For several years electronic books and their development stepped far forward – the screen more, there was a illuminated temperature setting light, and the speed is also significantly increased. Prices, of course, remains the same and went up, and many readers in Russia began to cost too much. But what about when you want the e-book with modern filling, but there is no desire to overpay for unnecessary functionality? The answer to this question can give the company the Onyx Boox, presented on the Russian market a book James Cook.
Reader Onyx Boox James Cook, judging by the price refers to the base segment, but in fact it is a very decent model with modern screen E-Ink, for which please only 5500 rubles (price for Yandex.Market at the time of writing). How is it possible that the current model of e-books cost so cheap? Now try to understand, as this book today in our test.
Packaging
Onyx Boox James Cook comes in a white box made of cardboard, a material she was not spared, plus there are magnetic locks that prevent unauthorized opening. Decorated the packaging is very minimalistic: white background, patterns light green color, black color of text and minimum graphics.
At the same time it looks very stylish and harmonious. Above is a short biography of James cook, after whom is named a model, and below shows a detailed list of hardware features books, plus next to it is the small size of the render to assess the design of the device and a brief list of its main advantages. Total, in terms of information packaging gets 4 points from 5 – all rendering could be done larger.
Equipment
Because Onyx Boox James Cook refers to the initial price segment, the luxury of picking here is not worth waiting, which is quite logical. For 5500 rubles, and so offered quite a lot including screen E Ink Carta generation, although at a later date.
In the box, in addition to the books, there is a network charger, a data cable for charging and PC connection, as well as warranty card and instruction manual. The latter contains a significant amount of useful information for those who have not previously used e-books.
Features
The book Onyx Boox James Cook optimized for reading, which is immediately evident on its specifications. The device has got all the basic set of electronics is needed, but beyond that she is nothing and it contributes to high speed operation, the prolongation of life from a single charge and, most importantly, lower total cost.
Information about the characteristics of the reader the buyer can be found in several sources: the box, the complete instructions in Yandex.Market and on the official website of the manufacturer, and everywhere is a detailed list.
screen: E Ink Carta, 6 inch, contrast of 14:1, 600×800 pixels; 16 shades of gray;
– processor: 2 cores, 1 GHz;
– memory: 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB internal, microSD up to 32GB;
– interfaces: microSD, microUSB 2.0;
– battery: built-in, Li-ion, 3000 mAh;
– firmware: Google Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, a native interface;
– housing material: plastic;
– casing color: black;
– dimensions: 170х117х9 millimeters;
– weight: 182 grams;
– working with files: TXT, HTML, RTF, FB3, FB2, FB2.zip, MOBI, CHM, PDB, DOC, DOCX, PRC, EPUB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF, and DjVu.
As can be seen from the list in the book uses one of the latest generations of the screen on electronic ink, known for its high contrast and rapid update. In fact, it’s not even a book, but a kind of Android tablet, and at a certain level of knowledge on it you can even install third-party applications.
Appearance
The book Onyx Boox James Cook filled in the traditional readers of the brand design, which has been run in various models and is recognized as one of the most convenient. The body is made of plastic and has a Soft Touch surface pleasant to the touch and does not collect fingerprints. In fact, the book is impossible to name the brand – Yes, she gets dirty, but does it reluctantly, and cleaning requires less than a minute.
In front, beyond the screen, there are two turning buttons on sides and bottom located 5-way navigation button, needed here due to the fact that the display in this model is non-touch.
On the top face of the manufacturer offered two buttons: power, fine are distinguishable to the touch, and reboot in case of hang up of the device. It is heavily recessed into the body, and during testing the need for it arose.
On the bottom there are a connector for charging microUSB and entry under the microSD memory card to expand the memory.
Ergonomics and build quality
Book Onyx Boox James Cook, and all the latest novelties of the brand, is assembled well enough, and squeaks from her, it succeeded only in bending the body, and that few people will do during the operation. In General, the adjustment of elements at a high level, do not play and not loose.
The book is excellent in one hand subject to the availability of large palms, but she intended to manage with two hands. The turning buttons are located perfectly and have a distinct course with a nice tactile feedback. Large fingers automatically fall on them, so it all worked out.
To use the navigational button is also very convenient – pressing felt good, the buttons are pressed easily without any extra effort. Only owners of large fingers will be quite difficult to hit the right buttons, it would make them slightly larger, which does not affect the design, but would improve the ergonomics in General.
In the end we have a reader with a high degree of convenience when using two hands. Operation comfort maximum, and it is characteristic of books Onyx Boox in this version.
Screen
Onyx Boox James Cook is equipped with a display, generation E Ink Carta with a contrast ratio of 14:1 and a diagonal of exactly 6 inches. Backlight and touch layer had not, so the control is performed by hardware buttons, since they are enough.
Viewing angles of the display the maximum, almost 180 degrees vertically and horizontally, but do not fade in the sun, allowing you to read not only indoors, but outside on a lovely warm day. This feature panels, E Ink based e-ink.
Flipping pages is instantly, no need to wait until the screen is refreshed, and the lack of touch layer might seem correct: the smaller touch display, the lower the probability of damage matrix, because the protective glass, which in this case design is not provided.
The contrast is 14:1 means that when screen reader Onyx Boox James Cook will be a feeling of reading a paper, just printed books. The background is relatively white, to contrast with the black letters, and this has a positive effect on the readability of textual information.
Software
Reader Onyx Boox James Cook runs on the Android 4.2 from Google, over which is set a proprietary shell that’s optimized for comfortable work with text files. The device has a built-in virtual library, a convenient file Manager and a couple of extra applications, including statistics on reading and vocabulary-translator.
Statistics read useful, for example, to monitor the child who needs to read a given for the holidays school program, or an adult who wants to spend less time social networking and read more. Statistics are kept automatically.
At the same time, the dictionary specifically, this model will not be required in the absence of the touch screen to type words letter by letter, moving around the virtual keyboard using the navigation buttons – the fun is highly questionable and time-consuming. But there is a solution: in the standard reading program provides a choice of words to translate directly from the text. For this you need to call the menu in the top bar to activate the dictionary icon that looks like the symbols “AA”.
For opening documents and books meets the program Oreader, one of the best on the market today. Its key feature is tremendously convenient interface which is not overloaded with graphic bells and whistles: you just open the book and see the text with a small progress bar on the bottom, and everything else hidden in a menu, which very convenient to use.
However, these menus can not be open – book turning side buttons, and change the font size on the fly can be a navigation button, which is also involved in the paging. In the book you can change the button settings and choose the most suitable preset.
Oreader have a very wide range of functions, and only one can change the scale of text is not limited. The program can bookmark relevant pages, to include automatic turning of pages, adjust line spacing and even view the footnotes that are not only in paper but also electronic books. And even that’s not all: Oreader allows you to choose not only the size, but even the font type of a few built-in, customize indent the paragraphs, to enable and disable justified alignment and even implement easy navigation as the table of contents, pages available quick transition to the desired page of the document. If you need to find a certain passage in the book, be it a word, a sentence or a whole paragraph, Oreader can help with sewn search tool.
Performance
Readers designed to work not only with books but also with documents of different degree of complexity. In the characteristics indicated support for PDF, and to check on Onyx Boox James Cook was alternately running files of size 100, 200, 300 and 400 MB, including text, formulas and scanned pages.
100-MB file book opened for 10 seconds, over 200 MB thought 15 seconds to open a 300 MB it took her about 20 seconds, which for a budget model very well. And only 400-megabyte container she opened about a minute, but hardly who will work with such files on the e-book initial level, this is, in fact, not intended.
Accessories
As mentioned above, the Onyx Boox James Cook comes with no additional accessories, but this does not mean that they do not exist in principle. In reality the Onyx is a whole range of covers-covers for their 6-inch readers, and only need to choose the appropriate for you personally model on the design. In addition, the format of the case books allows to use it together with universal covers for 6 inch ebook reader or even a desktop stand.
Work offline
Exclusion from the Onyx Boox James Cook of the backlight and the touch layer not only reduced the retail price of the book, but the load on the battery, resulting in sharply increased its autonomy. This is the case when the reader works not just long, but very long.
To check the battery consumption in idle mode has failed because of a week of testing in the style of “on the shelf” book consumed 10 per cent charge, not more. Now divide 100 by 10 and get 10 weeks or 2.5 months. Of course, the calculations are rough, but the book is impossible to defuse so – patience is not enough.
In operation, discharge from 100% to 5% occurred in the process of reading 25,000 pages of text, and it is about 50 books depending on their volume. Given the fact that I read the Russians, according to statistics, not so much, to charge the owner will be required about once every couple of months. Note that 1 page in this case is the amount of text displayed at one time under the default scale in the Oreader.
Conclusion
The strength of the book Onyx Boox James Cook is, of course, price is at the current rate of slightly less than $100. Also, the advantages include the lack of additional films on the screen (backlight of the touch layer) that the result provides greater image contrast in comparison with competing devices.
In other words, less than a hundred dollars you have the opportunity to buy the best eReader for yourself or a child and to forget, finally, about the cost of regular books, the prices of which in recent times, to put it mildly, not encouraging.
For the Onyx Boox James Cook will provide comfortable reading, even outdoors, long battery life and very convenient ergonomics of the body. Will just have to buy her a case, and you will have a reader that will serve you faithfully for a very long time.
Pros Onyx Boox James Cook
– good build quality;
– great battery life;
– the screen on electronic ink;
firmware Android;
– work with a wide range of formats;
– ergonomic design, pleasant design.
Cons Onyx Boox James Cook
– no case included.
© 2017 – 2019, paradox. All rights reserved.
