The iReader Smart Air can be mistaken as just one among the scores of others of its ilk currently dotting the tech landscape. It has got the same disproportionate design where the left bezel is thicker compared to the other three. It comes bundled with a stylus and packs in all the hardware bits to allow for smooth performance that does not break any new grounds but is par for the course. The E Ink display is excellent and refreshes really fast. So far so good but looks can be deceiving. For underneath the familiar external facade, the new iReader Smart Air hides something that no other e-note device offers. Read on to find out more.
Design and specs
The new iReader Smart Air is a handsome looking device with an 8-inch E Ink Carta 1200 300 PPI display making texts and images look really sharp and crisp. The company said the contrast has been enhanced by 15 percent while there is a 22 percent improvement in the page refresh rates. There also are the 28-level warm and cold dual-color reading lights which allow for a comfortable reading experience irrespective of the ambient lighting condition.
A 2GHz dual-core processor coupled to 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage makes up the core of the device. Providing the juice is a 2400 mAh battery which the company claims is good enough to last 75 hours or allow for a standby time of 45 days. At 225 grams, the e-note is also easy to carry or operate without tiring your arms. It supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity options while there also is a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer roles.
Software and UI
One of the biggest positives here is that the iReader Smart Air comes with inherent support for English, the lack of which has been the biggest bane with almost all digital notebook devices the company has come up with so far. The UI, settings, and icons, along with everything else are in English for the first time ever. That is also the reason the e-note device can be used to its fullest potential by the English-speaking lot the world over.
However, things get undone when you reach the store, which continues to be in traditional Chinese, and it does not support any other language than that. As of now, it does not have any other language settings, which means it is of little to no use to the non-Chinese speaking population. You can still download things or opt for a free trial where applicable but those are all going to be in the Chinese language. This applies to e-books, apps, or everything that the Store has to offer.
E-Books and PDFs
The above however shouldn’t be of much concern considering that you can always sideload your own books and read them fine. There are absolutely no issues with that. That way, the Smart Air can be a nice handy e-reader device that you can always have with you. But then, the Smart Air is also a note-taking device as well from its core, a capability that you will find prevailing over everything else that the device does.
So, while reading an e-book, you will have the palette available along the side tapping which will let you have access to several writing options. Those include five different pens – Pen, Pencil, Ballpoint, Brush, and Marker – to choose from, three thickness levels, and half a dozen color choices. The Smart Air is monochrome, but you will get to see things in color after you have exported your writing to a suitable device that supports color. Also, while there are three thickness levels for the pen, it supports different pressure sensitivity to arrive at the desired thickness levels. Also, yes, you can write or takes notes right on the e-book itself, something that even the Scribe does not support as yet though Amazon said that would be taken care of in a future update.
Coming back to the topic on hand, there is the Highlight option also available on the palette that can be used to highlight something. For that, you only have to strike through the portion of text and that gets underlined automatically. If that seems too insignificant for highlighting texts, there is the Marker option that will smear the entire portion with black but reverts back to a lighter shade of gray to reveal its highlighted status while still being light enough to reveal the text within. There is the Eraser option as well, something that you are likely to use often considering that the pen, it being the 3rd generation i-Reader X-Pen, lacks an eraser.
Tapping on the display will also reveal several options that show up at the top. Several of those are redundant as here too you get the Highlight and Marker options. However, you also have a few other options here, such as TTS, Bookmark, and such. With TTS, you also have the option to choose from a few male and female voices along with a child option available too. While all of that is great, there still are issues with the accent as it still is people of Chinese origin lending their voice. Nothing wrong with that but people with English background or higher English fluency would have surely done a better job.
At the bottom, you have the options Content, Notes, Learning Mode, Progress, and Settings. The Learning Mode is interesting as it splits the screen into two halves where you have a notebook on the right and an e-book on the left. You can continue to read the book on one half and jot down your notes on the other half. Of course, you don’t have as much space as say the Fujitsu Quadreno but it still offers decent space for both taking notes as well as reading e-books.
All of what I have said so far applies to PDFs as well. What that means is you can highlight texts, and use the marker option along with everything else that you were able to do on e-books can be done on PDF as well. In any case, PDFs load quickly and look nice too. The pen speed is also among the best in class out there with there being almost zero lag times. That makes using the pen a truly enjoyable experience.
Note-taking
As already stated, the Smart Air ships with the 3rd generation i-Reader X-Pen with no built-in eraser. That however does not come in the way of providing for a note-taking experience that is simply awesome. There are absolutely zero lag times which means anything that you write gets depicted instantaneously. You have all the pen options stated so far, which include five pen types, three thickness levels, six colors, and so on.
However, what sets the Smart Air apart is its Shaping feature. That refers to its ability to convert your hand-drawn shapes to their regular versions. So, if you draw a circle, the device turns it into a perfect circle. The same applies to other shapes as well, which include oval, rectangle, square, triangle, and such. Even a hand-drawn straight line which may have slight deviations gets straightened out. This makes for a cool new feature that isn’t available on any other e-note device.
The Shaping feature complements the pre-designed shapes that the device also offers and which you can add to your projects. Apart from this, you have the option to add images that you can drag around, add different shades, and whatnot. In fact, the options here are almost limitless. Just click on the More option and you will be taken aback by all that you can do. That includes 129 templates, which takes things to an altogether new level.
Another cool feature that the Smart Air boasts includes turning things into a graph. It’s like writing different things which act as the nodes that are interconnected and then tapping on the Turn Graph option. The device will not only convert the handwritten text into print, but the Shaping features also get into the act to turn the lines into perfectly straight lines. You can also make each node have different shapes as it is in a flowchart where specific shapes denote specific actions. Those can be a decision taking box, start and end symbol, and so on. No wonder this can be a boon for programmers or anyone else who needs to depict a sequence of events as a flow chart.
Yet another unique feature the Smart Air comes with includes the Blackboard mode. As you might have already got the hint, this turns the entire display black and any mark you make on it is in white. The effect is similar to what you do with the chalk on a real blackboard but in a more refined manner, with none of the dust and mess that real chalks can make. With everything turned black, it’s all the more soothing to your eyes as well, and doing things in white is really fun.
Conclusion
The iReader Smart Air is a cute little device that packs a lot of punch. Performance is top-notch, and the E Ink display is brilliant. Making things all the more exciting is the pen that has absolutely zero lag times. That alone makes it all the more inviting and fun to use. You would like to scribble and draw things even if it is just to while away your time. You will be drawn to use and try out the various setting and options it offers like Shaping, Blackboard, Graph, and such. Fun aside, all of these features can make things easy for those such as students, teachers, architects, journalists, writers, lawyers, artists, or anyone whose profession requires a lot of reading or writing to be done. The new iReader Smart Air digital note-taking device is definitely something to go for.