The Onyx Boox Poke 3 is a dedicated e-reader and provides a great experience for reading ebooks. This is the only product in the Onyx portfolio that doesn’t have a WACOM screen and a dedicated note taking app. Instead, it provides great hardware, that makes it faster than the Kindle or Kobo.
The Poke 3 features a 6 inch E INK Carta HD capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1448×1072 and 300 PPI. It has a glass based screen that is flush with the bezel. It has a great front-lit display with white LED lights, that provide a great reading experience when in dark rooms. There are amber LED lights, they provide a warm candlelight effect, so you can read at night, and help mute the white light. There are 10 LED lights total, 5 white and 5 amber.
Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor, 2GB of DDR4X RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The Poke 3 now has a USB-C OTG port to power and transfer documents. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 to connect up wireless headphones or an external speaker. It has a microphone and powered by a respectable 1,500 mAH battery. On the software side of things it has Android 10 and Google Play, so there is no shortage of apps to install. If you are new to Onyx Boox, I recommend Moon+ Reader, Overdrive Libby for library books and Libovox for free audiobooks.
How is the Poke 3 different from the Poke 2? It has a faster Snapdragon processor and faster RAM. It has USB-C, whereas the old version had Micro USB, these older ports tend to break the more you attach the cable to charge it or transfer data from your PC/MAC to the reader. Bluetooth has also been upgraded from 4 to 5 and it supports both analog and digital audio, which primarily just applies to USB-C based headphones, digital provides better audio quality, but the headphones are normally more expensive.
The retail packaging of the Poke 3 color scheme is black. On the front is a embossed outline of the device, with piano black lettering. On the back of the box is a list of tech specs in around 12 different languages. There is also a number of certifications that Onyx has passed in order to have a global release.
When you open the box for the first time the e-reader is on the front, encased in a static proof bag. There is also a free screen protector that comes with it. Opening up the bottom tray is the USB-C cable and documentation.
The overall color scheme of the Poke 3 is black. It has a two tone bezel. Surrounding the bezel is piano black and on the bottom is a very dark grey, this is where the home button is. The back of the device is a one tone black. At the very top is a power button and status indicator light, on the bottom is a USB-C port and microphone port. The microphone is not only used for voice chat, but also video chat, through apps like Discord.
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.
