PocketBook Basic New 613 reader review

After experimenting with PocketBook Touch , I got into the hands of another device from this manufacturer - the PocketBook Basic New 613 reader. Unlike the more expensive PocketBook Touch 622 model, the PocketBook Basic New reader does not have Wi-Fi support, there is no way to listen to audio format files Mp3, to control the device only mechanical keys and a joystick are provided (there is no touch coverage on the device screen).

However, at the same time:

• Web surfing using Wi-Fi drains the battery many times faster than regular book reading (from my experience with PocketBook Touch). In addition, the reader’s browser capabilities (for most Wi-Fi-enabled devices) are in many ways inferior to the capabilities of FireFox, Opera and Google Chrome installed on a desktop computer, laptop, netbook or tablet.
• MP3 support is not needed if you like to read with your eyes (or you have the opportunity to listen to audio files from your phone, MP3 player or other useful device).
• The lack of a sensor in this device is quite adequately compensated by a thoughtful, compact and very convenient reader interface.

The device was very pleased with the high speed of work, support for all the main formats of electronic books, an extensive set of settings for fonts in textbooks (18 different fonts; the ability to set the font size of the book in the settings, or change the joystick directly while reading; adjustable fields and much more other), convenient work with bookmarks, notes and search, thought-out personal library management system, as well as the ability to customize the key assignment to fit your needs.
This is not a complete list of bonuses that are available in this reader from PocketBook, read more under the habrakat (there will be photos and gif slideshows, so watch for traffic).

Appearance of the device

The PocketBook Basic New reader is a lightweight, compact device that conveniently fits in your hands while reading. The dimensions of the device are 122.6 x 176.4 x 9.7 mm; it is best to read electronic books with this reader with a two-handed grip. You can flip pages with both special keys and joystick buttons, both methods are very convenient.

Below I give photos of the device in different angles, so that it is possible to visually evaluate its size, shape and clarity of the text.

PocketBook Basic New next to the notebook: Thickness of the PocketBook Basic New reader compared to a ballpoint pen: PocketBook Basic New - rear view: PocketBook Basic New and Lbook V3 + (the reader from Lbook, unfortunately, is discontinued):















This is what the text of the book looks like displayed in the reader (in the picture for the text of the book, the font DejaVu Sans is selected, font size 25): Photos of the device shown above are clickable, if you click on the photo of interest, you can see the photo in original resolution. Most of the illustrations of this review, presented below, were made by combining a screenshot of the device (made programmatically) with a real photo of the device. Therefore, the screen color will be slightly whiter than it actually is, which does not hurt to describe in detail the chips and buns of the PocketBook Basic New software interface. I’ll return to the interface of the device’s software shell for now, but briefly outline the technical characteristics of the device.

Product Specifications

• Case Material: Plastic
• Display: 6 "E Ink Vizplex, glass screen
• Processor / RAM / Flash: 800 MHz, 128 MB, 2 GB
• Battery: Li-Ion, 3.7 V, 1100 mAh, 8000 pages
• Computer Connection / Additional Memory: Micro USB, Micro SD up to 32 GB
• Book formats: EPUB DRM, EPUB, PDF DRM, PDF, FB2, FB2.ZIP, TXT, DJVU, HTM, HTML, DOC, DOCX, RTF, CHM, TCR, PRC (Mobi)
• Image Formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF
• Additional functions: 3 dictionaries, calendar, calculator, games, notes, library
• Weight: 180g

More information about the device can be found on the official website of the manufacturer.

PocketBook Basic New Software Interface

Before describing the device, I updated the firmware to the latest version at the time of this review (3.3.4868).

When working with the reader, I really liked the fact that the developers divided the menu sections in such a way that you can quickly go to the desired option without overloading the joystick by repeatedly pressing left , right , up or down . From the top menu item, in one click you can go to the bottom, from the left section, similarly go to the far right. For example, after turning on the reader, you can go to the Library, where books are sorted to your taste in 2 clicks, or go to the settings section in just 3 clicks.



Being in the menus and submenus, you can easily go to the desired item and open it, or quickly return to the previous section (subsection). As for me this is done very conveniently:

Working with the Library in PocketBook Basic New

For clarity, I present the available options for sorting and grouping books in this reader as a GIF slideshow:



In this and the following slideshows, a long keystroke will be highlighted with a thicker frame compared to a short press.

With the Filtering option, everything is clear, but here are some of the available Grouping options that are most interesting to me (Folder, Author, Format). Available sorting options are intuitive, the difference between the Simple view and the Detailed view of the display of books in the Library for clarity, I will show below in the form of a slideshow:

Using the on-screen keyboard using search as an example

The on-screen keyboard, which is used when searching for book titles, searching for the desired phrase of text inside the book, as well as when working with dictionaries, is thought out and very convenient. You can easily type a word or phrase of interest even faster than when typing SMS (I mean classic phones without a qwerty keyboard).

For faster typing, letters and symbols are divided into 5 sectors, 3 of which are 3 * 3 tables. When typing, the first action is to select a sector, then find the appropriate letter (or symbol) and enter it with the central button of the joystick.

The thought-out arrangement and configuration of sectors with symbols gives you the opportunity to enter:

• space in 2 clicks;
• 4 letters in 2 clicks;
• 14 letters in 3 clicks;
• 14 letters in 4 clicks and one letter (s) in 5 clicks.

Entering punctuation marks and special characters also does not require large energy costs.

Using the on-screen keyboard as an example of searching by book title, I



’ll quote below on a slideshow: Below I’ll talk a little about the features of PocketBook Basic New with different formats of electronic books.

FB2 and MOBI

For FB2 and MOBI formats, as well as for other text book formats, PocketBook Basic New provides a quick font size change by pressing the joystick up and down . This option is very convenient, as it allows you to select the font size suitable for your eyes in a few clicks while reading. Going from the book’s page to the settings, you can choose any of 18 fonts available in the reader, set the font size, set line spacing, select the size of the fields, and configure a number of other useful parameters:



Personally, I was very pleased with the large set of fonts available in the program shell of this reader. The following fonts are available here (when you click on the font name - go to the slide with it, also see the slideshow with all 18 fonts available in the reader below): DejaVu Sans , DejaVu Sans Mono , DejaVu Serif , Droid Sans MTI Arabic , Droid Sans Fallback MTI Arabic , Droid Sans Mono , AR PL New Sung , FreeSerif , Liberation Mono , Liberation Sans , Liberation Serif , Menuet script , PT Sans ,PT Sans Caption , PT Sans Narrow , PT Serif , PT Serif Caption and RaghuHindi .

The slideshow shows all the fonts available in this reader (Font size 28, Font - Normal):



In the PocketBook Basic New reader, choosing the appropriate font for displaying books in text format, you can choose the font size from 10th to 50th.

EPUB

For e-books in EPUB format, the set of text display settings in this reader is much smaller than for FB2 and MOBI formats. But the most important settings are still present - you can choose font parameters, line spacing and size of fields in the book. Font size, as well as in the case of the FB2 format, you can quickly change by pressing the joystick up and down while reading, but there is one caveat that I noticed when experimenting with different fonts and their sizes in EPUB. If you select the same font and font size through the settings for a book in EPUB format as for this or another book in FB2 format - the sizes of the displayed text in FB2 and EPUB are significantly different.

The settings available for the EPUB format are as follows:

PDF and DjVu

When you open PDF and DJVU books on your PocketBook Basic New reader, the default reading mode is Width . It is in this mode that it’s most convenient for me personally to read books, however, sometimes, in the case of small print on scanned pages, you have to switch from the book to the landscape view (using Rotate ). The option to crop fields is available in the reader, the chip is certainly convenient, but if you scanned a book without maintaining the same indentation, when using this tool, some pages of the book will be cut off at the edges.

For PDF and DJVU books, the toolbar looks like this:



Instead of the Settings, at the bottom of the panel you will see the Mode iconwhich corresponds to the reading mode. There are 4 options available, but as I said, I personally have enough options for Width . See below for a list of other readable modes:



Rotate the book by changing the display mode from portrait to landscape as follows:

DOC and HTML

In the technical specifications of the device, I read that the PocketBook Basic New reader supports HTM, HTML, DOC and DOCX formats. I decided to personally check how convenient it is to work with these formats. The settings available for these formats are completely similar to the settings available for the FB2 and MOBI formats shown above. Font size can also be quickly changed using the joystick, which is very convenient.

Since the device does not support work via the Internet, links to Internet pages do not work. For HTM and HTML, image display only works if the images are located on the internal memory of the device or on the microSD card of the connected device (the device does not support GIF animation, slide shows are replaced with static images corresponding to the first frame when viewing).

The rest of the device adequately copes with the display of books, articles and magazines in these formats. The range of available settings is very wide, which makes it possible to customize the display of the text exactly the way you like.

For clarity, I give a couple of photographs that showed how DOCX and HTML articles open in PocketBook Basic New look like: I ended up with a description of the main functionality. Below I will note some additional features of the device, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the device.

Interesting in the settings PocketBook New Basic and other device features

Of the useful settings available in the device, I would note the ability to customize the assignment of keys to your convenience and personal comfort. For what and what you can assign, see the slideshow below:



In the PocketBook New Basic application, a program for viewing photos is available. It is nice to have the opportunity to look at photos from a family photo album between readings (color is certainly better, but when you don’t have a laptop or tablet on hand, this is an option). This application looks approximately as follows: The program can rotate images, as well as start viewing in slideshow mode.





Another practical tool available in the device’s arsenal is the calendar. If you don’t have an organizer at hand or if you need to find out which day of the week will correspond to the date of your interest, you can scroll through the calendar for the desired month and find out all the necessary information directly from the reader. The calendar from PocketBook looks as follows: Of the useful features of the device, I would also like to separately note notes and bookmarks. Often they help out when you need to quickly jump to an important point in a book or article. In PocketBook New Basic, notes and bookmarks are organized very conveniently, and I think many will come in handy.





There are many more interesting features in the PocketBook New Basic reader, but I will finish with my brief review. Perhaps I will continue the description of this reader in the following articles. Summarizing, I note the advantages and disadvantages of the device.

Strengths of PocketBook New Basic:

• excellent speed;
• support for all major e-book formats;
• thoughtful management and user-friendly software interface;
• a large number of fonts available for displaying books in text formats;
• compact size, quality assembly and light weight.

Weaknesses of PocketBook New Basic:

• there is no possibility to work with the Internet and sound files;
• limited set of options when working with images.

Concluding the review, I want to note that I personally really liked the reader. Everything is convenient, it works quickly, and reading is pleasant to the eye. Personally, I have enough of the capabilities of this device for reading electronic books with my head, I recommend at least for acquaintance!

Thank you all for your attention, I hope the review is informative and informative.

Offline version of PocketBook Basic New review in HTML5 format (6.61 Mb)
MD5: A779969E236C0C5712A6474CE3A00C8F I

thank Sokol.UA and the manufacturer for the opportunity to describe the wonderful PocketBook Basic New reader