Over the course of the last year many companies have expressed interest about designing and marketing a 13.3 inch e-reader. Many of the devices currently in development are in limo and the only customer to actively bring a device to market, is Sony. Where in the world are the 13.3 inch e-readers?
There are two prevailing technologies used in large screen e-readers. E Ink Fina is the cheaper option, since its made of glass, but its not very viable in a 13.3 inch device due to the fact it can easily shatter and is not very portable. The other technology is Mobius, which is what the Sony Digital Paper employs. It features a plastic screen, so its very flexible and lightweight, but tremendously expensive.
Without any fanfare the Pocketbook CAD was at an e Ink booth in January 2014 at CES. It featured a 13.3 inch screen and utilized Fina. The device was designed for construction business, designed to work on construction sites with dump & moisture proof body
In December 2014 Pocketbook announced that they had developed a second e-reader called the Pocketbook CAD Flex. This model upgraded from a glass based Fina e-paper screen to a 13.3 inch Mobius panel. This is the exact same screen that the popular Sony Digital Paper employs. The processor was increased to a 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU, but the RAM was decreased to 512 MB and internal storage lowered to 8 GB. They also mentioned that the final price will be around $574.00.
Onyx has not officially announced anything yet, but the are developing a 13.3 inch e-reader. They basically said back in 2014 they wanted to do it, but nothing really has been heard about it yet. We do have some new rumors surrounding the device though.
The Onyx 13.3 inch e-reader will have a functioning prototype this Autumn. This device will employ an e-Ink Mobius display, but the plastic screens are still terribly expensive and the company wants the display to come down in price. Technically they could release it in two months but it will be at such a high price, that few people would pay the money for one.
Not very much market research has been done on the mass production costs of Fina and Mobius display screens or how much money users would fork over to buy an 13.3 inch alternative to the DPT-S1. So the question is, how much would you pay for one?
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.