The Tolino Vision 2 was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the e-reader is now available at Worldview, Thalia, Club Bertelsmann and Hugendubel.
The mantra of the Tolino Alliance is to battle Amazon in Germany, and not let a big company dominate the market. The Tolino Vision 2 features the latest in e-Paper innovation, e Ink Carta. This is the exact screen technology found on the Kindle Paperwhite 2 and Kobo Aura H2O. This will not only provide higher contrast, but also eliminate the full page refresh issues that have plagued e-readers since the very beginning. The overall resolution is a very respectable 1024 × 758 pixels and has 212 PPI. It is also being billed as splash proof, so you can dump your coffee on it, and it won’t destroy the device, its not quite waterproof though.
The actual selling of the e-reader is actually quite interesting. Each Tolino partner has the freedom to establish their own pricing. The Vision 2 is currently retailing for 149€, but Club Bertelsmann is currently offering the best deal in the country, only charging 129€. This holiday season you can expect the price will likely fall between 105€ to 99€.
The Vision 2 has experienced a high level of demand this year, pre-orders had reached over 10,000 units. This has created a supply problem with Thalia and eBook.de who are all estimating two weeks of delivery time. Part of the reason why the supplies are stretched so thin is because the Alliance has expanded the sale of the e-reader to railway station bookstores and independent booksellers via Libri.
I think the Vision 2 is a really good e-reader if you speak German. The online bookstore mainly just stocks titles in that language but it does have an English mode for advanced users that know how to load in their own books and have no problem using Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.
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.