Next Papyrus PageOne

[Dulin's Books]

On Saturday I received a pleasant surprise in my mail box. A PageOne ereader from NextPapyrus

http://www.pageonestore.com



I have been talking with the Vice President of NextPapyrus John Kim off and on for some time since finding out about their PageOne. Recently I have had time to touch base with them again and they were nice enough to send along one of the ereaders.

First the Specs

6" Vizplex Eink display
157mm L x 125mm W x 8.4mm D
200 grams
2GB of on board storage
Micro SD expansion up to 16GB
MiniUSB 2.0
24pin connector (for wall charging)
3.5mm earphone jack

2200mA battery(read: HUGE)


Reading Formats - ePub, PDF, MOBI, PRC, CHM, TXT, HTML, FB2, OEB, PalmDoc, Plucker, TCR, RTF

Image Formats- JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP

Audio Formats- MP#, WAV, WMA


Its SOOO Small. Its got to be the smallest 6" reader available. It's actually not very much longer than a PocketBook 360 and they are the same width overall.

The front bezel area is anodized aluminum and the back is a subtly curved plastic in a "piano black"(a bit like an iPhone). The edge of the alumium has the anodization buffed off to reveal a narrow aluminim edge "trim". The PageOne is also available in white.

Overall is a really pleasing design in hand and so light I will have no trouble holding for hours. I prefer some of the readers I have tried in a case. The PageOne is one I think I prefer to hold naked. They do have a case for it of course and it has a couple of elastic bands on the cover that make it very easy to keep a grip on one-handed. I can bet that its very handy for strap-hanger commuters.

The button controls are by default on the right side of the display in portrait mode. The device can easily be rotated to any of the other landscape or portrait orientations at the push of a button or by a selection in the menu. When you rotate 180 degrees the button functions switch as well so the "back" button operation is always on the bottom, the page forward button remains the "bottom" page button. The page buttons can be reversed in the menu as well.


You can load your own fonts and change the pictures for the load/sleep screen. It does not support any DRM scheme so you need to know how to strip 'em if you've got 'em.

You can choose to change the speed at which pages turn. There are 3 levels: Quality, Normal, Speedy. Quality is a "slow" full refresh which gives you a perfectly clean background and sharp text. Speedy is partial refresh that is so quick it finishes before i move my eyes from the bottom end to the top starting line. It does leave some shadowing after awhile but i find it quite bearable. Normal is a happy medium between the two and is about the normal speed you would expect of a eink reader.

There is also a contrast adjustment. Normal , High and Higher are the choices. The difference between normal and Higher is quite noticeable with the blacks noticeably darker than the whites on the higher setting. High being a more subtle change. I had to ask what it actually does and it was explained that the device actually changes the gamma values. I havent tried it on pictures yet but Im sure it will be more dramatic.

Ill take some pictures soon and make sure to include some other readers for comparison. Ill have some more thoughts after I read a book or two on it. So far its a delight.

Im also going to lend the device to Nate the Great so he can give it a proper impartial review.

Its currently available only in Korea for a price of 234,000 WON which a quick conversion puts at $198.

[kjk]

That is a huge battery...the Kindle has a 1530mAh?

[Dulin's Books]

yes

Ive just seen this "fan video" unboxing on youtube which suggests another use for that 24 pin connector that i will have to ask NextPapyrus about.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPIH...eature=related

[capidamonte]

Watched the video...

Remote, dock, integrated reading light? All in the box?

[Dulin's Books]

they are not all in the box. They also arent currently on the Korean site. I will find out what is actually available.

[Dulin's Books]

After a couple of days of reading I have to say I am actually really impressed with this PageOne. Its firmware is stable, the device is a pleasure to hold and use. The battery life is simply astounding. When reading anything but pdfs there are 20 steps in font size from incredibly silly small to absolutely gigantic.

You can add your own fonts simply by putting the ttf file in the fonts folder, but I didnt need to since the Droid font came installed

It uses a folder structure thankfully so you can create folders how ever you want to sort your library. You can delete books right from the device! There is no search but you can sort by file name or date.

Reading PDFs there are like 10 zoom sizes(no reflow) and you can pan around a page. There is a little icon in the lower left that shows you which section the full page you are looking at. You can also choose fit to page, fit to height or fit to width. You can also choose between turning a whole page at a time or scrolling line by line. I tried a couple texts and the manual for the device and found it very comfortable to read them fit to width in landscape.

When reading most other formats there are a couple of icons in the lower right of the progress bar. They indicate the function of the page tune keys. The first icon represents a book and when selected using the ok button that allows the buttons to turn the pages. Pushing the ok button selects the next icon which is for enlarging the font size. select it and the arrow keys are used to change the font size.

One thing they are still working on is the menu. when you switch to landscape the menus stay in portrait orientation. Thats due to the fact that the menu is so long it wouldn't fit on the screen on the short vertical in landscape. It takes a bit of getting use to but im sure they will figure out away to change the menu structure in a future firmware upgradde.


No touch screen, no wifi, no 3g, no drm support( which would be a nice addition for library books here in the states). Its a dead simple , beautifully made, stable device that is great for READING. It would be nice to see such stable and easy to use firmware from some of the other lesser known reader companies. especially ones whose devices are popping up all over the place in the bed/bath/beyonds /kmarts etc of the US. Better yet it would be nice to see this reader in some of those stores.

Dont take my word for it-this is going off to Nate the Great for a week or so for a proper impartial review.

edit- sorry , lighting problems with 2 of the pics. ill take new ones and have them up in a moment

[Dulin's Books]

here are the last two images trying to capture the size. apparently the autofocus is on a bit of a strike this evening.

[fjtorres]

Does it let you adjust the margins?
How about line spacing?

Looking awfully interesting at that size; a 6in screen in a 5in case...

[Dulin's Books]

Couple of more things. You cn add your own "screen saver" or "logo" pictures so that when the devices goes to sleep you have an interesting picture to look at.

There are not line spacing or margin adjustments. It reads FB2 (not zipped) so there is a chance for it to allow both ofthose functions.

The light , cradle(dock) and remote are not available yet but they are in development right now. The cradle will have WiFi .

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

No touch screen, no wifi, no 3g, no drm support( which would be a nice addition for library books here in the states). Its a dead simple , beautifully made, stable device that is great for READING.

Sounds perfect for a lot of Mobilereaders! One of the most repeated requests I've noticed in my time here is for a device exactly like this-a pure Reader.

[Ravensknight]

I'm tempted, and I don't even NEED another reader...

[luqmaninbmore]

Dulan's Books: How much would you sell this thing for if you accepted into your stable of products?

[Dulin's Books]

I dont know yet- its something Im thinking about. I'd love to package it with that nifty light included. Something south of $200 with the light included. The current Korean price equals about $198. I'd have to see what my cost would be for a small number for something more accurate, which i haven't done yet.

hmm. Maybe I could do a sort of group buy for MR members if there was enough interest.

-Charlie

[tneken]

any word of a firmware with drm support

[Dulin's Books]

none at the moment that Im aware of. They do have plans in the works for a next reader and its possible that the new one will offer drm support. Ill ask them about it.