The Pandigital Novel is an e-book reader that scores a 4/10 for its design, a 7/10 for its features and a mere 3/10 for its performance. With this rating, you can imagine the performance problems of this device. Though the company has struggled hard to bring up an affordable colored eBook reader, it still has a long, long way to go before it can compete with Amazon Kindle, another of its kind that scores the top on the list of eBook readers.
Review
The Pandigital Novel looks like a photo frame and is somewhat a smaller version of the iPad. It has Wi-Fi connectivity, with the integration of Barnes & Nobles (a popular eBook store). The eBook is based on Android and it has Wi-Fi connectivity along with various multimedia functions. The average price of the Pandigital Novel is around $200, which is costlier than the Amazon Kindle. If however, you purchase the Pandigital at eBook stores such as J.C Penney and Bed, or Bath, Beyond etc, you may get it at the price of $169.
The Bad
Though the device looks good, it certainly has performance issues that simply cannot be neglected, and it is these very issues that have hampered the device from gaining user attention. The display having a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels is quite dull and lacks far behind from a smartphone sharpness level. The touch screen itself is not responsive and you may have a hard time with it. The device itself has a miserable battery life with 1GB built in memory but an external card slot available for storage up to 32GB. It offers just six hours of battery life, if it is only reading that you are doing. This makes the device far lacking behind the Amazon Kindle.
The Good
The eBook does come with basic multimedia functionalities such as a web browser, e-mail facilities, calendar, alarm etc, it still lacks the audio and MP3 functionalities that Amazon Kindle boasts of. With the integration of Barnes & Noble’s LendMe feature, users can share ebooks with each other for the first 14 days of their subscription; however, it can only be one book at a time. With the Wi-Fi connection, you can purchase loads of eBooks from the Barnes & Noble e-book store and then fix your desired font size, use the built in dictionary and write down notes of the books reading. The device automatically tilts when it is held in a landscape mode, but because of its sensitivity, it tilts most of the time when it’s not supposed to.
Conclusion
Though the Pandigital Novel struggles hard to come up as a portable eBook device, it does fall far behind its other contenders. Considering Amazon’s popularity, large user database and its fantastic Amazon Kindle eBook reader, it’s hard for Pandigital to make its place in this industry. If however, it focuses on its major performance flaws and other lacking features, it may be able to get a good place in the eBook device industry in a few years time.