Elegant Mr.Book

Mr. Beech, meet these users of Habrahabr. Habr, meet, this is Mr.Book. Stylish and elegant. With it, you can read books, listen to music, surf the Internet and watch pictures. In general, another interesting e-book, and, as requested, in the average price range.

In fact, of course, this book has only a painted butterfly, but this does not make it less steep.

general information

Understand that this book is stylish, you start literally at a glance even at the box. She is minimalist, but beautiful enough.

Grade fairly modest:

Mr.Book
Leather Case
USB cable
Adapter ~ 220V

But I will turn to the hero himself. To begin with, I think it is worth getting acquainted with its technical characteristics.

Display: Sipix touch screen (electronic paper), 6 inches, resolution 800 × 600 dots, 16 grayscale
Processor: 400 MHz
RAM: 128 MB
Built-in memory: 2 GB
Wired interface: USB 2.0
Radio interfaces: WiFi: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
Expansion slot: For microSD / microSDHC / TransFlash memory cards
G-sensor: yes
Supported file formats: FB2, PDF, EPUB, TXT, HTML, JPG, PNG, BMP, MP3
Connector: 3.5mm stereo headphone output
Battery: Lithium-ion, capacity 1530 mAh
Power supply: AC adapter, 100 ~ 240 V, 50/60 Hz.
Dimensions: 124 x 170 x 8.8 mm
Weight: 200 g

Appearance

The design of this book is really impressive, it is polished. The black matte surface, the areas on the back cover and around the buttons are made ribbed so as not to slide.

On the sides there are silver stripes that do not carry any functionality, but give the device a charm. There are no buttons on the sides, all controls are displayed on the front panel and the touch screen. As you can see, the book is very thin, and it is convenient.

At the back there is a “hole” Reset and an opening lid, under which, unfortunately, there are screws, so there is no quick access to the battery.

At the top there are connectors: 3.5mm for headphones, microUSB for charging and data exchange, microSD for a memory card. Also, on top is the lever to switch to sleep mode and turn off the device. The bottom end of Mr.Book is pristine clean.

On the front panel under the screen there is a row of 7 buttons: “Back”, “Refresh Screen”, “Volume”, “Menu”, “Search”, “Left”, “Right”. It is noteworthy that the blue LED is built in the central button and it lights up when you control the book using the screen. You can clearly see it in the picture.

As for the "Menu" button, then by pressing it at the bottom of the screen, a window appears in which you can select additional functions. This work with bookmarks, and the table of contents of the book, the inclusion of the accelerometer, go to the page, and even the translator.

In general, the appearance is very pleasant and the book looks solid and cool. Also, it comes bundled with a cute leather case, into which it can be easily inserted and firmly attached. It is hard, and from the inside it is made of a material similar to suede, so it will be difficult to scratch a book in a case. Another advantage of carrying a book in a case is that fine dust will not get clogged in the ribbed part on the back cover.

And in the unfolded state. The button can also be clicked.

Opportunities

I'll start with the main thing that every e-book should be able to do - this is a text display. With this, Mr.Book is all right. Of course, not so wide support for formats, but gradually the list is updated (for example, Doc support was introduced in the latest firmware). Although, frankly, it upsets me, because I want a variety.

As for the text output, the technology on which the screen is made is of great importance. In this case, it is SiPix.

Excerpt from the post on Habré:

E-Ink screens use two suspensions to form an image: black and white. Microcapsules of SiPix screens are filled with a suspension of only one color - white. Black points of the image are created by immersing a white suspension in a black liquid. As a result, the technology is simplified, and, as a result, it becomes cheaper. However, the result of this approach is that the reflectivity of SiPix screens is worse than that of E-Ink screens. As a result, the Sipix screens will appear slightly grayer.

Wikipedia
Description in English

So, the text is good, but the screen is really a little gray. Also, another difference that I noticed is a slight blur of fonts compared to E-Ink, but this does not affect the perception of the text. The text can be increased and decreased, unfortunately, there are no special functions here. I was pleased with the “Translator” item in the book reading menu, since when reading foreign literature, sometimes it is necessary to translate difficult words, and here it is done in a couple of seconds.

As for the photo and music, there is perhaps nothing even to say. Photos can be viewed in monochrome mode JPG, BMP, PNG. I don’t think that anyone is using e-books to view photos, but to look at the illustration in a book, it’s fine. You can play music only in MP3, and more, in principle, is not necessary. It is rather an addition than a necessity. What you liked is that you can listen not only through headphones, but also through the built-in speaker. I searched for it for a long time on the case, in the end it turned out that these were these small slots below:

Another nice addition was the Wi-Fi module, which allows you to browse sites directly from the book. Basically, it is useful for downloading books, so as not to suffer from a computer and wires, if there is a Wi-Fi point at home, of course. Surfing the web will be difficult, because This is still an e-book and the screen update takes a long time. I checked the opening of sites, everything is displayed normally, even Flash is shown on lib.ru, moreover, with the advertisement of this device. =)

Price: 7777r. (Average price for Yandex.Market )
I think that the amount is quite acceptable for a quality device, albeit without any special bells and whistles. Looking at her, it seems to be worth more.

The book runs on a 1530 mAh battery, about 6,000 pages. But we must bear in mind that the book itself can go into sleep mode, so the battery consumption will be significantly reduced.

Also, the device has a built-in accelerometer, which can automatically turn the screen when you turn the book. However, I personally love to read only vertically, so I turned off the G-sensor right away. This is done in the menu, which I mentioned above.

Impressions

This book has brought me many pleasant emotions, now I will tell you what you liked and not. Firstly - an interesting design. Everything in it is simple and beautiful, nothing prevents, there are no unnecessary elements and so on. It lies comfortably in the hand and can be read even in the cold, thanks to the buttons. Secondly - the OS interface, it is quite friendly and did not cause any difficulties. Although there is a small 6-inch screen, but it is quite enough. A good quality book is also its thickness. A thin and light book is much easier to hold in your hand than a large copy. Except for a small number of formats and settings (for example, font size and type), I liked everything in Mr.Book. Decent time and price. I believe that this is a worthy copy in the market of electronic books, especially if in the next firmware additional ones will appear. settings and formats.

pros