Plastic Logic QUE proReader in-depth video hands-on
By Paul Miller 
posted January 7th 2010 11:34PM
posted January 7th 2010 11:34PM
posted January 7th 2010 11:34PM
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I love the design of this thing but I don't know if I could handle the finger prints.
I'd have to go double-check my kindle, but I don't recall dust and fingerprints being a big issue on e-paper screens. It's not a backlit display where you really notice pixel diffraction. Which is good because touch UIs will work a LOT better than scrolling around low-refresh-rate displays.
@oGMo I too am a Kindle user and fingerprints, dust, etc drive me nuts but I keep my screen clean. I spend a lot of time staring at the thing so small items like that distract me.
Dunno, I've never had a big issue with it .. i've dusted off the screen a couple times but it's not like an LCD where the slightest smudge will be a distraction. Of course they have some "obscure devices" nowadays that use LCDs and touchscreens .. eye fones or something .. and people don't seem to have an issue. So I'm sure they'll think of something. ;)
@oGMo I don't recall the Kindle having a touch screen.
The document switching does seem a bit slow, and I think it's not the e-ink, and 5 second is not 1 second, it's the conversion and a slower processor that cause I expect because clearly some of the stuff works in less than a sec but documents loading is way slower.
It's designed for businesspeople btw not as a consumer book e-reader, but when dealing with executives you'd need more speed really, they pay more and expect speedier stuff I'd say.
@Wwhat Totally agree. If the e-ink part is 3/4 second as they claim why they hell don't they give it a processor that takes less than 2-3 seconds to render a page?
Damn that looks so good.
But at the same time, you really have to wonder. The reader is seriously stepping on some tablet toes. It does one thing really well (display text), but when you try and get it to do tabletish things, even as elegant as the Que reader look, it seem quite award.
That and its a thousand dollars...
@NeoXY : Totally with you. It's a pretty fantastic and well thought-out interface. But e-Ink is for extended reading, not active tasks like editing spreadsheets, viewing presentations or writing emails.
I do hope others will take a cue, though. It would be nice to have an e-reader like this that can tie work reading (PDFs, articles, etc) into leisure reading (novels, literature) with this sort of feel. Just scrap all the editing stuff for now though.
Small request to Engadget... can we have a standardised "ereader" tag (or whatever word you'd rather use)?
So I can just list all the various readers at once.
(Not meaning to make a big deal of it)
@Gregorian
I agree, signed.
What price?
@jon Close or make no difference to a thousand dollars
@jon See que.com Cheapest is $650.
@Timmmmmm
Gracias.
Now that we have quite a few of these out, is there a wiki to compare them all?
@BigD145
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers
@(Unverified) Ah, good. It's been updated, although I don't see an average time for a page turn.
This is very pretty. But it's B/W with 256(?) shades of gray, and that's too early 1980's for me.
@gerrrg Unfortunately with a thousand bucks you get 8 shades of gray only.
Man that's hot.
This could be REALLY useful to me if it can integrate with the Safari catalog. I could have all of my dev books at the tip of my fingers *drool*.
I like that best out of all of the e readers. Don't know if I would consider buying one...
Watching the video, I have to say that the interface looks like a total nightmare to use. I could never tell if something was touched correctly until well past the point of concern. I have a Sony Reader Touch Edition and it responds to touch input *dramatically* faster than this thing does, so it can't be blamed purely on the e-ink screen.
@Chefgon
Yep, needs a faster processor and some better feedback maybe.
Reminds me of windows© right now, doable but not refined :D
Little advise for the company (might seem obvious but you know how companies are):
do yourself a favor and update the firmware and make the spacebar slightly larger and the homebutton a toggle until another function is used, so hit the home button goes to homescreen, hit it again go back to where you were (undo).
When I say larger spacebar I mean larger vertically.
@Wwhat
It also looks like they should make the home button less sensitive or harder to hit. The guy in the video hit by accident 2 or 3 times and got dumped out of what he was doing.
Well that was what my advise was based on, paul miller is used to gadget and he still managed to hit the button several times, but if a second hit would undo an accidental hit it's much less of a hassle, and they can do it via a software upgrade, which is easy and relatively painless.
This looks very very nice. PDF reading is important and it looks like it's doing a good job.
Seems very responsive. Plastic Logic is awesome.
Uhm, a sentence like 'plastic logic is awesome' is a bit over the top after seeing this video don't you think? OK or not-too-bad are terms I'd expect to see but not awesome.
@Wwhat
It is pretty awesome (stellar) compared to other readers.
@Uberich
Stellar? Well, can't say I agree - not in the least, in fact. I've been waiting for the Plastic Logic reader for months and I must say I'm pretty disappointed. As this is meant to be used by professionals and not just for reading books, speed is a crucial factor. I can wait a second to turn a page when I'm reading a novel on my Sony e-book reader, but technical books are not read sequentially from start to finish, and this appalling speed (both in rendering pages and in acknowledging input) makes skimming through a book a nightmare - I'd say practically impossible. It's not at all what I imagined, or need; the only good thing is that it's got a large screen, but for that, any of the competitors (and there are quite a lot now) will do.
All in all it seems a half-baked product that still needs a lot of work, and most probably an upgrade in specs, to be commercially viable.
if only i had the money...
I need a reader this size, but I think I'll have to wait a while until the prices fall on these... $650 or $800 is just too steep.
Waiting for the day when e-paper will be completely glare-free just like conventional paper... :\
I can't see this becoming mainstream with business users unless the display is color. Looking at executive PPT presentations in B&W kind blows. It's fine for reading emails or just reading basic text. But color really changes things.
@bjsguess I see this as a device an exec might take to a meeting. I hate to say it, but it is still common practice to print out powerpoints, agendas and spreadsheets and hand them to all attending the meeting. Usually those printouts are done on a B&W laser printer. So as a substitute for that practice, this would be a remarkable improvement. Even the slow document load times are no worse than shuffling through the stack of pages to find out where everyone else is.
Really promising ..! If a screen refresh takes "three quarters of a second" then the processor could be slightly beefier (I don't know the size of the .PDF they loaded though). But all in all, I really like the page formatting, the size and the resolution on that thing.
Does look interesting.
Lack of sd slot of some type is big let down I think.
Also, while seeming to work well within the limitations of the tech it is easy to see the ground that some of the other screen tech is going to attack e-ink on.
..... speed.......
It will be interesting to see where contrast and battery life issues land.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what this tablet/reader can do, if it can't do it faster that what we see in the video.
I challenge anyone to read more than 3 newspapers, waiting several seconds for each page flip.
"Er.. perhaps... hmmm.. swipe a little slower??"
Things like those distinguish a mature product, or even company, from the rest.
When Apple releases it's tablet many will be disappointed because of the lack of features- it will basically be a big iPhone/Touch with normal 3G and nothing fancy. But I believe there WILL be some nice surprises on the software side, especially how it can handle and display interactive magazine/newspaper content (and the magazineStore/newspaperStore that launches will be awesome).
And most importantly: what the Apple tablet does, it will actually do well. Cudos to Apple for that.
@aMark
I watched a several months old video where they showed the reader and the guy asked 'is it always that slow?' then the CEO said 'no no this is pre-production and we didn't optimize that stuff yet\, and now months later is seems even slower, they should either code in assembler (always 5 times faster than c languages) or get a faster CPU, or dedicated logic chip to speed it up, and they should know that since they've been told by more than one potential customer.
@Wwhat As he explains in the video, pretty much all the e-ink devices have these page turns of a second or a bit under--they have to clear the page by turning everthing black and then white again, then drawing the next page.
@aMark: If and when Apple releases it's tablet....
This thing is great for reading text books. Don't expect it to do something else. But don't expect us to pay $649 for it. Drop the price to $249 and we might consider.
Here's a question. Does the glossy black border cause any sort of eye strain? I love the look of it, and I hated the white look of the Kindle for a while. But I've read about 20 books on my Kindle now, and the white disappears almost like the margins of a page. I'm wondering if the contrast of the black border and the lighter page might be tricky on the eyes. Even the sony readers are sort of a charcoal gray instead of high gloss black. Any thoughts?
I guess I dont understand the E-ink technology but why is it so slow to change pages? Slow cpu/ram or is it the 3G/wireless connection?
Seems like all E-ink displays are slow....I'd like to get one but the slowness is the biggest drawback for me.
I still like the Alex E-reader the best so far.
@bonedog73 the technology for the screen is called e-ink. The screen refresh/repaint is slow because of how the technology works and is a trade-off. An LCD which takes power constantly whether it's changing or showing a static image. e-ink only takes power when the screen changes - once an image is shown it can remain on the screen forever and takes no additional power.
This trade off makes e-ink great for applications where you will show a page of text and not change it for a while. Books, magazines, and similar.
This is why most readers measure power lifetime in page turns rather than hours.
What other devices are there that can display word and exel docs?
How many of those are large format?
I hope more come out.
I can't see paying $650 just to veiw word and exel docs (which is all I am going to use it for).
The calendar function is nice if it can be used as a stand alone (I don't need to sync with outlook).