomics of the PB360 quite a bit more than the K2 and much more than the Kindle DXG when reading while holding the device. The 5-way control is wonderful in both portrait and landscape view. Forward and reverse age turning just requires slight thumb motion as does following and returning from links, such as end notes. Getting to a link in the middle of a page with the pb360 just blows away doing the same on a Kindle, unless every line on the page has a link. Even then the pb360 is still a little better since you are already on the 5-way and the pb 5-way is much less awkward to use. On top of all that, the 5-way center button is context sensitive. Pressing it while in a book pops up a menu that allows quick access to table of contents, page number, search, screen orientation, bookmarks, and settings. The menu is tic-tac-toe style rather than linear, so each entry is only 1 or 2 clicks away.
All the buttons on a pb360 can have a long press as well as a short press, and the function performed for each is configurable. After a few days of use, I decided that I preferred something other than the defaults. A few days after that, I made a still different configuration, and have stayed with that.
The pb360 not only supports book organization via subdirectories, it supports multiple levels of directories, which is great for periodicals.
The pb360 has a microSD slot, which is great to have, but see more later.
Battery life has been great. After the initial charge, occasional USB connection to copy files has kept it going. But this is probably because it can not suspend or sleep. It can only turn off completely. It boots very quickly, but nowhere near as fast as a Kindle can resume from sleep. Most of the time, the pb360 starts up and shuts down fine, but every month or three, it freezes and I have to push the reset or disconnect the battery. I disconnect the battery when it freezes
and I have nothing to poke into the hole over the reset button. The reset has always worked for me when I could get at it. Somewhat more often, it can't find a book on the SD card or it opens but the pb360 thinks that there or much fewer pages that there really are and I have to close and reopen.
The thing that I dislike the most is that several times it has erased every book
in subdirectories on the SD card. I tried a new card and that did not help. I recently gave up using subdirectories on the SD card. This has only happened a few times, but once is too many. I have never seen anyone else complain that this happens, so I do not know if it is only me.
Other very nice features. For non-DRM books, mobi, epub, PDF, and fb2 are supported. I don't have any epub or PDF books with DRM, so I don't know how it does with those. For non-DRM PDF and epub, there are two viewers new in the box, you can add more or modified. Each book will be automatically opened with the last viewer used for that book or by selection. The default viewer for a never opened book can be configured with a text file.
The pb360 has an orientation sensor that can automatically switch between portrait and landscape viewing. I turned that off almost immediately and have nothing to say about it one way or other except that there is a community modified viewer that can use the sensor to turn pages with wrist flicks. There seem to be some people that have used that and like it.
The firmware on my pb360 was already quit old when I got it new. There had already been multiple beta releases of new firmware, but I have read about problems that I did not want to get with all of them.
The pb360+ does come with newer firmware, presumably required at least by the wifi. If I did not already have a pb360, but knowing what I know now, I would not hesitate to get a pb360+ right now. But mine is new enough and the chance that I would still run into the annoyances that I already have high enough, that I will stick with what I have for now.
If Amazon would make a Kindle with a 200dpi 5" screen, no keyboard, and a decently placed and programmed 5-way, I would get one. If it did not support subdirectories for organzation and/or did not have a SD card slot, I would still be ready to jump ship on a moments notice.
For a 6" screen, I would like to see almost bezel-less, but thicker, with buttons on the side, and maybe a slide out keyboard.