There’s a new entry in the ever-growing list of tablets with E Ink displays. The KloudNote features a 10.3 inch E Ink display with support for capacitive touch and pen input, a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A35 processor, 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, for WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 wireless capabilities, and optional support for a 3G or 4G cellular modem.
It’s up for pre-order from Geniatech for $449.
Chinese device maker Geniatech is probably best known in the consumer electronics space for its Android-powered set-top-boxes, but the company also makes a variety of products in the commercial, retail, and smart home categories.
The KloudNote is the company’s first foray into the tablet and/or eReader space. With a 10.3 inch, 1872 x 1404 pixel display, the device is larger than most mainstream Kindle-style eReaders. But it’s not exactly unique – the reMarkable 2, Kobo Elipsa, and multiple devices from Onyx and Sony have similar displays.
Geniatech’s KloudNote may not be unique, but it does seem like a reasonably versatile device. It’s powered by Android 8.1, allowing you to use the KloudNote as an eReader, note taking device, or general purpose tablet (with a grayscale display and a slow screen refresh rate).
The E Ink tablet has a 4,000 mAh battery, a USB-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack, speaker, and microphone. There’s no webcam, but that’s hardly unusual for an E Ink device. The omission of a microSD card reader may be more of a problem for some users.
The GeniaTech KloudNote measures 250 x 175 x 7.6mm (9.84″ x 6.89″ x 0.3″) and weighs 385 grams (13.6 ounces).
via CNX Software
Unfortunately 10 years late for me, now I am waiting for color e-note prices to drop…
All of these E-Ink products are too expensive for mainstream adoption, even after years on the market. This looks very much to me like a case of greed crippling optimum sales – and profit.
I think part of the reason most of us feel this way is due to the way that Amazon and Kobo subsidize the cost of their E-readers through ads and e-book sales, and it forces the entire market to compete.
E-ink panels are fairly pricey, and very few competitors are able to absorb part of the costs on the basis of making further revenue from the customer.
As someone who desperately wanted that (now vapourware) NoteSlate tablet back in 2011ish, it’s cool to see devices like this launch.
However, it’s a bit more of a gamble to buy a tablet from an unknown manufacturer when it uses an E-ink screen, especially for $400.
The reason being that if the Android build turns out to be garbage (or filled with spyware), theres probably a huge amount of difficulty to get another Android build with the UI design required to make it usable on E-ink (I’m sure there’s a considerable amount of UI tweaks that they made to ensure the contrast and tone choices in the UI are optimal for E-ink).
I think if I was going to spend over $400 on an E-ink tablet, it would need to be from a company that I feel comfortable knowing that I’m not going to be dissatisfied with the software. Even with that, I’m still not very interested in spending that amount. Maybe $300 at most.