| The Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader is a Japanese exclusive that just landed in that market a few weeks ago. For the launch of this new device, Toshiba revised its old ebookstore Blio and transformed it into the BookPlace. How does this e-reader rank up against the competition? Hardware The Toshiba BookPlace Mono features a six inch e Ink Pearl Display with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels. It uses IR technology from Neonode, instead of the traditional capacitive touchscreen. Underneath the hood is a Freescale i.MX508, 800MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. It has 4 GB of internal memory that can be expanded further via the Micro SD card. The MicroUSB cable both charges the unit and facilitates the transfer of data to your device. It is hyped up to last a few months or around 8,000 page turns. WIFI is the only way it will connect to the internet and the Toshiba BookPlace eBook store. This reader, when connected to the internet and browsing the store, is woefully slow. On the main page of the store are 3 or 4 different images hyping up manga, cookbooks, kids books, and other price points. This results in slow navigation because of all the different graphics that are loading up at once. When you are not online, and just browsing the various menus, it tends to be snappy. One of the cool things about the BookPlace Mono is the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack. This allows you to listen to music and audiobooks, but there is no physical speaker on the e-reader. The overall design is very unique. The screen is deeply sunken into the body of the unit, to accommodate the IR touchscreen display. It also has a physical home button, to bring you back to your main screen. Really, it is quite a solid e-reader and the main selling point is buying content from the Toshiba BookPlace eBook store. Software The entire UI is in Japanese and there is no way to load in different languages for an English crowd. Toshiba is focusing exclusively on the Japanese market and enhanced the Japanese bookstore to launch this new e-reader. Let’s talk about the ebookstore, since this is your destination to buy content. There are various categories to browse from, as well as a dedicated search area. You can sort by price in YEN if you want to find cheaper or more expensive books. We noticed at least three thousand books total in the ecosystem that mainly comprise of Manga, Graphic Novels, Cookbooks, Kids Books, and eBooks. Most of the Manga is only available via PDF and the rendering engine to display content is painful. You can’t pinch and zoom to isolate specific panels, but if you press one, you can zero in on a panel. Obviously, page turning in Manga is swiping on the left hand side. It also, has a PDF rendering engine to allow you to scroll around the document. Your main home screen comprises of your library shelf, where the cover art of the books you own are presented in all of their glory. You can sort by list view, but the default is cover view. It looks like there are 15 titles that can be on your main screen. At the very bottom of the display area is links to your library, settings, and the BookPlace. You can configure various options, such as page refresh, WIFI setup, font sizes, and alternative settings. In the video at the bottom of the review, we show you most of the menus and sub-menus. Our Japanese is a bit rusty, but Peter knew enough to set the e-reader up for a review. In order to even start using the reader from scratch, you need to setup a user ID, password, and email address. The Toshiba BookPlace Mono reads EPUB and PDF documents by default. It sells ebooks and manga in both of these formats, but does allow you to upload your own titles that you download from the internet. There is a small sync button, so when you upload your own titles from the Micro USB to USB cable on your PC, you want to make sure to sync your new content. Overall, e-reading is very solid. The traditional EPUB book, turns pages very quickly. You can customize the font size, font type, linespacing, margins, and gesture direction. By default, the e-reader is configured to turn pages when you swipe to the left, but you can change it to the right. The PDF experience is OK, as long as you are just turning pages. The e-reader tends to buckle under the pressure if you are initiating the zoom feature or scrolling around the document. In the end, this is an ebook reader geared towards a very specific market. Toshiba spent a ton of money and man hours relaunching its online store in conjunction with the release of the Mono. You can download free samples of most manga, but we noticed that not all books had samples. Wrap Up Will this reader sell? It is priced at around $140 US, and ebooks cost anywhere from 200 Yen to 900 Yen. I can see this as being a fringe device, as most people are gravitating towards smartphones and tablets for their everyday use. The one thing it has going for it is Manga. Traditionally, it is not in color anyways, so you don’t lose out on not having a full color screen. The art, panels, and overall experience is fairly solid, and even Toshiba’s line of tablets doesn’t tap into the BookPlace ecosystem. I would recommend this over some of the alternatives available in Japan, such as the BookLive Reader by lideo. PROS Great manga selection CONS Tends to stagger under the weight of zooming on PDF files Rating: 7/10 Review of the Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, May 24, 2013
Review of the Toshiba BookPlace Mono e-Reader
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