PocketBookEra Color E-Reader | Eye-Friendly 7'' E-Ink Kaleido 3 Touch-Screen | Audio-Book & E-Book Reader | Waterproof | Text-to-Speech Function | Built-in Speaker | WiFi & Bluetooth | Stormy Sea

If you're in the market for a color e-reader, this is a great choice. Colors are muted (as with all color e-ink), and the screen is darker than the monochrome version, which necessitates more backlight use, and thus battery power. This is inherent to all color e-ink displays, so understand that before buying. If color is not critical, buy the monochrome version.The build quality is top notch. I was a little concerned that with the buttons on the side would be prone to accidental clicking. They are not, and in fact the shape of the buttons actually improve single handed grip considerably. Holding the Era in one hand, and using the right arrow button to advance pages is comfortable. The device is fairly light (about the same as a the Kindle Paper White). It will just fit in a wide pant pocket. The back side's grooved surface looks OK, but did not improve grip the way I expected.PocketBook's software is a breath of fresh air. There are a plethora of customization options. Every physical button can be customized to do whatever the user wants. Screen tap, and gesture actions can also be fully customized. The store can be hidden; Something I appreciate as US customer. The library can be sorted many ways, including by genre and series, and it can also be searched. Books can be marked as favorites, and users can make their own collections. There is a task manager (which can be mapped to a physical key like most every other feature), which makes switching between apps effortless. There is a nice browser, allowing about as good a browsing experience as possible on e-ink. Voice integration is better than I expected. Multiple voices are available for download to suit most tastes. Playback is relatively smooth, and playback speed is adjustable. There is voice playback in the dictionary tab, which is very helpful with foreign word pronunciation.It's a modifiable device too. If you want to use KOReader, installing it is a snap, and file associations can be set so clicking on a book opens KOReader automatically. If you want to dig deeper, all kinds of other changes can be made. Like changing the application menu, changing app icons to whatever you want, Changing the app menu categories, sorting, and hiding apps altogether, and the developers even included helpful comments in the devices config files to make customization easier.What's not to like? It would be nice if bookmarks had a dropdown context menu like Kindle. The dictionary/translation feature opens as a tab; A window like on Kindle or KOReader would be better. If PocketBook entered the US market, quite a few things could be improved, but it's understandable why they have not.

Color e-ink just isn't there, still. It's OK, but not contrasty or clear enough, for me. Others might be OK with it. I also don't like having to convert every book I buy on Amazon to ePub or whatever. I found a free eBook - turned out to be a PDF - and tried to change the font, and there doesn't appear to be any way to do this. The manual also doesn't mention the ability to change fonts or even font size(!!). I have to assume it's possible, but... I didn't want to have to create an account, and buy an eBook from the Pocketbook Store to find out. But seems to me it would be in the manual.I also didn't like the buttons. They're flush with the device and there are 4 of them. Easy to press the wrong button. I also thought the overall speed of the device was a bit slow compared to my Kindles.On the plus side, the screen was nice and bright at 100%.Personally, I will be waiting for the new Kindle Color coming out in 2025 in 6" and 10" sizes. Supposed to be great color. Next Gen kind of thing. And fast. Hopefully, they just take the Oasis and make it color and faster, at least tfor the 6" version.

Lightweight, but with a large enough screen for comfortable reading. Having seen color E Ink screens before, I knew it wouldn’t be like a tablet, but it’s still much better than black and white. I liked the warm backlighting, user-friendly main menu, and pretty simple file synchronization. Most importantly, it’s easy to hold – the hand doesn’t get tired, and the mechanical buttons are well-placed (I had some difficulties with this on my previous e-reader). Plus, the water resistance is a nice bonus.

I have a lot of experience with different Pocketbook and Kobo ereaders. The Pocketbook Era B&W is one of my personal favorites so I thought I'd give the color variation a shot. The ergonomics of the Color vs B&W are exactly the same.Software-wise it is exactly the same as any other modern Pocketbook I've used. Their features are basically in parity with each other so you should know what to expect here. usb-C OTG works with this model so you can "expand" your memory with usb-C flash drives.I'm not bothered by the dimmer Kaleido 3 screen in comparision to B&W... my main gripe with the Era Color is the massively uneven frontlight that I could not ignore. Out of all the models of ereaders I have used this was one of the worst frontlights I've seen (The Onyx Boox Color 7 frontlight I had was an uneven neon green tinge).Maybe I had a bad model and other Era Color's frontlight are calibrated better. In my experience though, it is much more worth it to buy either the Inkpad Color 3 or Verse Pro Color which both are slightly sharper with their recessed screens and have much more even lighting.