Era E-Reader, Stardust Silver, 16GB | 7ʺ Glare-Free & Eye-Friendly Touch-Screen with E -Ink Technology | Waterproof | Text-to-Speech, Audio- & E-Book Reader | SMARTlight & Built-in Speaker

This review is from the perspective of these use-cases: - Reading both English (US) and Russian/Cyrillic - Heavy need for offline dictionary lookup, especially with Russian-Russian and Russian->English dictionaries - Using mainly Koreader side-loaded over USB connection from MacOS - A lot of this review is of the pairing of Koreader with the device, not just the device itself - Using Calibre to organize and send books - No comics or any real need for color e-ink screen - Using side-loaded and koreader dictionaries - Comfortable with tech and tweaking configs - No experience with the store, I sideload books (the only way IMO) - if you're a kindle store user - good luck This thing is exactly what I was looking for. Move from Kindle: I had a Kindle Oasis, the latest version before they discontinued it. I loved the physical buttons but the battery was trash from the start, and the dictionary support was really weak. I needed 1) better dictionaries (which the oasis didn't support most common dictionary formats) 2) you couldn't select and define a word that is within the definition of a different word. No good when you have a weak vocabulary. The old kindle 3 could, but Amazon stopped caring about the nice finishing touches on the Kindle long ago. 3) better battery life I chose the Pocketbook Era Color because it had: 1) the ability to sideload koreader easily and good koreader integration (you can override the default reader to koreader directly without too much tinkering - nice. No jailbreak needed. 2) I chose the color because it actually has better tech specs over the regular Era. I would gladly give up the color screen for sharper contrast and lower price - but I wanted that quad-core over the dual and 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB - anything to make these snappier - I chose to deal with potential contrast issues or darkness - worth it 3) All the format support I could need Experience: - People here complained about "uneven lighting" - I don't see that - either they're picky or they fixed it. Looks even steven to me. - Nice build - doesn't have the metallic casing of the oasis, and its a little thicker - but I kind of like it more for some reason - its not bulky, feels much better to hold, personal pref I suppose - Took half a day of tinkering to get it just how I like it, some of that was due to koreader being so feature rich, and not a knock on this reader at all. - Side loading koreader was a snap. no jailbreak needed, awesome. - I briefly took a look at the pocketbook default reader, and the dictionary requires either two presses to get to the word, or to go into dictionary mode, which I'd rather just hit the word and quickly get the pop up. It matters when your vocab is bad and you do this a lot. Maybe there is a fix, but I just chose to go the koreader route. Will be more consistent between this and future devices. Looks nice otherwise. - Koreader lets you associate the file types to itself, so you open the book in pocketbook, and it opens in koreader. Nice. - Battery life is great. Maybe not "new mac/iphone" great, but absolutely what i would expect and probably better. - I got the flip case (not shell) - you unclip a narrow side panel in the back, the cover attaches there flush with tabs on one side and magnets on the other. Works great - no it probably won't protect the edges - get a shell if you need that. The cover is a good material that looks like it won't fray like the oasis covers did. - Warmth/frontlight/night mode all work great under both pocketbook and koreader. - If you enable automatic frontlight settings, koreader won't be able to modify the frontlight, so you'll need to exit and disable auto front light - there's probably an easier way but i haven't cared enough to look - Dictionary support in koreader - solid, best experience I've had with it for both Russian and English. I pulled down a bunch of dictionaries, and the ReaderDict and Koreader Wiktionary dictionaries are by far the best. You can select the word, select another word within the first definition, and edit the word being searched for, and quickly switch dictionary as well as prefer a dictionary. - Initially koreader looks bad, you have to set the font and margins how you like them, and the possibilities are basically endless - Bookerly/Amazon Ember are available from amazon, PT Serif for proper Cyrillic display, whatever you want. Line spacing, everything. - FB2 support solid - I don't really notice a resolution difference with the color screen - I know its there, but I'm impressed it's not that noticeable. - I like the longer buttons way better than the little oasis buttons - Touchscreen is more....predictable...than the oasis. Oasis has a mind of its own. Negative experiences: - Yeah the screen is a little darker than what a paperwhite or oasis would look like. But its not noticeable really. I haven't had the need to have the frontlight on maximum yet - maybe 80%. So that solves that problem real quick. Worth the better specs over the regular era. Kindle users: If you're a kindle store user, you're going to want to be careful what you buy here - here you're out of the amazon ecosystem and need to get involved in managing your books. It's a price to be paid for flexibility and options. Russian/Cyrillic readers: - FB2 instead of epub, koreader, ReaderDict and Wiktionary dictionaries, PT Serif with proper margins and line spacing, shortcut corner tap table of contents for those into classic literature with "complete series" ebooks. Get cozy with the koreader user manual. Perfect reading experience. Super happy with this.

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.

I so wanted to like this e-reader but I'm afraid it's a glitchy, unreliable too-slow device and I'm returning it while the window is still open. It's a very nice device, well-thought-out with so many useful features. Unfortunately reading on it is an ongoing nightmare I quickly grew tired of. Page turns are sometimes slow, sometimes instantaneous, sometimes it skips ahead by 15 or so pages and I have to backtrack looking for the page I was on. It's prone to random freezing and can be unresponsive while you're desperately trying to figure out how to escape the loop of doom you're in. There are many more ways the Pocketbook has tortured me, too many to relate here. So many great features if only it could actually perform them. Really, I may possibly have gotten a dud because they can't all be this bad. My Pocketbook is an exercise in frustration and futility every single time I use it and I've finally given up on it. Reading is not supposed to be painful - I read for relaxation, not aggravation.

2026 update: no issues with the device besides the clunky g-sensor. Can be a tad slow navigating ui but page turns are snappy. They have steadily improved with software updates including Libby app built in! You can browse the library and borrow books on device with your library card and it’s amazingly convenient far more so than sending from another device for kindle or Kobo’s overdrive support. I have the 64gb BW Era and just ordered the Inkpad 4. Edit: I’ve had this device for about a month now. I’ve deducted a star due to the sluggishness of G-Sensor, the feature that allows you to switch hands and change orientation. It’s enough to cause much irritation and is basically unusable. I hope they can fix this with a software update but I suspect it’s just low processing power. Also sometimes the device becomes completely unresponsive all together. I wonder if they just crammed too many features into the device than the hardware can handle. Original review: I have been using exclusively kindles since the first one and they are great. Never had a problem with any of them and great build quality. I have also been buying them for my whole family. My only gripe was I enjoy managing my library of books with custom cover art and older books that are not available in kindle format. I also like to buy books from other sources that have a deal. This is complicated with a kindle and time consuming. I did tons of research coming from my most recent kindle oasis 2. I knew I couldn’t go backwards from having buttons, it really elevates the reading experience for me. I wanted to be able to read any format from any store I felt like buying from. I did NOT want one store forced on my Home Screen or ads. These things really narrowed down my options. I settled on the Era since the Pocketbook Viva isn’t available yet on Amazon. I’ve had a few evenings with it so far to go through every setting and get most of my library on it. Kindle books will not transfer without a lot of work. At first it took a lot of adjustment, I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision. I had to change how I hold the device slightly and how I tap the screen to get the proper response. It has far more customization across every aspect of the device. And the smart light is nice to have because my oasis does not have warm light. The battery is bigger and even with all the added features, battery life is astronomically better. As far as I know, this device has the largest battery capacity of all the black and white e-readers (non android). Some people have complained on screen issues and issues logging into accounts, I haven’t encountered any of these issues yet. Also you don’t HAVE to log into any accounts. Another amazing feature is the text to speech. The device uses the voice of your choice to read any book. Of course it’s not as good as quality narration of an audiobook but it’s much better than I expected. I will save a lot of money not buying audiobooks. Audiobooks are also supported though. If you want total control of your E-book library and are computer savvy enough to put in the work, I’d recommend the freedom having a Pocketbook provides. Given the price compared to similar devices, I’d say so far it’s a good value. If you like the simplicity of having the biggest ebook store and a book subscription service on your device and don’t need or want anything else then you’d probably be better off sticking to Kindle. I should add though Pocketbook DOES have a store on the device and supposedly if you contact them with your device info they can change the region information allowing you to use it. I will be doing that myself soon.

The Pocketbook Era has great build quality, feeling like a truly premium device in the hand. It has a good screen, and a lot of nice software features, it's a very open, flexible operating system, and it has unparalleled file format support for ebooks. But it's badly let down by being very laggy and sluggish, and having very glitchy software. Sluggish - nearly everything is painfully slow. Opening books, opening apps, looking through menu options, applying settings, etc. The only partial exception is page turning - that's acceptable, but only one page at a time, and only pages that are all text. If you turn to a page with a picture, or turn several pages in a row, it lags again, badly. Also, sometimes switching between books can take up to 30 seconds. I think part of the problem is extremely slow internal storage. Transferring even a few small files takes way too long. (Some reviewers say the Era is much faster than previous Pocketbook devices. If so, I can't imagine the older ones even being usable!) Glitchy - often the screen just doesn't register taps at all. Though it can be hard to differentiate between unregistered taps and sluggishness. When a tap does register, often the screen flashes to refresh not once, but several times. Or the tap has the wrong response. Again, when switching between books, not only can it take 30 seconds, but sometimes the second book will open, close, and then re-open, with numerous flashes while you wait. The page turn buttons work okay, but the other buttons produce erratic results. I've had Kindles and a Kobo, so I know what to expect from e-ink compared to phones and tablets. The Pocketbook Era is unacceptably slow and glitchy compared to other devices - especially considering the high price. It's a shame - the Pocketbook Era has a lot of the makings of a great device. But Pocketbook needs major performance improvements and a lot of bug fixes before this is worth buying. It took me less than a day to decide to return it.

Loved it. It is fast, support multiple ebook formats, good with images, very simple to rotate to use with one hand and very light to hold too. Smart back light is quite good too. Easy to set up personalized shortcuts for touchscreen and buttons. Only con is it feels VERY fragile, I’d recommend buying a cover -it’s even recommended in the user manual.

This Pocketbook ereader replaced my Kobo Aura One (which I truly loved). Pros - This has a better screen. Fast page turning The reading experience is very smooth and comfortable. The display is very sharp and easy to read. Lighting is very even. 64 GB is a crazy amount of storage. I never delete anything. I can operate it with one hand. I had to use both hands with the kobo. Buttons are very useful but I have a hard time remembering which is which when I flip it. The connection to calibre is more reliable than the kobo. I love usb-c on an ebook reader. Battery life is excellent; I get about a month. The cloud account works very well. I had to lie and say I bought it in Germany to get it to work. Cons- It is rather sensitive to orientation and often flips the display 90 degrees when it should not. The library browser is jerky and unpleasant to use. I used both readers for I while this winter, but found myself preferring the Pocketbook Era.

Outstanding! Good native program, but even more customizable with Koreader installed. I can easily increase the font size or weight with Koreader when my eyes get tired. I no longer have to convert everything to Mobi or Epub since it can read so many different types of ebooks. Saves me a lot of time. It's also very private- you don't have to be connected to an ebook seller to use it. Works offline. The 64GB memory is great - I can bring a huge library. Wish they still made the 64GB model. Good size and dimensions. Very lightweight. My favorite ereader by far. I now have 3 of them and got one for my brother, who liked it so much, he got one for his wife.

Lightweight, compact, the settings can be in any language (not always a case with other e-books), possibility to highlight and note, and the most important is ability to download books from anywhere you want

1 haftalık deneyimim gayet güzel.

Brilliant e-reader with text to speech compatible with Libby App UK (Used by many UK libraries). This e-reader is exactly what I was looking for and allows me to access the library books I borrow via the Libby app from my library in epub format and then listen to them using text to speech which I find much easier than reading due to disability. I borrow via Libby on phone or iPad first as they’re faster to navigate but then opening the epub of the book on pocketbook immediately allows access to all features including voice which has a number of voices available for text to speech and can be listened to by Bluetooth headphones or through the integrated speaker. It’s on a par, if not better than the kindle text to speech experience (easier to access and stop and start than voiceover). The user interface is slower than Apple products but similar to non- Apple devices I’ve tried and very similar to Kindle basic model speed. The screen is responsive and accurate. The buttons are good and responsive. There are lots of customisable options and the battery life, even when using text to speech, is impressive compared to basic kindle. It’s expensive (reason for 4 stars) but if you’re looking for text to speech for epub, Libby library books I couldn’t find anything better and would recommend. The listing says 65gb silver but I was sent 64gb copper model so I’m not sure if the listing is now for both or a random assignment but the sunset copper colour is lovely and the device seems well made overall.

Mein wertvollster Stück. Man kann viele Bücher lesen auch draussen an Tageslicht, der Kontrast ist hervorragend. Ich habe dazu eine "kwmobile Flip Hülle kompatibel mit Pocketbook Era/Era Color - Vorderfach Handschlaufe" gekauft um das E-book in der Hand besser zu halten. Ich liebe es.

Cercavo da tempo un ereader che non fosse collegato a uno store. Avevo provato tolino con sistema operativo Android ed era stato un disastro. Questo lo sto usando da diversi giorni, gli ebook si caricano tramite Adobe Digital Edition (quelli con adobe drm) senza problemi, quelli che non hanno adobe drm vanno copiati come su una chiavetta usb. i colori sono buoni e la batteria ha un'ottima durata, considerato che io lo tengo acceso diverse ore al giorno. l'avvio è molto rapido. Molto soddisfatta anche per la gestione dei libri presi in prestito in biblioteca, che ultimamente col Kobo non riuscivo più a gestire.