The
Likebook Alita
is
the latest product from the Chinese manufacturer. Being an e-reader
on Android, it has good hardware and software capabilities. With its
10.3-inch screen, would it be the dream e-reader for researchers,
students and other great PDFs readers?
Hardware
aspect: a high-performance e-reader!
This
10.3-inch e-reader has a more powerful hardware than most of the
competitors,
especially the e-readers of the market leaders: Kobo, Amazon Kindle
and Pocketbook. Indeed these have a single or dual-core processor
while the Alita has an octa-core.
It has 4GB of RAM while most of the e-readers have only 1 or 2 GB.
Let’s
summarize the hardware aspect of this e-reader:
Screen
size:
10.3 inches.
Resolution:
1400 x 1872 / 227 ppi
CPU:
1.5GHZ Octa-core
SD
Card Slot: up to 128GB on some models
Battery:
4700 mAh
USB-C
/ Earphones / Jack / Backlight with temperature control / Bluetooth…
So,
this e-reader seems to be very effective, but… is this what you
want in an e-reader? More
cores on a processor, more RAM, more NAND storage means more power
consumption: so it has to be reflected in the battery life, at the
same capacity.
Nevertheless,
you have to take into account that, unlike
most of the other e-readers on the market, the Boyue Likebook Alita
runs on Android,
Google’s system, originally designed for smartphones
and tablets!
It is therefore understandable that it needs more RAM and processor
capacity than a more minimalist e-reader, using a lightweight system
based on a Linux core, like those of most competitors. Good or bad
thing? It all depends on what you want to do with an e-reader!
An evolution of the “Mima”?
This
e-reader is indeed an improved version of the Mima: the RAM for
example, being 2GB on the Mimas and 4GB on the Alita. Similarly, the
internal storage space: from 16GB to 32GB (27GB once formatted). In
addition, Alita is 10% lighter than Mima, which weighed 430g. On the
other hand, it runs on Android 6.01 like its sister, but should be
upgraded to Android 8 soon. It has a microphone.
The
Mimas have more
physical
buttons, but with
more RAM, less weight and the possibility to use a version of Android
that is not too old, the Boyue Likebook Alita seems to be a much
better choice than a Mima,
for those looking for an e-reader in 2019.
Android…
on an e-reader? WTF !
At
first glance, we may be surprised by the choice to use Android on an
e-reader. This choice allows the manufacturer to save money by
limiting the work on the software aspect of the product, while
offering an e-reader with large software capabilities. This can be
found here. Reading
PDFs is really pleasant, and you can easily take notes. It is also
possible to customize your device by modifying the installed
applications.
But
an e-reader is also a device for reading. For that, a more limited
software that can only open certain types of files allows you to stay
focused on your book, and not to disperse. An e-reader on Android,
isn’t it the inconveniences of a tablet, with its low autonomy, its
notifications, etc.? Not necessarily, because here we find a device
with a black and white E-ink screen and limited refresh rate: the
device is not suitable for “surfing” or “tweeting”:
it is still an e-reader!
As
it comes with an Android old version, we are supposed to be able to
update it on Android 8 quickly. And an e-reader, by essence not or
little connected to the Internet is less sensitive to a security
update delay than a phone or a tablet. Nevertheless, we can worry
about the possibility of updating these products in the long run. If
Kobo, Amazon and Pocketbook have shown in the past that they have
been providing updates for their devices for years, what will be the
long-term policy of a manufacturer like Boyue who produces new models
on a regular basis and therefore software doesn’t seem to be a
central concern?
10.3
inches… A good big screen e-reader!
You
have to keep in mind the specificity of this e-reader: to offer a
10.3-inch screen at a fairly low price. Yes, Android brings certain
heaviness and an Inkpad 3 or a Kindle Oasis will be more suitable for
most readers, but for big PDF readers or those who would like to use
their e-reader as a notebook to draw on or take notes on, the
LikeBook
Alita
can be a very good choice.
Indeed, if an 8-inch screen is enough to read PDFs decently, up to a paperback size, it’s clearly too small for A4, unless you use the e-reader in landscape mode. However, with 10.3 inches, you can read A4 documents comfortably – even though the text will be small if the document has no margins – and you can keep the margins of the PDF books you are reading. You can even annotate them with the stylus, just as you could do with a paper document.
So
the experience is no longer so much that of an e-reader, but is
closer to a digital book on which it is possible to take notes, with
the stylus, as one can do on a paper document with a pencil.
Is it worth the difference in cost compared to an Inkpad 3, for example, which sells for about half the price? It’s up to each one to decide, but for certain uses, it is clear that by its versatility, an e-reader like the Likebook Alita opens up possibilities that are inaccessible to competitor users, rather oriented towards reading and the Inkpad 3, while cheaper in EU isn’t available in all parts of the world, and comes with its own imperfections…
Furthermore, the Alita is slightly less expensive than the Boox Note Pro, which has similar characteristics. It’s hard to know which one is better: the Alita should receive an update on Android 8 soon, while the Boox Note should stay a priori on Android 6. In the meantime, the Boox Note Pro is more reactive than the Boyue LikeBook Alita, and its reading software is better finished… But what will be the future of these two e-readers? What kind of software follow-up will the two manufacturers offer? Difficult to predict…