SLJ Reviews the Entourage Edge ‘Dualbook’
RSSAugust 1, 2010
If you take what are arguably the two hottest device categories in the tech market today—the E Ink reader and the tablet—and combine them both in a dual touchscreen device that melds a pleasant, paper-like reading experience with the full-color, web-browsing versatility and portability of a tablet, that’s the Entourage Edge “dualbook.”
Designed as a device that would let students read and annotate etextbooks, take notes, and also do Web-based stuff like email, browsing, and audio/video, the Edge accompanied me on a recent road trip. I wanted to pack light, do some reading, and still check in with Facebook friends and access my email, and Web-based travel information—all on one small form-factor machine, and the two-screened hybrid fit the bill. And though the Android-based device’s dual screens often work in tandem, let’s first look at both individually:
The E Ink reading screen: At 9.7 inches diagonal, it’s a nice size, especially for viewing PDFs, which often aren’t very readable on the smaller, six-inch screens of the Nook and Kindle 2. Entourage has its own library boasting about 200,000 books, textbooks, and periodicals, plus well over a million public domain titles from Google Books. Use it, or download any EPUB or PDF title from your favorite source. You can annotate that content or pop up the journal function and write freehand with the provided stylus or type using the virtual keyboard or a USB keyboard (not included).
The color touchscreen: Slightly larger than the E Ink screen, at 10.1 inches diagonal, it’s a responsive WXGA touchscreen slightly bigger than the iPad’s. You can navigate with the stylus or with finger taps and swipes. When input is called for, a virtual keyboard elegantly pops up. Both screens can be manually oriented in any direction and the clamshell-design device folds completely backwards, so you can lay it flat and use a single screen at a time.
How the screens work together: The E Ink screen has only eight levels of grayscale, where the Kindle 2 and Nook have 16. Not a problem. Swipe across an image on the E Ink screen and it’ll display in full color on the opposite screen. Likewise, if you tap on a hyperlink on the E Ink screen, the link—whether it’s to a website, video, or audio file—will open up on the LCD display. Now that’s cooperation.
Dualbook downsides: The device weighs three pounds and is roughly the size of a large netbook. At an inch thick, it’s certainly not nearly as slim and lightweight as the Nook, Kindle 2, or iPad. Dual screens also draw more power than single ones, so expect the battery to last as little as four hours during dual screen, WiFi use, but up to 16 hours when used as an e-reader only, with both the color screen and WiFi turned off. Not bad.
The Entourage Edge is a versatile and promising device, but it could be a lot better. The app store, for example, is still pretty thin—as is its library—but both could easily evolve. I’d love to see a bunch more apps available, ideally including Andriod apps for seamlessly downloading titles from competitors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Still, If you want an E Ink reader and a tablet PC rolled into a netbook form factor, the Entourage Edge is as good as it gets.
Jeffrey Hastings (hastingj@howellschools.com) is a library media specialist at Highlander Way Middle School in Howell, MI.
