Reading books is one of the best and most useful hobbies to maintain while we’re young. While it’s true that most children’s screen time is considered excessive and has led to a global increase in the incidence of myopia, there’s a need to make books accessible for all.
Enter Inkpalm Plus, Xiaomi’s E-book. It’s the Asian version of Amazon’s Kindle. This is, in all aspects, a tablet, except it’s made for reading. There are no colors in this, and the Inkpalm Plus is a gadget made solely for reading.
First off, E-book viewers (or sometimes called E-book readers) are digital devices that give the closest possible experience to paper. An E-book screen feels like paper, so no highly reflective surface will strain your vision. E-books, unlike traditional phone screens, use E-ink. E-ink is a two-tone substance that displays only gradients of black and white which make it extremely useful for displays that mimic the quality of printed material.
The Inkpalm Plus uses E-ink, however, it supports color temperature so you can either have a yellowish-white screen for better eye health. The Inkpalm Plus does support other types of images like illustrations and is a good device for viewing manga.
This device is powered by a Rockchip RK3566 processor. This is a HUGE upgrade to the previous Inkpalm Plus device which uses the Allwinner chipset. For performance comparison, the Rockchip RK3566 allows for 4K video decoding, while the latter is only limited to 1080p@30fps.
The Inkpalm Plus features a 5.84-inch screen for a comfortable reading experience, with 24 levels of brightness for a variety of lighting conditions. It comes with a 2,200mAh battery (or 30 days standby), which should not be a major issue since E-books consume far lower power than phones or devices that do not use E-ink.
This E-book also has 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, Bluetooth 5.0 support, and possibly runs on Android 11.
It’s available for pre-order, with a price of around USD160. There’s no information yet on whether China will ship this outside of the country, so stay tuned for more updates.
