Read me, touch me ...

It so happened that I had a long trip for the holidays and I thought about how to entertain myself along the way. And my choice fell on reading, and in our time it is accepted to read from modern e-books. One of these devices is the PocketBook 603 Pro and got to me for testing, for the duration of the trip.

First impression

The reader, as I am assured by advertising, belongs to the Premium class. In principle, I am inclined to agree that pleasant case materials, low weight, the presence of an E-Ink touchscreen screen, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and, as it turned out, a VERY capacious battery leave a pleasant impression.

Appearance and materials

Externally, the PocketBook 603 Pro does not stand out among its fellow series. The same shape of the body, the same design elements. It is not shocked by some extravagant design, the reader looks appropriate in the hands of a businessman’s briefcase and in a student’s backpack. The body is made of plastic and aluminum and pleasant to the touch, there is no backlash, all parts fit tightly to each other and the body feels solid and monolithic, the cover that comes included also adds zest, as it is velvety black outside and unexpectedly bright green inside .


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Ergonomics

The book has a very small size (182 x 132.3 x 11 mm) and weight (280 g), thanks to which it is easy to hold and allow you to read standing in a traffic jam or in the subway. The control buttons are quite comfortable and clearly work out pressing, the stylus and the touch screen for me were a nice bonus, because After the tablet, I always wanted to press the screen with my finger :)

Somewhat surprised by the lack of a set of headphones and a charger, I only had a USB-microUSB cable in the box.

Interface

The producers of the book have tried here, the interface is simple and clear, it will take a couple of minutes to master. When you first start we will have a desktop on which various widgets are rendered such as calendar, time, music player, RSS feed (yes, it can pull news from the Internet!). In the library, you can connect books from the Internet, from internal memory and from an external memory card. The only thing I did not really like is not a very smart turn sensor.

Functional

As expected from the e-book, it performs its main functions perfectly, the only thing that seemed to me that the pages could turn over faster, but here is the limitation of the E-Ink technology. In general, the screen is quite contrasting and pleasing to the eye. Pleases high speed of opening of different formats, and there are quite a lot of them: EPUB DRM, PDF DRM, HTML, DJVU, RTF, TXT, PRC, CHM, DOC, TCR, FB2, FB2.ZIP.

Interesting to me was the Text-to-Speech feature, the presence of ABBYY Lingvo's built-in dictionaries and a full-fledged web browser. There is also a program for creating handwritten notes and an RSS reader, which pleased me, as it turned out to be much more pleasant to read the news from the E-Ink screen than from a regular TFT.

The second most important function for me was the music player, I love to read books on the way to unobtrusive music and get everything from one device is a necessity for me. Plus, I took with me a few audiobooks that you could just listen to on the go. The power of the built-in amplifier turned out to be enough for my headphones not to let extraneous sounds from outside, which I also attribute to the pluses of the device.

power usage

Here I was pleasantly surprised, after 3 days of active use, listening to audiobooks and music, I was not able to land the battery even by half! In general, the manufacturer promises a month of battery life with 2 hours of reading per day and I willingly believe him. By the way, Wifi and 3G put batteries very hard, but who will actively sit on the Internet from an e-book :) although such a function is present there.

Overall impression

I can definitely say that this device left a very pleasant impression, high-quality assembly, a large battery, the presence of WiFi, 3G and Bluetooth with the ability to connect peripherals, support for many formats, microSD memory cards at a price of about 11,500 tr. (on Yandex Market) make this device indispensable in a long way or when standing in traffic jams.

Pros:
+ contrast display
+ touch input
+ availability of 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth
+ there is a music player
+ support for external memory cards
+ built-in dictionaries
+ RSS reader
+ light weight and size
+ capacious battery

Minuses:
- weak package (case and cable only)
- delay when turning pages
- not very comfortable handwritten notes

Detailed specifications

General
Manufacturer:	Pocketbook
Model:	Pro 603
Dimensions
Dimensions (mm.): (width x height x thickness)	182 x 132.3 x 11
Weight (gr.):	280
Display
Display Type:	E-ink
Screen size:	6
Screen resolution (px):	600 x 800
Grayscale:	sixteen
Built-in lights:	Not
Supported Formats
Text:	CHM, DjVu, DOC, ePub, FB2, PDF, PRC, RTF, TCR, TXT, HTML
Graphic:	BMP, JPG, PNG, TIFF
Audio:	MP3
Memory
Memory capacity (MB):	2048
Memory cards:	microSD
Communications
Bluetooth:	there is
Wi-Fi:	there is
Other:	3G
Multimedia
Other:	G-sensor
Nutrition
Accum Capacity (mAh):	1530
Duration of work (number of pages displayed)	14,000