Pocketbook Era Color e-reader with Kaleido 3

Pocketbook has just announced the Pocketbook Era Color; this new e-reader will come out at the end of April 2024. The big selling point is including the latest generation of colour e-paper technology, Kaleido 3. It combines an award-winning design with premium features, including audiobook support, built-in speaker, Text-to-Speech function, SMARTlight, and IPX8 water protection.

The Pocketbook Era Color features a 7-inch e-paper display with a black and white resolution 1264×1660 with 300 PPI. The colour resolution is 632×840 with 150 PPI. There are over 4096 colours that can be displayed on the screen, which makes it ideal for viewing e-book cover art, comics, webtoons, or PDF files. SMARTlight ensures the most comfortable reading experience in any lighting, allowing users to select the ideal front light tone, from cold bluish for reading in daylight to warm and calming yellow for reading before sleep. A slider bar can mix and match both the white and amber LED lights.

The 300 PPI and 150 colour PPI will ensure that the fonts are razor-sharp, making the reading experience glorious. A layer of glass protects the screen and is flush with the bezel. The screen features enhanced anti-scratch protection, which gives more confidence in the device’s safety, even in the most active use. Moreover, the waterproof Pocketbook Era is ideal for reading in the bathroom or outdoors. The e-reader is protected from water according to the international standard IPX8, which means the device can be immersed in fresh water to 2 meters for up to 60 minutes without any harmful effects.

In terms of the industrial design, it is very sleek. The colour scheme is all black, and the back of the reader is perforated with over one hundred lines, which provides excellent grip without leaving many fingerprints. There are page-turn buttons on the right side of the screen, making it easy to hold the e-reader with one hand while turning pages.

Underneath the hood is a quad-core 1.8 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. The USB-C port allows you to charge the device and transfer data. You can listen to music via the single speaker on the bottom of the reader or pair wireless headphones or earbuds using Bluetooth 5.4. Another helpful feature for those who prefer listening to books is Text-to-Speech, which turns any text into a natural-sounding audio track by voice. With just two clicks, the device will read any text file aloud in one of the 26 available languages. It is powered by a 2500 mAh battery. The dimensions are 134.3 × 155 × 7.8 mm and weighs 235g.

The Pocketbook Era Color supports a myriad of ebook formats, such as ACSM, CBR, CBZ, CHM, DJVU, DOC, DOCX, EPUB, EPUB(DRM), FB2, FB2.ZIP, HTM, HTML, MOBI, PDF, PDF (DRM), PRC, RTF, TXT. Pocketbook pays Adobe a monthly fee for the Content Server. This allows users access to Adobe Digital Editions to sideload ebooks in EPUB or PDF purchased from other bookstores. You can also use Digital Editions to load library books borrowed from a company like Overdrive. Pocketbook is very versatile in this regard. Pocketbook also has a bookstore filled with thousands of ebooks.