[language gamer]

I bought the Pocketbook 360 because it looked like a great device with a great price tag. So far, after hammering out all the kinks, it’s proven to be well worth it. The interface and device itself are very well-designed and user friendly, the device has great customization options, and some nice extra features. There are several great reviews out there that discuss these aspects in depth, but I wanted to write a review that focused in particular on the note-taking features, specifically targeted towards academics. I hope this review is helpful and I welcome feedback and discussion. My understanding comes primarily from my own experience using the device, so I apologize for any inconsistencies or omissions.

As a pure reader, the Pocketbook 360 seems more than adequate. Many of us, however, need to interact with books in more complex ways. The popular misconception seems to be that note-takers should get larger e-book readers with touch screens in order to properly make notes. Browsing the MobileRead comparison chart, it seems like almost none of the 5” devices have note-taking features and most of the 6” devices that do employ touch screens. I have nothing against these devices, but I don’t see why we can’t do just as well without sacrificing portability, lower price, and simplicity.

Here are the positives of the 360’s note-taking capabilities:

1. As I mentioned before, the mere presence of note-taking features in a device this size and price is unprecedented. That already ranks high enough for me to purchase one.

2. Exporting. This is the main feature I was looking for. As an academic, traditionally I gather all my resources from printed texts, yet do all my actual work on the computer. This means I have typed out by hand hundreds of pages of quotes onto my computer. Trust me, this gets extremely tedious. The ability of an e-reader to make the direct transition from book to computer is a must. The 360’s notebook works by saving a html file and a folder of images to the internal memory. Connect the USB cable and simply drag the selected notebooks to your computer.

3. Save to any notebook. Instead of automatically saving your notes to a file based on the text you are reading, the 360 enables the user to specify the destination notebook every time a note is made. This is a very valuable feature because it lets the user organize notes according to a particular theme or have multiple texts by a single author stored in one place.

4. Notebook Interface. In addition to downloading the notes to your computer, you can access them through the main menu. Each notebook displays the text of each note in sequence, allowing you to read through your comments. This is a very handy way of reviewing the main points of a text or quickly searching for something that captured your attention. Since all good quotes need context, each note links back to the original text enabling one to easily find the quote’s original place in the text.

5. Directional Keypad. Personally, I find the keypad better than a stylus. A major benefit of an e-reader is the ability to read with one hand. Since I can make a note with just a few strokes of the directional pad, I can take notes without interrupting the flow or position of my reading.

6. Bookmarking and screenshots. Although I don’t take advantage of either of these features often, the 360 has two more potentially useful note-taking features. If you want to capture an entire page instead of a single quote, you can either bookmark the page for future reference or you can make an image of the entire page using the screenshot feature.

I am organizing the negatives as a wish list because they are all potentially fixable. Taking care of the high priority fixes would in my opinion make this device a major player for academics interacting with ordinary texts (although it will probably never compete with larger devices for users who work extensively with large graphic-heavy documents, even though it is capable of handling them).

High Priority Fixes

Copy Text
I understand that in some situations, making the notes into an image would be useful. These are still books, however, and I mostly read books for the text. The 360 desperately needs a way of exporting the notes in some text format, which should work with the existing HTML. There could be an option to toggle between text and image settings for note-taking or the device could automatically copy both. However this happens, there needs to be a way for users to interact with their notes.

Static Numbering
Academic users will typically need to cite quoted passages. It is vital for there to be static numbering attached to each note. Each note already comes with a header that displays the text, providing a perfect place to add a numbering system. A system like the Calibre method of using the chapter and paragraph numbers would be exceptionally valuable. If a format contains its own static page numbers (like epub), these could be displayed as well. Without a feature like this, the 360 is somewhat clumsy for serious academic purposes.

Medium Priority Fixes

Backup to SD card
In my opinion, data cannot possibly have too many layers of protection. An option to manually or automatically backup the notes to the SD card (without using the USB cable) would be very useful.

Highlighting
Although note-taking is more important than an independent highlighting feature, it would be very nice to be able to see what passages have been noted when viewing the text. I often go through books multiple times and I actually like seeing the traces of my previous thoughts in the book. A simple toggle to display highlighting on all passages in the notebooks would suffice.

Annotation
Although annotation is an important part of interacting with texts, it’s not crucial since the on-screen keyboard is a bit slow for lengthy comments. Still, for users who are willing to put in the time, having a way of appending comments to a note would be very valuable. Even a slow way is better than no way.

Low Priority Fixes

Bookmark Limit
According to the manual, you only get 30 bookmarks per book. Unless there’s some feature of the device that makes it unable to process more, this seems like an arbitrary and unnecessary limit.

Tips
Thanks to Ulli, Francesco, and Forkosigan for helping me find work-arounds for some of my initial criticisms. Here's what I've learned so far:

In PDF files, you need to map the note-taking feature to a button that is not used for directional movement. The long press on the up and down keys should work, but the short press won't. After that it should work fine.

If the passage you want to select is in the bottom half of the screen, you can scroll up, which will wrap around to the bottom of the screen. This saves quite a few clicks.

Conclusion
The Pocketbook 360 is a great reader for simple reading applications. For more advanced engagement with texts, the 360 has enough features to allow significant note-taking, although it falls short of being a truly high-performance tool for academics. You can easily make notes and read them both on the device and on a computer, but these notes cannot be easily manipulated or cited. The device also lacks the highlighting and annotation features that we are accustomed to having with physical texts. Although this device isn’t fully ideal, it can handle serious academic use as long as you adjust your note-taking style accordingly. Given the low price and the many advantages the 360 has over comparable e-readers, it warrants serious consideration.