Onyx Boox has just released the Poke 2 color e-reader. This device had a very limited production run and less than one hundred got made. The company wants to run an experiment to see if there is a market for this type of product. This is due to the limitation of E INK Kalidio, which is able to display over 4,096 different colors. The front-light has to be on for the colors to display properly, and they tend to look muted with a glass layer, so Onyx is using a sunken screen and bezel, which is what Pocketbook did with their color e-reader.
The Poke 2 Color features a six inch E INK Carta HD Display with a resolution of 1072×1448 with 300 PPI. The color panel can display over 4,096 different colors with 100 PPI. The screen is sunken, so it doesn’t have a layer of glass on top of it. It also has a front-lit display, so you can read at night or during low light conditions. It does not employ a color temperature system, because amber LED lights severely detract from the color experience.
Underneath the hood is an Octa-core 2.0 GHZ processor, 32GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM. It is powered by a 1,500 mAh battery. One of the only downsides of this device is the lack of a USB-C port, instead it is employing a Micro USB port with OTG. What is OTG? It basically allows you to plugin accessories into the USB port and they will just work, with no drivers necessary. This includes keyboards, mice, foot pedals, USB expansion slots and the like. It also has WIFI 2.4 and 5HZ for blazeningly quick internet speed and also Bluetooth 4.1 for wireless accessories and a microphone for things like Discord chat or Skype Messaging.
It remains to be seen if Onyx will continue to produce these devices, or if it was just a test.
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.
