Around the World with an E-Book: ONYX BOOX James Cook 2 Review

    “Do at least once what, according to others, you can’t afford. After that, you will never again pay attention to their rules and restrictions. ”
     James Cook, an English naval officer, cartographer, and discoverer
    Everyone has a different approach to choosing an e-book. Some think and read thematic forums for a long time, others are guided by the rule “you won’t try - you won’t know”, buy ONYX BOOX Monte Cristo 4 , and all doubts about buying a reader disappear, after which the device gains its deserved place in a separate compartment of the backpack. After all, it’s worth buying an e-book only because it is the only gadget of its kind with which you can travel around the world on the same charge (but only on a more modern form of transport than Fedor Konyukhov).





    Debt calls to tell you about another reader, which primarily attracts with its price (7,000 rubles) and the presence of an E Ink Carta screen with MOON Light + backlight. Today, James Cook is visiting us, or rather, his second iteration.

    No, we did not create a hologram of the famous explorer and discoverer, which will read books aloud (although the idea does exist) - just ONYX BOOX brand released the second generation of its reader James Cook. I remember that in 2017 I really liked the first version, even then the manufacturer installed E Ink Carta screens, which had no worthy analogues. It’s all the more interesting to see what James Cook 2 is like (a spoiler - it’s like “Terminator”, where the second part was even trickier than the first).

    Where does the reader get such a name, where are traditional designations for many manufacturers like “MVF413FX” or at least “5s”? ONYX BOOX approaches the “names” of its books no less responsibly than the stuffing and features (Apple calls its operating systems after geographical attractions, so why not?), So its readers can be easily recognized by the name Robinson Crusoe, Chronos, Darwin Cleopatra, Monte Cristo, etc. So, James Cook got into these rows with a new 6-inch E Ink Carta screen, MOON Light + backlight and battery life, which would last for at least one expedition of the great navigator. The device is built on the basis of a new quad-core processor with a clock frequency of 1.2 GHz, which ensured the speed of the operating system and reduced the speed of opening books.



    In general, for a reader of this segment, adjusting the color temperature is a real luxury: only in January last year ONYX BOOX showed the first reader in Russia with this feature (it is called in honor of the Queen of Egypt), and now we see MOON Light + in a budget device. A necessary addition to this is expressed in the face of 512 MB of RAM, which add a speed e-book, as well as an internal memory of 8 GB. 

    3,000 mAh is a decent indicator for modern smartphones, which really reveals when used in an e-book. Due to the use of an energy-efficient processor and screen, the reader can work without recharging for up to one month in average use mode. 

    First Expedition: Features and Scope of Delivery ONYX BOOX James Cook 2


    Display
    6 ", E Ink Carta, 600 × 800 pixels, 16 shades of gray, contrast ratio 14: 1, SNOW Field
    Backlight
    MOON Light +
    operating system
    Android 4.4
    Battery
    Lithium-ion, 3000 mAh capacity
    CPU 
    Quad-core 1.2 GHz
    RAM
    512 MB
    Built-in memory
    8 GB
    Memory card
    MicroSD / microSDHC
    Supported Formats
    TXT, HTML, RTF, FB3, FB2, FB2.zip, MOBI, CHM, PDB, DOC, DOCX, PRC, EPUB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF, DjVu, CBR, CBZ
    Interface
    microUSB
    Dimensions
    170 × 117 × 8.7 mm
    Weight
    182 g

    The book comes in a beautiful package with a photograph of (well, almost) James Cook, it briefly talks about the discoverer and his achievements. The kit is modest and of significant elements is a microUSB cable for charging and the reader itself, they did not put a cover on them. However, let's not forget that we have a device from the budget segment.





    The second expedition: the appearance and features of the screen


    The case of the e-book is traditionally made of matte plastic with a soft-touch coating. Its advantages are that it causes a tactile sensation is very pleasant, and also less sensitive to fingerprints than glossy surfaces. True, it will be difficult to remove the imprint unnoticed, if it has already appeared. But wearing without a cover is a pleasure.





    Compared to other e-books, James Cook 2 weighs a little - only 182 g. The dimensions are used almost as efficiently as possible, so with a screen diagonal of 6 inches the reader remains very compact. You can easily take a book with you on a trip on a ship or on a balloon - which is really enough fantasy. 

    If some readers control only buttons, while others use only joysticks, ONYX BOOX offers both. The buttons are located on the sides: they are responsible for turning pages when reading, and the left one by default gives access to the sections "Menu" (with a long press) and "Back" (with a short). Given that the reader’s screen is not touch-sensitive, the buttons should be responsive and tactilely pleasant, with which there are no problems. Reading and holding an e-book in one hand is also possible without any problems.





    A five-way joystick located below the screen allows you to navigate between menu items. It also serves as the main navigation tool when reading in embedded applications.

    Well, below everything, as we are used to - a micro-USB port for charging, a slot for a memory card and a power button. Of course, moisture protection would have come in handy (of course, you have to shout “Half!”), But you can hold the helm with one hand and the book with the other, because there are no elements on the other ends, so that the buttons protruding from the side do not interfere with comfortable reading.



    For convenience, the buttons can be swapped so that, for example, the previous page opens by clicking on the right button. It is also possible to completely change the purpose of the buttons - this can be done in the settings.



    Let's leave the odes to the controls, because we are most interested in the screen - it should work well during a night trip, and in the afternoon under the scorching sun somewhere in the vicinity of the island of Hawaii (for Cook, this was the last stop, but we are in 2019 year, and the natives are not so scary). James Cook 2 is suitable for both, and the other: the 6-inch screen has a good resolution, as the screen type is used already familiar from other readers ONYX BOOX E Ink Carta. The display may not be the largest, but it can still be used both for reading fiction and for documents (suddenly you want to load a map there).



    An indispensable assistant in the expedition will be MOON Light +. This is a specially designed type of backlight, with which you can not just adjust the brightness, as in other readers, but change the temperature of the backlight. For warm and cold light, there are 16 divisions of “saturation”, which adjust the hue of the backlight. With active backlighting, the maximum brightness of the white field is approximately 215 cd / m².



    Let's analyze the differences between MOON Light + and the backlight used in other readers, using a specific example. In e-books with ordinary backlighting, the screen simply glows with either white light or white with some shade, which does not change the essence. By adjusting the color temperature, the light changes very much, so if you want to read about Captain Nemo’s adventures during twilight, it’s better to set up a more yellow hue with a filtered blue part of the spectrum. Such backlighting makes it possible to read in low light conditions: this is especially noticeable at bedtime, when a warm shade is much more pleasant to perceive than a cold shade (it is not for nothing that the same Apple has a similar Night Shift function; and the f.lux application has millions of users). With this backlight, you can sit at your favorite work before going to bed for several hours, and your eyes will not get tired.





    But is it not on ordinary tablets?

    Many tablets and smartphones really do offer backlight hue adjustment right now. The difference between the e-book in this case is the type of screen: in the case of OLED and IPS, the light is directed directly into the eyes, so if you read for a long time before going to bed on the same iPhone, your eyes may begin to watery or other discomfort will occur. If we talk about E Ink, here the backlight illuminates the screen from the side and does not hit directly in the eye, which ensures comfortable reading for several hours. In case the expedition does not go according to plan, and you have to be in the role of Robinson Crusoe, this is not an extra feature.

    Why use SNOW Field



    This is a special mode of operation of the screen, which has become the hallmark of ONYX BOOX readers. Thanks to it, a reduction in the number of artifacts on the E Ink screen during partial redrawing is achieved, and this is what often repels the purchase of an e-book. When activated, you can disable in the settings full redrawing while reading simple text documents.
     
    Everything is fine with E Ink, but still has its own fly in the ointment: its responsiveness leaves much to be desired. The screen is good for an e-book, including due to the fine adjustment of the temperature, but if you start using the reader for the first time, you will need to get used to it.

    Expedition Three: Reading and Interface


    The screen resolution of this reader is 800 × 600 pixels: you can forgive, if you take into account the price, but after Darwin 6 and MAX 2 I was already ready to frown, watching the pixels. Nevertheless, due to well-chosen fonts, pixelation is invisible, although a picky reader with an "eagle eye" can find points where the pixel density is 300-400 per inch.

    Impressions from reading are mostly only positive: it’s nice to look at the letters, they are smooth and clear. SNOW Field removes small artifacts, and an “electronic paper” screen gives the maximum feeling of reading an ordinary book (but what book can you read without a lamp under the covers? And this one is possible!). The reader supports all major book formats without conversion, so you can open the PDF and read Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite work in FB2. Where to get books for such readers is a purely individual issue, but it is better to give preference to official sources. Especially now there are many stores on the Web where electronic versions of books are sold.

    For works of art, it is most convenient to use one of two built-in reading applications - OReader. Most of the screen is occupied by text, and if you need to adjust some settings, just go to the menu where you can choose options - from orientation and font size to line spacing and page margins. Although I am not an adherent of electronic books, I found myself flipping through physical buttons conveniently, although after an iPhone it’s a bit unusual.



    If during reading you need to go to the table of contents or save a quote, this can be done in a couple of clicks. 



    Access to increase / decrease the font and its quick settings is realized using the central button on the joystick - press it once and select the desired item.
     


    For fine tuning (line spacing, font type, margins), you need to hold the left scroll button, and then select the desired item using the buttons on the joystick - press the left button. Accordingly, if you click on another button, the backlight settings menu is activated, etc. Due to the lack of a touch screen, control is not the most intuitive, but you can quickly get used to it.





    Fans of reading books in English may need to translate a particular word, and this is done as natively as possible (yes, they have already built dictionaries here). Press the central button of the joystick and select “Dictionary” in the pop-up menu, then select the desired word with the up / down, left / right buttons around the joystick. After that, the Dictionary application will open, where the translation of the word will appear.





    And to work with formats like PDF and DjVu it was even more convenient, there is an additional built-in application ONYX Neo Reader. The interface is almost the same, plus this program seems to be more minimalistic and somewhat resembles a browser. There are useful features like automatic flipping (for example, if you are rewriting notes). At the same time, this is clearly not a device with which it is convenient to work with a lot of documentation, for this it is better to take something like Monte Cristo 4 .





    As for the main technical characteristics, in James Cook 2 they are represented by a quad-core processor with a clock frequency of 1.2 GHz and 512 MB of RAM. When the current smartphones already have 8 GB of RAM, this at first glance sounds frivolous, but in fact it is enough for the reader to quickly open the book and leaf through the pages, as well as quickly perform operations such as smooth browsing. Moreover, during the test, the reader has never asked for a forced reboot.

    The reader was not surprised by the interface - it's still the same Android that uses ONYX BOOX in its readers, but with its own shell. The desktop includes several elements: “Library”, “File Manager”, “Applications”, “MOON Light” and “Settings”. The battery level is displayed at the top, a little lower - the last open book, after it - recently added.




     
    The library stores all the books available on the device, which can be viewed either as a list or in the form of a table or icons (an alternative to it is the file manager), in the "Applications" section you can find the clock, calculator and dictionary. In the system settings you can change the date, see the free space, configure the buttons and so on. You can also configure the field of recent documents, automatically open the last book after turning on the device and other useful gadgets. For example, you can set the shutdown time of the reader so that it does not discharge in the background.





    Waving around the world?


    If you remember, the third expedition did not end very well for James Cook, but this has nothing to do with the reader, which bears the name of the great discoverer. She will easily survive the fourth, fifth, and 25th expeditions, the main thing is not to forget to charge her occasionally (we understand that the battery lasts about a month for average reading activity, but still). 

    During various interviews, they like to ask tricky questions such as “what subject would you take with you to a desert island”, etc. If I had the choice to take a box of matches with me, I would certainly prefer James Cook 2 (well, a survival kit). Of course, now few people go on round-the-world expeditions, basically we prefer winged multi-ton cars, but there is a place for an e-book, especially if you have two long flights with a night transplant.

    I liked that ONYX BOOX was added to the second generation of James Cookbacklight (and not ordinary, but advanced MOON Light +), in the first iteration of the reader this was really not enough. This may be the fundamental factor in choosing this e-book, and the price is 7,000 rubles, of course. This is a good option for the first reader with an E Ink screen, with which you can take your favorite artworks with you, read a child’s bedtime story (even if this is ONYX BOOX “My First Book” ), and an enthusiast will go on repeating all three expeditions of James Cook . 

    Only in Hawaii is better not to call. Well, just in case.

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