Pandigital Novel 2 - Not living up to promise

Engadget's Joanna Stern reviews the Pandigital Novel 2, and while it looks good in the picture (below), the review shows it as clearly not ready for real-world use.


Click on the picture to read, in vivid detail, why not.

Here are a few choice quotes from the article to give you an idea:

' ... after attempting to read an entire novel on it we can't help but wonder how it found its way past product development and into the stock rooms of Walgreens, Bed, Bath & Beyond and JCPenny, to name a few...

On a design note, we really do wish that the bezel wasn't made of a glossy plastic -- it should just match the rest of the matte device.

  [Reviews haven't considered this a problem with the Nook -- is it because of the obvious plastic shine when the color's darker?   I think it keeps the units lighter, which seems always a concern too.

At times we had no issue dragging a finger across the screen to turn the page, but other times the page would just not turn. Additionally, many times when we tried to turn the page we mistakenly highlighted text and a menu to add a note or highlight popped up.

We don't have much praise for the matte screen either -- it's fairly washed out and the viewing angles aren't all that good.

The browser is the typical Android variety and is just fine for visiting sites -- though we had to clear the cache to get it to load Engadget. The resistive screen does get in the way of scrolling a bit -- we found ourselves selecting links by accident -- but it's tolerable... '

A lot more at the Engadget page...

  - Andrys

PanDigital Novel 2 - Promising, for $200

For $200, I'm interested in this PanDigital Novel 2, if it's not slow and unresponsive as the first one was, though not as an E-reader as I need something like E-Ink and the effective study tools of the Kindle.

It's more than 30% lighter than the first version of the Novel (which had a white bezel), has more memory and, as Conceivably Tech points out, still costs $200.

  Would love it as a secondary reader that would read ePub and especially DRM'd ePub, since I can already convert the non-DRM'd epubs.  It'll have direct access to Barnes & Noble's store and of course have web-browsing over WiFi.
  I really like the idea of a MATTE screen, as it's the glare and reflections from the iPad that bother me when trying to read on it.

  This could be a great subtitute -- a more portable view-all -- for the iPad (for which I have no need that would support paying $500, to *start*, for the iPad, which is missing so many things I depend on with my 10"  Samsung Netbook), but we have no idea what the functioning of the PanDigital is like at this point. The first version was not promising, per early reviews.  This one is apparently faster and more responsive.

  I'd sure watch this one.  There are many coming up and I'll eventually get back to keeping up this page a bit.  I have notes on many other ones, but this one proves more enticing than anything I've seen so far (except the *idea* of the Notion Ink Adam).

Read the full story behind the picture, at Conceivably Tech.

  - Andrys