Some thoughts on the remarkable paper pro for a visual novel/manga reader. PICS!

[Fritomaster]

The images!
(Edit: Labeled the images)
(In real life this displays are like 20% darker looking and have a touch less contrast. I got the picture exposure close but it's hard to balance it 1-1, so just pretend it's harder to see lol.)

PT 1: https://imgur.com/a/8mBq83n

PT 2: https://imgur.com/a/Qxt4VWz
(Also includes video of the paper pro sound)

Thoughts!
I bought my mine for manga/graphic novels/nerd books ect.
I daily a inkpad color 3 and I have a kindle/Bigme hibreak phone.

Anyways! I'll keep it short and feel free to ask me whatever, also everything is from a comic reader standpoint that doesn't want android apps or android battery life. (It's great for a note taker/pdf reader outside of being grainy with text with contrast boost off and a image crusher with contrast boost on.) (One note is tho the display is really far away from the touch surface if you've used any newer drawing device. It feels odd. Great paper like feeling though.)

(K3 = Eink Kaleido 3 displays)
Again reviewing from a graphic novel standpoint not note taker/work device.

Pros:
Handles gradients better than K3.

15-20% or so whiter than K3

Almost zero ghosting

Doesn't add false colors

Some colors look better than K3.

Mostly fast when not messing with the ui.

Cons:

Anything peach/yellowish/orange/semi orange move very close to a vibrant piss yellow.

Most shades of green and blue are rendered too dark. (Light blue/green can straight up not render.)

It's dark enough to be annoying but just borderline enough to not use a backlight. The same with the backlight it's just a tiny amount of boost (Max on pro is about 30-40% on most other devices.) So you get this weird spot where there's no good lighting for indoors without maxing it out.

File handling, you have to convert everything to PDF which isn't hard but once file sizes hit over 300mb it gets wonky transferring. (and I have a 300 dollar router just for home media/streaming vr) maybe a bug but I don't have any issues with other devices.

The image is grainy at this DPI and the way it works, so while gradients are much better it comes at a cost and you can't have clean text and a non black crushed image at the same time.

Blueish blacks - Not as bad as images make it out to be with daylighting, mostly annoying at night with the backlight light on.

Way too big to read in bed comfortably for along time, an inch or two off would be a much better max size, 8 is too small imo for detailed graphics novels tho.

Battery life is way less than something like the inkpad color 3

The way the screen resets creates a coil whine like noise, if you are in a quiet - very quiet room and you are flipping very colorful pages it's a pretty loud buzz. Video in the second link at the top.

Verdict:

Tough call. The device has more vibrant colors, better gradients and more detailed rendering... but it comes with 3 or 4 more display issues that the K3 screen doesn't have. It's much less of a jump up than it is a small step with mostly a side grade.

Some shots look much better, some look worse. When you are reading a comic and someone steps into scene with dark burnished bronze armor and the paper pro renders it a highlighter piss yellow it really kills the vibe. It's very distracting. That said a dark scene with fire can really pop right off the page and on K3 it just never pops. That's both a pro and a con tho because the gallery 3 screen can look either vibrantly decent or very vibrantly bad. It's never really that passive.

For black and white it generally looks pretty good, you really need contrast boost on for clean text/better lines but that renders mid grays inaccurate but it's not a huge deal.

The device is also massive, I'm a big bed reader and I really prefer the bezel on the side. If you hold it at the bottom the thin pokey corners stab into your hands. So you kinda just rest it on yourself or read sideways.

My takeaway is that we really need a 9/10 inch device with gallery 3 that has a thinner distance between the screen (like the inkpad), 20-30% brighter backlight and a bezel on the side lol.

But in the meantime if you don't mind the giant size and want something that at times looks better than everything else (But also worse too.) then get this for sure. If you want something that's just always fairly decent get a k3 device, 6-8inch for manga mostly and 8+ if you read comics/graphic novels that have detailed art/color.