Pocketbook Pocketbook Pro 902
Pocket Book 902 9.7” EBook Reader Review
Our Pocketbook Pro 902 arrived with eager anticipation. Surprisingly, after reviewing the larger display readers on the market, the shortlist started off short and came down to two very quickly. It was between this one and the Amazon Kindle DX. Both were similarly priced, and it appeared that they both used the same E-Ink display. The 9.7” monochrome display resolution of 1200×825 pixels with the ability to use grey. We were not disappointed by the clarity of text and diagrams!
The box.
As a surprise to many that are not familiar with E-Ink technology, out of the box, the display shows a “PocketBook No1 Reader” advertisement. One is inclined to wonder how to peel off this protective membrane showing the advert so the real display is uncovered! Of course, this is the real display and the technology allows the display to remain showing the last page of text, even when the device is powered off.
Talking of the packaging the unit is supplied in a smart green box and unlike some competing products, comes with a slip-case that appears to be made of furry-cardboard with a green inner liner. The slip case does the job very well.
To get you started, the Pocketbook came with over 1000 e-books containing the old classics which are out of copyright. There were many languages of books, but thankfully they were categorized by language. We didn’t need the non-English versions so we removed them using the USB-PC connection where the Pocketbook appears as a regular Flash thumb drive.
The on-off button has to be held down to activate the device, another useful thoughtful to prevent accidental turn-on when carrying it around in its case. When powered-up, by default changes briefly to an advertisement for “Bookland” (the main online bookshop that is associated with Pocketbooks), and then drops into the main screen. The main screen can be customised to an extent, but normally shows a clock, a list of function icons such as ‘Library’, ‘Notes’ ‘Applications’ ‘Music’, and probably most importantly of all a short list of recently opened e-books. The latter means that it’s only a few button presses to jump right to the last page you were reading (as the device automatically remembers the page for you).
There are probably two main reasons why you might be choosing a large format display. The first is if your vision is poor; you may need to enlarge the text significantly. On a smaller screen you may end up with only (literally) a handful of words on each screen.
The Protective Case with green liner
With the Pocketbook Pro 901 a pair of buttons on the right hand edge allow the user to increase or decrease the font size while viewing a text. For most E-book digital formats, text will re-flow appropriately, so you don’t need to keep scrolling across the screen to read parts that have gone off to the right.
In fact PocketBook surprised us by re-flowing Adobe .pdf books too when the font size is increased. Even so, .pdf documents are designed for a specific page size, and the original layout becomes a bit lost. That brings us to the second reason why a large format screen might be desirable. The ‘902 is very capable of displaying a full size ‘letter’ or ‘A4’ page on one of its own pages. For anything with a few diagrams, tables or technical book layout, the larger screen proved to be invaluable.
Easy to change font size.
Ergonomically the Pocketbook is more suited to right-handed people as the page-turn buttons are on the right. Of course the device orientation is controllable by a in-built sensor, so as you rotate the reader the orientation usually shifts. The pocketbook does a good job of rendering the screen between portrait and landscape formats for reading. We were quite happy reading by holding the device in one hand only (the right hand!). It is light enough to not cause strain, and the page turn buttons can be easily operated by the thumb.
For entering text to the device, for example for use in the web-browser or in the search function, one invokes a ‘soft keyboard’ on the screen. Unfortunately, without a touch screen, entering text is very slow using the joystick style for cursor movement button. Other readers have miniature qwerty keyboards which although are still fiddly, are probably a little faster. It’s a good job that the main device function of simply reading books is not affected by this slightly frustrating input method.
As the use of the e-reader with a larger LCD for technical documents is an important one, we decided to throw a few technical books at it to see how long it took to load and the responsiveness. We used an 800 page A5 format book “Head First Statistics” from O’Reiley, which contained many diagrams and changes of text. The book was copied onto a regular removable 32GByte micro SD card, and inserted into the Pocketbook. The ‘paper size’ for the original .pdf file was 9.25” x 8”. The E-Ink display size of the pocketbook Pro 902 was 8” by 5.5” (approximately), however paper books need margins, and the Pocketbook nicely clipped the unused space on the left and right side of each page, thus saving maybe an inch or more. The resulting page was quite readable.
Performance is the nemesis of E-readers, which of course are primarily designed for long battery use. Large .pdf files containing complex layouts demand high CPU and memory resources. The PocketBook coped with all the documents we gave it, although once while paging through a large complex .pdf document it appeared to ‘drop’ the text and returned to the main menu. It resumed the book without issue. This is far better than some competing E-readers that we have tested which would hang on large documents (if they loaded at all). Compared to PCs and Tablets, particularly on .pdf files the Pocketbook is slow; page turns taking maybe 1-2 seconds. It’s fine for sequential reading, but can get a bit frustrating trying to zip a few pages backwards and forwards. There is a ‘go-to’ page, and a ‘search’ facility for non linear reading, but again without a touch screen and a fast CPU, the functions are only adequate if you can wait a few seconds.
Some of the other facilities offered by the Pocketbook were ‘Text to Speech’ , where a synthesised voice attempts to read the text. This facility was adequate, and similar in comparison to other E-readers. The speaker volume and clarity was excellent.
The dictionary was not as good as some of the better known E-readers as it didn’t offer synonyms, and we felt it’s operation was not as well integrated into the reading task. It did offer foreign translations of words which might be handy if your book is not in your own tongue and you need a little help now and then.
Easy to use buttons.
The Pocketbook can play background music of course, although this shortens the use of the battery. Its WIFI connection was undramatic and caused no problems without 802.11n setup. Bluetooth for wireless headphones and keyboard are supported, but we did not test these. USB connectivity comes in two modes, ‘Charge’ or ‘PC’. In PC mode thee device presents two new drives to the computer (one being the micro-sd card, the other being on-board storage). Transfer rates over 2MBytes/sec were adequate. It must be said that organisation of files on the device is possibly more orientated toward those with an aptitude for navigating around. We preferred this approach as the user is in control, but it could confuse the non-technical.
The last big question when reviewing an E-book Reader has to be about the ease of acquiring and using digital E-book content. Whilst other popular E-Readers seem to strongly integrate the preferred supplier into the delivery system possibly making it difficult to load content from other suppliers, the Pocketbook is much more open in its approach. Not only that, but it seems to support the widest range of E-book types we have seen (including Adobe DRM protected content). Again, for this reason, it might be a little less slick at the buying E-books to delivery system as competing vendors, but with a little more procedural knowledge on the part of the user, virtually any digital bookstore can be your supplier! PocketBooks have teamed up with Bookland.
This store is accessible from the ‘library’ section of the E-reader, but it seems to really only invoke the inbuilt web-browser to go to their site. The E-reader can be is registered through them but the integration seems to be fairly loose, still requiring manual login. However, the reader will appreciate that this E-book reader was not purchased so that all the digital material is channelled from one source!
Pocketbook Pro 902 Technical Specification Summary
Library Screen.
Core platform CPU: 533 MHz
RAM Internal memory: 256 MB
Internal Flash Storage: 1 Gb
Screen size: 9.7″
Resolution (pixels): 1200 x 825
I/O port USB-port: Micro-USB x1
Earphone jack (Audio out): 3.5 mm stereo x1
Micro SD External Micro SD card: x1 (32GB Max)
Communication WiFi: (802.11 b/g) + BlueTooth
G-sensor: Standard
Battery capacity: 5.5 W, 3.7 V / 1530 mAH (removable). Up to 7000 page flips on one charge
Speaker: 0.5 W x2 speakers
Special function: Text to speech
Operating system: Linux (Kernel Linux 2.6.28)
