New Pocketbook 10.3" Notepad/Ereader: Inkpad One

[ab78727]

Originally Posted by DJUNGELSKOG

Maybe it’s just me but it looks like the device is too slow to keep up when the reviewer is trying to take a note, and the resulting text looks like an approximation of his actual handwriting. I have a verse pro that behaves in a very similar way when I try annotating an epub.

That's a fair point - it was hard for me to tell from the video but you are right that it is probably slower than current higher-end devices with around 20ms writing lag.

[calming_sea]

I have my Pocketbook Inkpad One for a few weeks now, so my experiences so far.

Introduction
The Inkpad One was bought because my Kobo Aura One’s battery was about dead. One day of reading and it needed a recharge. I did not consider using a smaller device than the Aura One (7.8 Inch). Now that I have the Inkpad One I realize the screen is 70% larger than the Aura One and I do not want to go back to such a small thing. Regarding resolution, I know its 227 ppi, but at my age I don’t need 300 ppi any more.
I did select Inkpad One on its small bezels. For me to keep a larger device portable it needs small bezels. Having written that, they should not be smaller than this, every now and again I touch the sensitive part of the screen.
My primary purpose for an e-reader is fiction, which comes as epub. For the new e-reader I considered reading study books, which come as pdf. Hence I did check beforehand if books (pagesize less than A4) would be feasible to be read and inferred it would.
Coming from Kobo with many kepub books, my first worry was how to move these to the Inkpad One. Thus beforehand I added my books to Calibre and it was a breeze to copy them to Inkpad One.
Book management is slightly better in Inkpad One, as it has directories in its library view. Very innovative, not dumping all books together, but order them by topic or author. Kobo, you should try that.

Reading .epub
I do find the interface while reading a bit less than the Kobo. I do miss a general progress bar which tells me how much of the book I have read, and do miss time till end of chapter. It does allow me to show page count and page count till end of chapter, though these are pages as coded in the file rathr than page as seen on my screen. Not every page turn counts as a page.
Another thing is the table of contents of a book. I see less of it than on the Aura One before. Thus table of contents could use a more compact layout.
Finally I used to have a ‘jump back’ button on the Kobo. Could jump to a map or dramatis persona, check something and jump back. In the Inkpad One I need to bookmark, since there is no ‘jump back’. So now I bookmark before I jump to a different spot.

Reading .pdf
I never had much success before in reading .pdf on an e-reader. Way before this I had a Pocketbook 902 and that one just did not cut it to read scientific papers. The Inkpad One screen is much better, I can read the science books. For comparison I opened same book on 902 and it was not good. Screen quality definitely progressed since that time.
Depending on the book, I have used two ways to show the pages. One way is to display all contents of the page. In this setup there are white margins left and right on the screen. It is best to not display page numbering etc, as that takes valuable screen space. Alternatively, with a bit more zoom, there is no white space left and right, but only 70% of page is visible. A page turn brings the remainder of the page, with a little dotted line where the screen ended before. Both worked ok for me.

Notes in books
For the purpose of this review I tried to annotate. Usually I do not write in books, as I do have the feeling that what I highlight in my first read, I might not need highlighted on a later read. With e-books I do like the occasional highlight as I can erase them later. It is also possible to add notes and drawings. However, it looks like those annotations show up as icons in the margin which you have to touch to open. I don’t like it much. As stated, I never used to annotated books, so it does not worry me, but I can imagine that somebody who has plenty notes in margin might find it not convenient.

The pen
I do use the pen more than I expected, but a load of the time I could achieve the same with my fingers. I also play a bit with the pen while reading. Unfortunately I already notice a bit of wear on the pen at the spot where the pen attaches to the device. To protect it, now there is a bit of black tape around the pen , and it still attaches well enough.

Libraries.
The Inkpad One does come with a load of libraries in ‘Onleihe’. But strange enough that was not present when I had language as Dutch. It is present after setting language to German or English. I have not used them so far.

Syncing with pocketbook cloud
This seems to require an active adobe account and a load of battery life. I usually have the wifi off as I don’t have a second device to keep synced.

Finally
No regrets. So far I am happy with it.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by calming_sea

. It does allow me to show page count and page count till end of chapter, though these are pages as coded in the file rathr than page as seen on my screen. Not every page turn counts as a page.

Switch it to "off".

[calming_sea]

Switch internal numbering to off works. Though it takes longer than I expected to have numbers displayed. For longer books it tells me I cannot disable the built in page numbering.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by calming_sea

Switch internal numbering to off works. Though it takes longer than I expected to have numbers displayed. For longer books it tells me I cannot disable the built in page numbering.

It takes ages. It’s only useful if you’re not going to change the reading settings. Personally, I prefer the other system. It gives you a rough idea of how much of the chapter is left to read.

[nana77]

https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/...ook-inkpad-one


Ps: I didn't knew Pocketbook releases those InkPosters based on Spectra 6: https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/news/inkposter-news-ch

Personally, I'm still consider the Pocketbook Color Note, as it seems that Mobius screen doesn't has that greyish tone as other Kaleido 3 looks like while on black and white mode, the specs seems the same as the Inkpad One (except the color), and it might add the Kindle feature (despite I might not like Android's fatnesses).

Spoiler:

@3:18 there is a comparison by PPI's

Edit: didn't saw the price lol.

[ab78727]

fyi, amazon.com is selling the inkpad one today for about 312usd+tax after coupon - very tempted . thank you @calming_sea for the insightful review.