The Meebook M8 is a brand-new e-book reader and is the religious successor of the Meebook P78 Professional. This machine is primarily marketed as a manga reader and does some gentle note-taking. The key promoting level is the quick processor, 64GB reminiscence, plus exterior. There are gesture controls to alter the brightness of the sunshine, and it has full entry to the Google Play Retailer and all Google Play Companies. It additionally has Google Android 14, making it one of the vital present e-readers to have it.
{Hardware}
The Meebook M8 includes a 7.8-inch E INK Carta HD e-paper show with a decision of 1404×1872 with 300 PPI and 256 ranges of grayscale. The machine’s physique is white on the entrance, again, and alongside the perimeters, making it stand out in a crowd. It has a front-light system with 24 ranges of white and amber LED lights to learn at the hours of darkness. It additionally has a digitizer layer, however it isn’t WACOM; that is used to take notes, edit PDF recordsdata, spotlight textual content, and freehand draw, however Meebook will not be hyping up these options. It ships with a easy capacitive pen with no eraser and must be charged by way of USB-C.
Beneath the hood is a Octa core 2.2GHZ processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64 GB of inside storage. If this storage is unsuitable in your apps, books, manga, and different digital content material, an SD card can have a further 1TB. There are two microphones for voice communication apps, Groups and Zoom. Two audio system can be found to take heed to audiobooks, music, or podcasts, however it additionally has Bluetooth 5.2 for wi-fi headphones and earbuds. A USB-C port is used for charging or transferring knowledge and is powered by a 3200 mAh battery. WIFI 6 is accessible to entry the web. The size are 193x140x7.0mm and weighs 265g.
Software program
The Meebook M8 runs Google Android 14 as its major working system, and few different e-readers are available on the market with this newest OS. The M8 is taken into account a world launch, so it helps dozens of languages and has full entry to the Google Play Retailer. In the meantime, the M8 Colour is just out there in Asia and received’t be extensively out there.
Just a few software program options and enhancements make the M8 stand out. Variomodes make key duties quick and sturdy. Regal Refresh is right for studying textual content or internet pages. Default Refresh is the usual, which is healthier for photos. Quick Refresh is nice for general efficiency. Excessive-Velocity Refresh is appropriate for shopping Google Play app listings and really utilizing the apps. Extraordinarily Quick Refresh is geared in direction of streaming music or watching movies.
This machine additionally has much less ghosting attributable to its self-cleaning know-how. You must by no means see textual content superimposed whenever you flip the pages of an e-book or take notes. There shouldn’t be any residual textual content and no anti-aliasing points.
The house display is just like prior Meebook fashions. The UI is on the left facet and contains House, E-book Library, Bookstore, Notes, recordsdata, settings, and apps. Nothing stands out about how they implement the library, recordsdata, or settings. The library contains solely books you have got sideloaded on the inventory studying app. Nonetheless, something you obtain, reminiscent of Kindle, Libby, or Kobo, will seem within the app class.
The house display additionally has some widgets. There’s a calendar and quotes widget by default, however they are often eliminated. A piece prominently shows your lately learn books and their cowl artwork. There are shortcuts to the dictionary, Google Play, and Cloud Storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, and many others.).
Studying
The Meebook M8 is severely geared for studying. This mannequin has a inventory studying app known as Z-Reader. This app helps many eBook codecs, together with TXT, CHM, FB2, MOBI, HTML, RTF, HTXT, EPUB, PDB, DOC, PRC, PDF, DJVU, ASW, and PRC. In case you are a giant comedian fan, there may be now assist for CBR and CBZ, two of the perfect and most well-known codecs. This app is primarily designed for studying sideloaded content material, reminiscent of connecting to your PC or MAC and dragging and dropping recordsdata. In case your assortment resides on a cloud storage supplier like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive, you may simply set up and obtain these apps to your machine.
Meebook is advertising and marketing this machine in Southeast Asia, pushing exhausting for the M8’s digital manga facet. I suppose that’s the reason they embraced CBR and CBZ, for individuals who pirate stuff on-line and need to sideload the whole lot. Nonetheless, for most individuals, Google Play homes the overwhelming majority of standard apps for legitimately studying this type of stuff.
There may be loads of storage in your digital assortment. It has 64GB of storage and helps as much as 1TB of additional house by way of the SD card. This can make sure that your complete assortment of PDF recordsdata, books, manga, and audiobooks is accessible when wanted. The file system robotically organizes the whole lot into pretty little folders, so administration is a breeze.
Audiobooks and podcasts make this an ideal selection. You may pay attention via the 2 audio system, which have a middling high quality. They definitely aren’t as much as the extent of the iPad or different flagship smartphones, however they’re appropriate for E INK screens. The Meebook helps MP3, OGG, and WMA utilizing the default music participant. This app depends on you having to sideload audio content material. In fact, with Google Play, the world is your oyster. I like to recommend Audible for audiobooks or Overdrive Libby for audiobooks out of your native library. Spotify is strong for music and podcasts, though you want a subscription for probably the most worth.
The inventory e-reading app is fairly commonplace fare. You may alter line areas, margins, font measurement, font kind, and several other different issues. You may select what dictionary you need or obtain further ones. Web page turns are lightning-quick by way of faucets or gestures. You’ll probably solely need to use this app if you have already got an in depth DRM-Free book library or have pirated it on-line. For everybody else, you’ll probably need to obtain apps to entry the content material you have got paid for, such because the Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Scribd app, or your favourite library app to obtain ebooks or audiobooks out of your native department.
PDF recordsdata are dealt with very effectively. Web page flip velocity is lightning fast. There are numerous choices to optimize a PDF, reminiscent of distinction choices. You can also make it lighter or darker, with many different choices between these two settings. When you’ve got a PDF with gentle textual content and the pictures don’t look that nice, you may make the whole lot a bit darker till you discover the candy spot. Many alternative kind settings will let you crop the picture, make it full display, reflow, and full web page scrolling. I just like the web page scrolling characteristic; as an alternative of turning pages with swipes and gestures, you may swipe up and down. You should utilize the pen to attract on PDF recordsdata, reminiscent of underlining particular our bodies of textual content or simply making notes within the margins.
Drawing
The Meebook M8 has an introductory note-taking expertise, which isn’t as superior because the Onyx Boox, Supernote, Fujitsu Quaderno, Sony DPT, or Outstanding. This mannequin does have the benefit of strain sensitivity with the stylus, so the tougher you press, the thicker the traces develop into. There are 4 varieties of instruments to make drawing enjoyable: pen, pencil, ball-point pen, and paintbrush. Every has line thickness settings as a slider bar and could be displayed in 4 colours: black, crimson, blue, inexperienced, and white. You may’t view the colours with out Kaleido shade e-paper know-how. You’ll solely see the colours for those who export the notes in PNG or PDF and examine them on a pc or cellular machine. Drawing feels a bit like sandpaper. It has a glass-based display with a matte display protector preinstalled on the manufacturing facility stage. It isn’t easy, so that you usually must press tougher. The stylus can be top-heavy due to the metallic clip and battery canister.
There are numerous preinstalled templates, reminiscent of clean, faculty guidelines, assembly notes, schedules, and plenty of others, however they’re simply PDF recordsdata so you may sideload them in your templates. You may simply insert new pages and create 4 shapes (traces connectors, sq., rectangle, and triangle). You may insert textual content, and it pulls up the Android keyboard. Wish to insert photos and work with that? You may sideload in footage and have advantageous instruments to regulate them, reminiscent of resizing and cropping.
Wrap Up
The colour variant of the Meebook M8 was a jumbled mess. Terrible note-taking expertise, lack of options, and contact errors galore. Nonetheless, the black and white model of the M8 is, in actual fact, truly higher.
The contact recognition is on level, quick responsive, and cheaper because of the lack of Wacom licensing, because it makes use of an energetic capacitive pen. The energetic capacitive pen in query is fairly unhealthy. It seems to be good, and it feels good in your hand, however it’s gradual, laggy, and must be charged with a USBC
Apart from that, the UI and the working system have simply been copied from Bigme and Onyx and introduced over onto this unit, with no actual care or consideration to make it their very own.
When Boyue fizzled out and Haoqing (Meebook) again in 2020, their units had a variety of character. They had been simplistic and to the purpose; you could possibly let you know had been utilizing a Meebook. Now it looks like they’ve gone only a generic, cookie-cutter route with race-to-the-bottom costs.
They’re promoting, as effectively, is closely targeted on manga studying options, which I need to say is sort of correct because it does full that job with competency.
Meebook M8
359.99
Professionals
- Android 14 and Google Play
- A number of Storage
- SD Cart
- Appropriate {Hardware}
- Inexpensive
Cons
- Pen is Horrible
- Drawing Expertise is Abysmal
- Entrance-Mild is Not Vivid
- Makes use of Energetic Digitizer As a substitute of WACOM
- Reliant on Apps
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Submit and the New York Occasions have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
