(Photo: Onyx) E Ink may be focused on perfecting folding electronic paper right now, but the company's work on color e-paper is finally making its way into a consumer product thanks to Onyx.
As Liliputing reports, the Onyx Boox Poke2 Color e-reader recently launched on the Boox store, and it offers a color experience for those willing to spend a lot for a far from perfect experience.
Onyx is quite open about the Poke2 Color being based on "emerging technology" and states on the product page that the device has a "rather low resolution" compared to the more typical non-color e-readers it sells.
It recommends the Poke2 Color only be purchased by those people "who are keen on trying new things."
So how limited is it? The Poke2 Color uses a 6-inch color E Ink display with a resolution of 1,448-by-1,072 pixels.
When viewing black and white images or text it renders at 300 pixels per inch, but for color output that's reduced to just 100 pixels per inch.
Color is also limited to just the 4,096 colors offered by the E Ink Kaleido panel.
It's a touchscreen, though, and includes a front light with 32 levels of brightness control.
The chosen operating system is Android 9.0, running on a 2GHz octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and includes 32GB of storage space.
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported, and the included battery is 1,500mAh.
Altogether it adds up to a device weighing just 150 grams that's capable of displaying PDF, EPUB, MOBI, HTML, DOC, and text files while also offering the ability to side-load Android apps and listen to MP3s using headphones or a wireless Bluetooth speaker.
What may stop a Poke2 Color purchase even for those "keen to try new things" is the price.
It's $299 for the e-reader, although Onyx is throwing in a protective cover for free, which usually costs $39.99.
Even so, the non-color version of the Poke2 only costs $190, clearly showing how much of a premium that color E Ink display adds.
However, the positive in all of this is the fact a color e-reader has hit the market, and that suggests others will follow, they'll get better, and they'll get cheaper.
(Photo: Onyx) E Ink may be focused on perfecting folding electronic paper right now, but the company's work on color e-paper is finally making its way into a consumer product thanks to Onyx.
As Liliputing reports, the Onyx Boox Poke2 Color e-reader recently launched on the Boox store, and it offers a color experience for those willing to spend a lot for a far from perfect experience.
Onyx is quite open about the Poke2 Color being based on "emerging technology" and states on the product page that the device has a "rather low resolution" compared to the more typical non-color e-readers it sells.
It recommends the Poke2 Color only be purchased by those people "who are keen on trying new things."
So how limited is it? The Poke2 Color uses a 6-inch color E Ink display with a resolution of 1,448-by-1,072 pixels.
When viewing black and white images or text it renders at 300 pixels per inch, but for color output that's reduced to just 100 pixels per inch.
Color is also limited to just the 4,096 colors offered by the E Ink Kaleido panel.
It's a touchscreen, though, and includes a front light with 32 levels of brightness control.
The chosen operating system is Android 9.0, running on a 2GHz octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and includes 32GB of storage space.
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1 are supported, and the included battery is 1,500mAh.
Altogether it adds up to a device weighing just 150 grams that's capable of displaying PDF, EPUB, MOBI, HTML, DOC, and text files while also offering the ability to side-load Android apps and listen to MP3s using headphones or a wireless Bluetooth speaker.
What may stop a Poke2 Color purchase even for those "keen to try new things" is the price.
It's $299 for the e-reader, although Onyx is throwing in a protective cover for free, which usually costs $39.99.
Even so, the non-color version of the Poke2 only costs $190, clearly showing how much of a premium that color E Ink display adds.
However, the positive in all of this is the fact a color e-reader has hit the market, and that suggests others will follow, they'll get better, and they'll get cheaper.
