I've acquired a new
Inkbook Prime, and I thought I'd give some initial thoughts/review notes.
I sent back the first one I ordered - it froze while trying to install updated software, and neither I nor Amazon's tech support could figure out how to get it to reboot. (Standard Android instructions for "hard reboot" do not work.) Arta Tech did not respond to email, and has no US phone number.
It's working with Android version 4.2.2. Kernel version says something about November 16, 2016.
I have not attempted to connect to the internet nor download new firmware. If that's going to brick the device like it did last time, I want to find out how it works first. I'm not sure I'm going to bother at all.
It says it has 8gb storage. It lies. It has 6gb storage. I am not concerned about this; I know that getting over 1gb of ebooks on a reader makes navigation nearly impossible - ereader software is not designed to let you choose between several hundred, much less several thousand, texts.
The light settings were very hard to find. The manual shows where the icon is - except there's no icon in that spot on my screen. Eventually, tinkering with the internet settings (not actually connecting, but finding out where they were) made a small "(i)" icon show up - that operates the light and the wifi connection. Light looks like it has settings going from "soft glow" to "medium glow" to "retina burn," and about 6 more above that. (Exaggeration. But "on" starts at 5%, and then there's 10% and every 10% up to 100%. At the brighter levels, I could use this for a booklight for other books.)
It doesn't seem to recognize chapters/bookmarks in ebooks. There are instructions ("Enter table of contents by pressing appropriate icon from pop-up menu") but I don't get a pop-up menu as shown in the tutorial.
Side buttons: Two on each side. The bottom one is "next page;" top one is "prev page." This is nicely intuitive for me; the bottom is the one I can reach easily. Screentouch also works for forward/back; center screen is "settings."
Library navigation is a nuisance; I don't see a way to sort by "new additions." I could be missing something; I'm still a bit overwhelmed.
Settings for font size are limited. They are: Small/starting default; medium; big; bigger; huge; humongous; and about eight larger sizes. (I'm probably exaggerating. All I remember is, I put the setting at the second box, and that was okay; the third was uncomfortably large, and there were several more boxes to go.)
Settings for choice of font face and leading only work on some epubs. I know about locking those features in the epub; this was weird, because some fanfic epubs from AO3 allow adjustable fonts, and some don't. Must have something to do with the author uploading from Word or via html-ized text. I have not dug into the epubs themselves to sort out the differences.
Have not tried mobi files yet.
Have tried both scanned and converted PDFs. They worked as expected (which is to say, they range from poor to useless), with bonus hassle that rotating the view shoves the PDF into fit-height on the small size; it doesn't have a "fit width" setting for PDFs.
Back of the case is not flat; it's got a curve-ish feel that would be nice if I were planning on holding it loose. Since I'm planning on making a case for it because there aren't any commercially available, the lack of flat back is a nuisance.
Would not recommend this to anyone who's not already fluent in e-ink readers. Settings are hard to find; the manual is a walkthrough process every time with no printable version, and most of the features are not explained. Other than that, it looks like a pleasant enough device.