Pocketbook recognizes that many people take their e-readers to the pool, beach or on vacation. Standard e-readers have lots of open ports, that water or sand can easily destroy the reader. In order to remedy this situation the Ukrainian based company will be releasing the Pocketbook Aqua this March.
The PocketBook Aqua is protected by IP57 certification, which means that the device is protected against dust and for 30 minutes at one meter of water is dense. This will basically allow you to read it in the bathtub or scuba diving!
The device itself features a six inch e-Ink Pearl Display with a resolution of 800×600. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHz single core processor and memory is relegated to 4 GB of storage. In order to make it waterproof Pocketbook had to forgo the SD card and also eliminated all buttons.
Many phones and tablets are increasingly billing themselves as waterproof as a marketing ploy. Sony has done this with a number of their devices and smaller niche companies are also offering products. My question, is how viable is a waterproof e-reader? It might make a solid vacation one, that you can read in any environment, although its dubious if this will ever be your primary one.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
