Guest Review of the Pocketbook 360 Degree Reader
Review from Kacir, a "Mobile Read" forum member:
Not many people outside Ukraine and Russia have seen the PocketBook 360° reader yet, but the PocketBook 301,a 6 inch older brother of PocketBook 360° and the PocketBook 360° itself, are already well established devices. In December 2009, PocketbookReader.com will launch it's North American marketing campaign.
The PocketBook 360 hardware is manufactured by Netronix and the hardware is almost identical to quite a few other 5" readers such as the Bookeen Cybook Opus. What sets the PB-301 and PB-360 readers apart from the crowd is the firmware. Both PB models have almost identical firmware, so everything I write about PB360 firmware is applicable to PB301 as well.
The design of the case and layout of the controls the PB360 was produced exclusively for the PocketBook company and is available in black or ivory color. I have purchased the ivory model and I was blown away with the quality, contrast and sharpness of its 5 inch display and with overall feel of the device in my hand.
You can hold PB360 in four positions with controls to the left, right, top or bottom – hence the name PocketBook 360°. The display is flipped either manually or by means of built-in G-sensor. If you hold the device in its default position, your right thumb is right on a very nice 4 way D-pad with central OK button, There are two large page-turning buttons placed above and below the D-pad. The buttons are quite stiff, and especially the two large buttons produce an audible click when pressed. This is the only thing I would change, but I can happily live with clicks.
My favorite hardware feature is the detachable lid. The lid snaps on the front of the device protecting the display during the transport. It also seamlessly snaps on the back of the device so you do not lose it when you read.
Thanks to the excellent firmware and the Epson display controller the page-turn is very fast and the device feels very responsive. The flash when the e-ink display briefly inverts during page turn is still here, but is much less noticeable than with older e-ink devices. The vast majority of users will stop noticing the flash on even much slower e-ink devices after a very short period of use.
For working with dictionaries, applications, renaming and copying files and for creating notes, there is on-screen keyboard, that is very, very cleverly designed and convenient to use. The on-screen keyboard is operated from the D-pad. Despite using only 5 keys it is much more convenient than typing on mobile phone.
Everything about the firmware is user configurable. You can assign any function to any of of the eight buttons. Yes, even the on/off button is user configurable. You can configure different action for short and for long button press. You can even load and run your own applications.
The PocketBook company provides a Software Development Kit, complete with device emulator so there are already quite a few high quality third party applications. There are several games, such as minesweeper, sudoku and chess and applications - a calculator, foreign language learning application and even terminal emulator so you can tinker with Linux on the device directly from the device user interface. There is already an improved version of FBReader available – thanks to source code and SDK provided by PocketBook company
The PB360 is equipped with a micro USB port for charging and connecting to our PC. You can also load the books using Micro SD Card slot at the top of the device. When connected to the computer the device appears as a standard USB memory device. You can use PB360 with Windows, Apple, Linux or even FreeBSD machine without any special software. The battery lasts for weeks of reading on one charge. I also like the fact that the battery is user-replaceable.
The FBReader – the main book reading application can be customized to your liking. You can set the font type, font size, margins and line spacing. You can set all those things in “real time” from within FBReader. There are even more options available in the configuration files that are accessible in the /system/configuration directory when you connect the reader to the PC.
In the library application you can choose from several views – list, details, thumbnails. There is an icon next to the book name so you can see the book states - “not yet opened”, “being read” and “finished”. You can of course reset those flags.
The PB360 has one of the best firmware among all 6 and 5 inch devices. It supports many e-book and picture formats - FB2, TXT, PDF, DJVU, RTF, HTML, PRC, CHM, EPUB, DOC, TCR, FB2.ZIP, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and the newest firmware
includes Adobe DRM protected e-pub and pdf file formats.
PocketBook supports the widest range of languages of all the devices, including all Latin and Cyrillic based ones, but also Japanese, Chinese, Korean and even right-to-left languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew. It supports hierarchical file and directory structure, dictionaries (Even from within pdf file!), user supplied fonts, and numerous configuration options.
The design of the case and specification of firmware was crowd-sourced at www.the-ebook.org – a large Russian speaking discussion forum, and it clearly shows. There are many more cool and neat features that I keep discovering. If you are looking for a small portable device with an excellent display, nice protective lid that does not add bulk to the device and with widest range of supported formats, languages and configurable options have a look at the PocketBook 360°. I purchased PocketBook 360° after a very careful and detailed study of all available devices and I am very happy with my decision.
Special thanks to Kacir who provided this informative review.
Not many people outside Ukraine and Russia have seen the PocketBook 360° reader yet, but the PocketBook 301,a 6 inch older brother of PocketBook 360° and the PocketBook 360° itself, are already well established devices. In December 2009, PocketbookReader.com will launch it's North American marketing campaign.
The PocketBook 360 hardware is manufactured by Netronix and the hardware is almost identical to quite a few other 5" readers such as the Bookeen Cybook Opus. What sets the PB-301 and PB-360 readers apart from the crowd is the firmware. Both PB models have almost identical firmware, so everything I write about PB360 firmware is applicable to PB301 as well.
The design of the case and layout of the controls the PB360 was produced exclusively for the PocketBook company and is available in black or ivory color. I have purchased the ivory model and I was blown away with the quality, contrast and sharpness of its 5 inch display and with overall feel of the device in my hand.
You can hold PB360 in four positions with controls to the left, right, top or bottom – hence the name PocketBook 360°. The display is flipped either manually or by means of built-in G-sensor. If you hold the device in its default position, your right thumb is right on a very nice 4 way D-pad with central OK button, There are two large page-turning buttons placed above and below the D-pad. The buttons are quite stiff, and especially the two large buttons produce an audible click when pressed. This is the only thing I would change, but I can happily live with clicks.
My favorite hardware feature is the detachable lid. The lid snaps on the front of the device protecting the display during the transport. It also seamlessly snaps on the back of the device so you do not lose it when you read.
Thanks to the excellent firmware and the Epson display controller the page-turn is very fast and the device feels very responsive. The flash when the e-ink display briefly inverts during page turn is still here, but is much less noticeable than with older e-ink devices. The vast majority of users will stop noticing the flash on even much slower e-ink devices after a very short period of use.
For working with dictionaries, applications, renaming and copying files and for creating notes, there is on-screen keyboard, that is very, very cleverly designed and convenient to use. The on-screen keyboard is operated from the D-pad. Despite using only 5 keys it is much more convenient than typing on mobile phone.
Everything about the firmware is user configurable. You can assign any function to any of of the eight buttons. Yes, even the on/off button is user configurable. You can configure different action for short and for long button press. You can even load and run your own applications.
The PocketBook company provides a Software Development Kit, complete with device emulator so there are already quite a few high quality third party applications. There are several games, such as minesweeper, sudoku and chess and applications - a calculator, foreign language learning application and even terminal emulator so you can tinker with Linux on the device directly from the device user interface. There is already an improved version of FBReader available – thanks to source code and SDK provided by PocketBook company
The PB360 is equipped with a micro USB port for charging and connecting to our PC. You can also load the books using Micro SD Card slot at the top of the device. When connected to the computer the device appears as a standard USB memory device. You can use PB360 with Windows, Apple, Linux or even FreeBSD machine without any special software. The battery lasts for weeks of reading on one charge. I also like the fact that the battery is user-replaceable.
The FBReader – the main book reading application can be customized to your liking. You can set the font type, font size, margins and line spacing. You can set all those things in “real time” from within FBReader. There are even more options available in the configuration files that are accessible in the /system/configuration directory when you connect the reader to the PC.
In the library application you can choose from several views – list, details, thumbnails. There is an icon next to the book name so you can see the book states - “not yet opened”, “being read” and “finished”. You can of course reset those flags.
The PB360 has one of the best firmware among all 6 and 5 inch devices. It supports many e-book and picture formats - FB2, TXT, PDF, DJVU, RTF, HTML, PRC, CHM, EPUB, DOC, TCR, FB2.ZIP, JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and the newest firmware
includes Adobe DRM protected e-pub and pdf file formats.
PocketBook supports the widest range of languages of all the devices, including all Latin and Cyrillic based ones, but also Japanese, Chinese, Korean and even right-to-left languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew. It supports hierarchical file and directory structure, dictionaries (Even from within pdf file!), user supplied fonts, and numerous configuration options.
The design of the case and specification of firmware was crowd-sourced at www.the-ebook.org – a large Russian speaking discussion forum, and it clearly shows. There are many more cool and neat features that I keep discovering. If you are looking for a small portable device with an excellent display, nice protective lid that does not add bulk to the device and with widest range of supported formats, languages and configurable options have a look at the PocketBook 360°. I purchased PocketBook 360° after a very careful and detailed study of all available devices and I am very happy with my decision.
Special thanks to Kacir who provided this informative review.
