Pocketbook has just announced two new e-readers that will be available sometime in the next month or two. The Pocketbook Touch Lux 4 is one of their flagship e-readers and has a new front-lit display that is better than previous models. The Basic Lux 2 is similar to the entry level Amazon Kindle Basic.
The Pocketbook Touch Lux 4 features a six inch E Ink Carta display with a resolution of 1024×758 and uses a capacitive touchscreen. It has a new front-lit display, packing in more LED lights than previous models due to the color temperature system. Pocketbook told me that the Lux 4 features the same design as the InkPad 3.
Underneath the hood is a Freescale/NXP 1GHZ single core processor, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. There is a MICROSD support for an additional 32GB of storage. If you max out the SD, you should have room for over 3,000 ebooks.
PocketBook Touch Lux 4 supports 17 book formats and 4 graphic formats, such as JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF. The built-in Wifi together with the PocketBook Cloud, Dropbox PocketBook and Send-to-PocketBook services allow easy delivery of e-content onto the e-reader without connecting it to a PC. The preinstalled Abbyy Lingvo dictionaries offer 24 language combinations for reading books in foreign languages.
The new PocketBook Touch Lux 4 is available in obsidian black, matte silver and emerald colours. It weighs 155 g and dimensions are 161.3 × 108 × 8 mm. It has a 1500 mAh battery, so it should last two to three weeks of constant use.
This e-reader will be available next week or so and it will retail for 119 EUR.
The Pocketbook Basic Lux 2 does not have a capacitive touchscreen display, everything is controlled via the D-Pad. This device is six inches and uses a E Ink Carta screen with a resolution of 1024×758. You can read at night via the front-lit display, but it has less LED’s than the Lux 4.
Underneath the hood is a Freescale 1GHZ processor, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a SD card capable of an additional 32GB of storage. The built-in Wifi together with the PocketBook Cloud, Dropbox PocketBook and Send-to-PocketBook services give convenient opportunities to deliver any e-content to the device without having connection to a PC. The e-reader supports 17 book and 4 graphic formats, such as JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, without conversion. The preinstalled dictionaries offer two language combinations to read books in foreign languages.
I really dig the design of the Basic Lux 2, it is small and has a single home button, it looks like a smartphone and there are two manual page turn buttons beside it. What looks like the home button is actually a D-Pad, this is used to navigate around the UI. The e-reader is available in obsidian black and matte silver colours. It weighs 155G and dimensions are 161.3 × 108 × 8 mm.
The Basic Lux 2 should be available in a week or two and will retail for 85 EUR.
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.
