PocketBook Touch Lux 623 reader review

PocketBook Touch Lux 623

A fairly small number of e-books with an e-ink display are currently presented on the market. Such devices include e-books Barnes & Noble Reader with Glowlight, Kobo Glo, Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, AirBook City Light HD and PocketBook Touch Lux 623, the latter of which is devoted to this review.

Contents of delivery

The PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book is delivered in a thin black cardboard box, on which the reader itself is depicted and its main technical characteristics are written in several languages. In addition to the 6-inch PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book itself, the delivery box contains a white micro-USB / USB cable, a manual and a warranty card. There is no power adapter or cover included in the package.

Appearance

The PocketBook Touch Lux reader has the same body as its predecessor with the PocketBook Touch touchscreen, but if the PocketBook Touch is presented only in black and white, then the PocketBook Touch Lux e-book is sold in three colors at once - black, white and gray. Due to the fact that the bodies of both readers are the same, all Touch reader accessories are suitable for the Touch Lux model.

The sides and front panel of the PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book are made in the form of a single piece of smooth, but not glossy plastic. The back panel of the e-book is also plastic, but not smooth, but rubberized soft-touch coating. The case expands slightly towards the bottom, which makes it more comfortable to hold the device weighing 200 grams with one hand.

The top side, right side and left side have no ports or connectors. All interface connectors are located on the lower side face, it contains an audio output (3.5 mm), a microUSB port, a tiny reset hole (forced reboot), a power / lock button and a slot for a microSD memory card.

Most of the front panel of PocketBook Touch Lux 623 is occupied by a display, under which there are a light indicator, PocketBook logo and four mechanical buttons - "Home", "Menu", "Left" and "Right". The surface of the Left and Right buttons is concave so that they can be found blindly. The indicator light can be turned off in the settings if it is not needed. Long press of the Home button brings up the task manager, but this is the default, if desired, the user can assign another action to it.

Display

The PocketBook Touch Lux model is equipped with an excellent 6-inch screen made using E-ink Pearl HD technology with a resolution of 1024 x 758 pixels. The display supports touch control and has a bright backlight. The high resolution of the display allows for more accurate display of detailed information and small print. The superiority of the E-ink Pearl HD display of the PocketBook Touch Lux model over readers with displays having a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels is visible to the naked eye.

The capacitive touch layer allows you not to immerse the e-ink mattress deep into the body of the e-book. The disadvantage of this technology is that the luminous film of the display backlight and the capacitive sensor slightly degrade the image quality.

The backlighting of the PocketBook Touch Lux model is the same as that of other readers with displays made using e-ink technology - five LEDs are installed on the lower edge of the display, which illuminate a special light-guide film that illuminates the e-ink matrix over its entire area. The display backlight is turned on and off by long pressing the "Menu" button or in the settings menu of the e-book. It is also worth noting that in the settings menu, the backlight can not only be turned on or off, but the brightness level can be changed by dragging the corresponding slider.

Functionality

Pocketbook Touch Lux Reader recognizes many e-book formats, including popular and widespread formats such as FB2, PDF, EPUB, PDF (DRM), EPUB (DRM), DJVU, FB2.ZIP, DOC, DOCX, TXT, HTM, HTML etc. Also, thanks to the built-in music player, the Pocketbook Touch Lux e-book can play MP3 files. The reader is capable of displaying images in JPEG, PNG, BMP and TIFF formats. In addition, various pre-installed applications and games can be launched on the Pocketbook Touch Lux e-book.The Pocketbook Touch Lux model is equipped with a built-in Wi-Fi module that allows you to view web pages using a pre-installed browser. Also, the connection with the global network is useful when using an RSS reader, viewing the content of the BookLand branded bookstore, the ReadRate resource and synchronizing with the PocketBook Sync service.

The permanent memory in the PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book is four gigabytes, but only 3280 megabytes are available to the user. If the built-in memory is not enough, then it can be expanded using a microSD memory card with a capacity of up to 32 gigabytes.

The autonomous operation of the PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book is provided by a non-removable rechargeable battery with a capacity of 1000 mAh. The manufacturer assures that one battery charge will be enough for eight thousand page flips, without mentioning that the battery life will also depend on the backlight brightness, Wi-Fi module activity, display decay delay, etc.

Interface

The PocketBook Touch Lux Reader has a very rich, but intuitive interface, which even a beginner will be able to understand. An important role in facilitating operation is played by a combination of touch and hardware-button control.

Most of the main screen of the PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book is occupied by the "Recent Events" window, in which you can see recently opened books, recently added books, as well as social recommendations for various books. Below the Recent Events window is the Main Menu window with the items Library, Settings, Store, Music, Notes, Applications, Dictionary and Search. At the very bottom of the main screen is the "Service menu", in which you can adjust the brightness of the backlight, wireless connections, call the task manager, which provides the ability to manually close unnecessary active applications, and see the battery level indicator.

In the main menu item "Library" the user can see all e-books available on the PocketBook Touch Lux reader, group them by folders, genre, author, format, series, date of addition and several other parameters. You can also sort books in the library, choose one of three types of displaying the list of books, and assign one of three formats for displaying free and occupied memory of the PocketBook Touch Lux e-book. While reading a book, the user sees only the text and reading progress (current and last pages), but these are the default settings and, if necessary, you can add a couple more useful parameters to the bottom line.

By touching the center of the screen, you can call up an additional menu, in which you can set a bookmark, make a note, start the voice acting of the Text-to-Speech text, see the content of the book being read, its rating, use the dictionary, go to the expanded text settings menu, change the text orientation and use the slider quick transition between pages.

In addition, in the additional menu, you can assign other actions to the hardware keys, activate text anti-aliasing, adjust the text reading parameters, select one of the USB connection modes, and set the frequency of page refresh (always, never, every 10 pages, 5 pages or 3 pages). The penultimate item of the additional menu is devoted to saving battery power, allows you to find out the battery charge level in percent, and is called "Battery saving". The last item of the additional menu is called "Device Information"; this section contains brief technical characteristics of the e-book and information on the amount of free memory.

Exploitation

Mostly pleasant impressions remain from the operation of the PocketBook Touch Lux 623 e-book, the reader's body is light and ergonomic, it is comfortable and easy to hold in the hand. Turning the pages of books can be done both by means of hardware buttons and by touching the touch screen, which is also very convenient.It is worth paying special attention to the fact that text files of the EPUB format are opened in the AdobeViewer program with a rather ascetic number of settings. While most text files of other formats, including the widespread FB2 format, open in the beloved FBReader application.

Very convenient in practice is the ability to activate the backlight by pressing the hardware button "Menu" for one second, you don't need to dig into the settings for a long time. Equipping the e-book with a slot for a memory card with a capacity of up to 32 gigabytes, it allows you to store on it not only a huge number of books, but also a large music library. The reader's support for MP3 audio playback allows you not only to read books and listen to music, but also listen to audiobooks. The sound quality of the pre-installed player (a small background noise is heard) is unlikely to please music lovers, but it is quite suitable for listening to audiobooks. Image noise can be noticed when the display backlight is on, which can negatively affect the comfort of using the reader in the dark. In a quiet room, you can even hear a distinctly quiet crackle of the backlighting system, but this is quite acceptable for this type of backlighting, although it is uncomfortable for the user.

And yet, the biggest drawback of the PocketBook Touch Lux e-book is its small capacity battery. Even the direct competitor of the PocketBook Touch Lux model - the Amazon Paperwhite e-book, which has similar technical characteristics, is equipped with a 1420 mAh battery, and not 1000 mAh, like the PocketBook Touch Lux. It is unrealistic to scroll through the 8000 pages declared by the manufacturer on a single battery charge, since the display sensor, LED backlight and Wi-Fi module also consume a lot of energy, and therefore the actual number of pages that can be viewed on one battery charge does not exceed several hundred.

conclusions

The PocketBook Touch Lux model is a good 6-inch e-book with a good backlit display made using E-Ink Pearl HD technology, recognizing touches, a solid set of functions and supporting all popular text file formats. The reader can be subtly personalized and customized. The disadvantages of the PocketBook Touch Lux model include low autonomy, an ascetic package and a little overpriced.