Amazon may still be dominating the e-reader market with its incredibly popular Kindles, but smaller companies like PocketBook are doing more when it comes to innovation. The newly announced PocketBook Verta gives users the option to swap out the e-reader’s back panel with black, white, red, brown, and yellow options. Those will be available for purchase separately from the Verta itself.
The new PocketBook comes in two varieties, the Verta and the Verta Color, with the only difference being that the latter’s E Ink screen is capable of displaying—you guessed it—color. The Verta is outfitted with a 6-inch E Ink Carta 1300 display, a bit of an upgrade from its predecessor’s, with a resolution of 1,448 x 1,072 pixels at 300 PPI. The Verta Color has an E Ink Kaleido 3 screen that can display 4,096 colors at 150 PPI.
The Verta and Verta Color have very similar internal specs, running on a Rockchip RK3566 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 GPU with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Notably, neither Verta comes with the option to expand this storage with a memory card, which previous models did include. This could be a function of keeping both the price and the weight of these devices down. Each has a USB-C port, is rated IPX4 (fine against water splashes but certainly not waterproof), and has a 1,500mAh battery. Both include physical page-turn buttons, too.
Those who purchased the Versa—the e-reader now being replaced by the Verta—might not be tempted to upgrade to the new devices, which don’t offer much other than a slightly nicer display, a slightly more powerful processor, and the interchangeable back plates. But they could certainly be an attractive option for would-be e-reader owners looking for something on the budget side of things without getting locked into Amazon’s ecosystem. The Verta will start at $169, while the Verta Color will cost $179, putting them about on par with Amazon’s base Kindle (and significantly less expensive than Amazon’s color display options). PocketBook also runs its own proprietary Linux-based operating system that comes with built-in Libby support, allowing users to borrow library books right from their devices without needing to transfer them from a computer.
The Verta and the Verta Color don’t have official release dates just yet but are expected to launch soon.
