The Onyx Boox Poke series of e-readers are some of the best in the business. Onyx refreshes its entry-level model once per year, and its latest generation is called the Poke 5. This device is geared solely toward reading manga, webtoons, ebooks and audiobooks. The Onyx Boox Poke 5 retails for $179.99 and comes with a free magnetic sleep cover case; you can order it today from the Good e-Reader Store, which is shipping now.
The Onyx Boox Poke 5 features an E INK Carta HD e-paper display. The resolution is 1448×1072, with 300 PPI. This type of resolution is the best in the business and makes reading a pure joy; fonts are razor-sharp. The screen is capacitive touch-enabled, so you can pinch, zoom and gesture. Onyx is employing a new grayscale system with the Poke 5; instead of the typical 16 levels, they use 256 systemwide. This new grayscale system makes a huge difference when reading image-heavy content like surfing the internet, looking at pictures or reading PDF files.
The colour scheme is black on the front and back of the device, and it has a flush screen and bezel design, protected by a layer of glass. Onyx uses a warm and cool lighting system due to the white and amber LED lights that project light evenly across the screen and not into your eyes.
Underneath the hood are a Qualcomm Quad Core 2.0 GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. This doesn’t sound like enough storage for power users; an SD card can house an additional 1 TB of content. There is Bluetooth 5.0 for connecting wireless headphones or earbuds to listen to audiobooks, podcasts or music with the stock player. There is a microphone for voice communication apps. A USB-C port is available for charging or transferring data. It is powered by a 1500 mAh battery, and the dimensions are 148x108x6.8 and weighs 160 g.
Google Android 11 and Google Play are available on the Poke 5. To enable Google Play, you have to switch the Play Store to one in the settings menu. The entire process takes just a couple of minutes. This gives users the ability to download millions of free and paid apps. App performance is pretty good, thanks to the Speed Mode system, which degrades image quality with a performance boost. This makes browsing all of the Play Store very quick, and you can even listen to streaming audio on Spotify or YouTube Music with no dropped frames. The stock Neoreader ebook app is ideal for sideloading in your collection of ebooks, whether they are located in the cloud or housed on your PC. The device supports pdf, djvu, azw, azw3, doc, doc, docx, epub, fb2, fbz, html, mobi, odt, PRC, rtf, sxw, trc, txt, chm, and ppt.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.