Range of electronic books in 2017, the company Onyx Boox replenished reader Cleopatra 3 – the third generation model “Cleopatra” is well proven in the market. Distinguishing features from previously released several versions and they all affect the hardware component of the device.

Cleopatra is not just a reader and semi-professional device not only for reading books, but also for working with documents. This feature large diagonal touch screen and advanced capabilities of the software.

Onyx Boox has kindly provided us with a book for testing, in which we, among other things, rate the two main competitive advantages of the new technology Snow Field and a new modification of the signature of the backlight Moon Light, which has learned to adjust the color temperature.

Packaging

The book Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 can be considered a design solution that is already apparent at the stage of evaluation of its box. As always, Onyx did not skimp on the quality and density of the paperboard, so the packing is very durable and certainly won’t fall apart in your hands and will not let the book be damaged during transport.

The entire surface of the box cover Egyptian hieroglyphs to better match the title of the book, and the texture of the material is, if it is not cardboard at all, and high quality Egyptian parchment. Shade, of course, appropriate.

The bottom box is a list of characteristics of the reader and a brief list of its main advantages, some of which we already have listed. There is also a small size render of the device, not really giving an idea about its design, and the top has an embossed gold image of the Queen Cleopatra.

Open the box like a sarcophagus, but instead of the mummy inside is e-book in proprietary protective cover.

Equipment

Buying Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 the consumer becomes not only the box and the book itself, but also a number of accessories that will be useful in the process of operation. First, of course, this protective case from premium materials, secondly, it is a proprietary charger at 1 amp and data cable.

Also in the box are a warranty card and instruction manual. The latest in this case stylized as a pamphlet and made from the same “parchment” as the package, and there is a lot of information for those for whom the “Cleopatra” became the first reader in your life. Total, in box with book has everything you need to operate the device, except that I would like the stand to position the book at an angle to the table, but this is a luxury that can be purchased separately.

Features

A detailed list of hardware and software features of the book Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 is described on the back of its packaging. Similar content list is present on the official website of the manufacturer, and in summary form it can be found in the instructions. The word, the word, information about the hardware of this model is freely available.

screen: 6.8-inch E Ink Carta, the contrast is 14:1, 16 grayscale, touch, 1080х1440 pixels;

– backlight: Moon Light +;

– processor: 2 cores, 1 GHz;

– memory: 1 GB RAM, 8 GB ROM, microSD up to 32GB;

– interfaces: microSD, microUSB 2.0;

– wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 n;

– battery: Li-polymer, 1700 mAh;

– firmware: Google Android 4, native interface;

– support file formats: TXT, HTML, RTF, FB3, FB2, FB2.zip, MOBI, CHM, PDB, DOC, DOCX, PRC, EPUB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF, and DjVu.

– housing material: plastic;

– casing color: black;

– dimensions: 192х132х9 mm;

– weight: 236 grams.

From traditional e-readers the third generation of “Cleopatra” is characterized primarily by screen size: 6.8 inch vs the standard 6 inches. The difference, on the one hand, is small and the device itself still could be called compact, but these 0.8 inch allow you to fit more information on one screen, and thereby to reduce the number of updates that positively affect the battery life.

Appearance

Without the cover the book Onyx Boox Cleopatra is a traditional 3-piece design in the style of modern smartphones: there is only touch screen and button directly under it, if you look at the front panel. The model is made in plastic case with soft and slightly rough finish which could be called anti slip.

From the management perspective, the reader is suitable to all without exception, and at the same time having a touch screen and side buttons for paging – they were placed to the right of the display, almost at the end. On the left is the mirror button, you need to navigate the menu. Also under the screen is a five-way navigation button, which also can be controlled by the device itself and the reading process.

On the rear panel of “Cleopatra” nothing, except the various kinds of labels, the average user unnecessary. The top end is also empty, while the bottom is the power button and the microSD slot under the memory card and a microUSB 2.0 port for PC synchronization and charging.

The overall design of the book is a classic and austere, with balanced proportions and a bright spot in a light gray plastic, round navigation button below the display. This appearance can be called universal, as it will appeal to people of both sexes, regardless of age.

Ergonomics

Compactness compactness, however, the increase in screen size could not affect the ergonomics Onyx Boox Cleopatra is a 3 – to manage the reader need only two hands, although you can get used to and flipping with one hand, but it is not as convenient. In the hands of the device lies very well and does not slip off, but his weight is beginning to be felt in about an hour after the start of use.





Side buttons and large enough to find them by feel, plus in the book you can change the appointed actions and keeping them for themselves. These buttons fall right under your fingers, so that their location is clearly thought and thought a lot. Down the power button sticks out slightly from the body, but has a very tight course that eliminates accidental operation. Navigation button under the screen caused a number of issues: in particular, it is not very easy to press for people with wide fingers – she is a little small. The exception is the Central button, it just has adequate size and is pressed very convenient.

The surface casing protects against slipping out of the book from his hands, very much soiled, especially on rear panel, but to clean it easily using conventional wet wipes. However, the kit still have a case. The screen is also covered with fingerprints, but not much, and on the electrophoretic display fingerprints virtually invisible.

Screen

Display, Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 is a panel of E Ink, that is screen e-ink, monochrome. Devices of this kind are unsuitable for watching videos – there are the usual tablets.

Touch screen surface works quickly, efficiently processing all touch, and there’s even support for gestures to zoom in and zoom out. The display without the backlight due to the contrast of 14:1 reminds a sheet of newly printed paper books.

In the sun the screen “Cleopatra” not only does not fade but becomes only more contrast – this is the feature of E Ink panels. Technology Snow Field, the new pride of the Onyx Boox, fulfills in full: its essence lies in the kind of vibliani the background of the display, whereby each time the page is refreshed the image of the previous page becomes completely invisible. Here again the analogy with a paper book: if the pages are made of thin sheets, the page text on the back slightly transparent. Snow Field completely removes this effect and improves the readability of text.

Resolution screen even with such a big diagonal is more than enough so that you can reduce the font size to a minimum and get the maximum of text at times without loss of image quality. The viewing angles are, of course, the maximum – even at 178 degrees, which is the limit for matrices IPS (they begin to slightly fade), the image remains clear and very contrasting.

Backlight

In this reader uses the back-light Moon Light, which is different from the usual Moon Light adjustable color temperature. In short: you now have two scales to adjust the brightness of warm and cold colors, and play with setting the desired values can be very long.

Note that this upgrade significantly improves the readability of text and dramatically reduces eye strain when reading in the room with a faint upper light. It is sufficient to increase the brightness of the warm sunlight, and the screen becomes more milky, with a light yellowish.

Shades of the backlight looks very nice, but to the maximum twist is not: for comfortable reading are missing 50-60% and everything else is too. Photos show examples of the maximum brightness of warm and cold shades. Itself the brightness is adjusted smoothly, on the same principle as in smartphones on Android.

Fill the screen with uniform light, without discolouration or shadows from the LEDs. In our view, Moon Light+ is a very good solution, and Onyx Boox you should use this type of illumination in subsequent generations of its readers, including a 6-inch model.

Case

Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 comes with case cover, top and bottom trimmed in faux leather dark red color. There are stamping in the form of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, giving additional elegance to the accessory, and inside it is trimmed in black velvety fabric.





This choice of materials are sent simultaneously and in beauty of execution, and maintaining presentation books, so her body is not in contact with anything solid. In case the reader is held securely due to the solid mounts-parts of plastic, the lid of the case is integrated magnets, which when closed will activate the Hall sensor in the device that will put it into sleep mode and save battery. When you open the book wakes up automatically.

Software

Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 running Android 4 from Google, augmented proprietary interface. In the presence of a Wi-Fi module for Internet access and built-in browser, access to Google Play to download additional apps.

By default, in the book, besides the browser, there is a handy dictionary to look up meanings of new words in Russian and English, as well as the application for viewing the statistics read. It will be useful to anyone who wants to start to read more. From the standard set of Android have calculator, email client and calendar, and in addition the book can be used as a kind of Notepad with Notes. To use all of the above is very convenient due to the presence of the touch screen, which, moreover, is very quickly updated.

In General, the firmware works very fast and stable during testing, there was not a single lag or hang – optimization on the level. OS cut all unnecessary SOFTWARE, which also affected the performance, and added proprietary interface from Onyx Boox. It provides quick access to all the books, having a built-in virtual library and viewer files in the internal memory and on a flash card.

The main application Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 is Oreader, reader, around which everything is tied. The program is one of the most functional among all presented on the market, and its interface is fully translated into Russian language, without errors and mistakes.

The app welcomes the users with minimalist interface with intuitive icons and logical menu organized. Here the user can configure even the most seemingly insignificant details: “the red line”, line spacing and letter spacing, word wrapping, size and even the font type. To play with settings for a long time, but in the end everyone will choose the option that is convenient and comfortable to him personally.

In Oreader there are lots of additional functions: rapid movement through the table of contents or the book itself, the transition to the desired page by searching for the correct words or sentences, and even bookmark too, that is like a traditional paper book, only much more modern. Directly from the application window, you can configure the brightness, and in the lower part of the interface displays a progress bar showing how many pages left until the end of the book.

The Internet on this book to use is also quite convenient: quick screen updating helps. The only caveat: the sites are overloaded with animations and ads will be unpleasant to walk around, so we recommend to download from Google Play third-party browser with a built-in adblokom.

Performance

As mentioned above, the Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3 works very fast and without slowdown, but it is with regard to the regular menu of the operating system. As for the paperwork, then all is not so simple.

The book copes with any text files weighing up to 250 MB, so 99% of the books that you read, it will open almost instantly. But the PDF reader is not very profitable opening these documents for a few seconds. The greater the weight of the file, the harder he has to, but, surprisingly, this does not apply to all documents DJVU here with the speed of open in order.

Total, in terms of performance claims to “Cleopatra” does not occur if you use it for books, why it was created.

Work offline

Backlight off full battery books is enough for approx 20000 pages, but it’s several books with standard thickness. 25% the brightness of Moon Light+ reduced the autonomy of up to 18000 pages, 50% – up to 14000 pages.

At 100 percent brightness, the stored energy is enough in General to 10000 pages display text. Note that autonomy does not affect the temperature regime backlight: no matter warm or cold light, battery discharge occurs at the same speed.

In General, the result of work on one charge for a third “Cleopatra” more than worthy. As for the time of charging, it is regular memory with a current of 1 ampere whereas the amount of energy in an average 3 hours.

Conclusion

The average cost of a Cleopatra 3 Yandex.Market at the time of this writing is 15,000 rubles. This includes signature case, new screen backlight the display with a larger diagonal and early developments of the Onyx Boox, including a convenient application for reading Oreader.

For this amount one can hardly wish for anything more: the book is well-stocked and assembled, has a few different control options, quickly snaps the book, and even can be used to benefit Internet. Not enough, perhaps, protection from water, but the presence thereof, the cost of the reader would be very different. In the end we have a great value for money gadget to read during the testing did not cause any negative emotions, leaving only a positive impression.

Pros Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3

– large screen;

illumination with a choice of light temperature;

– comfortable for reading;

– access to the Internet;

– case supplied.

Cons Onyx Boox Cleopatra 3

– lack of support for audiobooks.