Pocketbook Viva eReader : too expensive ?

Author: Nicolas | Last update: 2023-04-18

Pocketbook continues to release innovative models and the announcement of the Pocketbook Viva e-reader will delight fans of high-end reading material and those who have been waiting for a new generation color e-reader.

Presentation of the Pocketbook Viva ereader

The Pocketbook Viva is a high-end 8-inch color e-reader announced for April 2023.

It is also one of the first readers that will use a new generation color screen based on E Ink Gallery 3 technology.

This is a brand new way of displaying colors that should allow, finally, to have more vivid colors than on the old screens of the "Kaleido" type used, for example, in the Vivlio Color reader.

Of course, we'll have to wait for the release of this Pocketbook Viva to find out for sure...

Pocketbook also seems to want to offer a very high-end color reader, since the announced price is over 500€!

This price will certainly cool some people down, but it shows the will of the brand to offer high quality material as far as the color reader is concerned.

This is especially true since it is not a digital notebook like the Kindle Scribe or the Kobo Elipsa...

The Pocketbook Viva offers a new 8-inch color screen, 64 GB of storage memory, an IPX8 certification to make the reader waterproof and the possibility to read audio books (see specifications below) and a pretty good design with physical buttons.

I appreciate this new design which tends to become more and more common with each Pocketbook release, as with the Pocketbook Era, another high-end e-reader.

Specifications of the Pocketbook Viva

Here are the technical specifications of the Pocketbook Viva :

• Quad core processor
• 8 Inch Color display
• IPX8 waterproff specification
• 64 GB of built-in memory - for a large library, which is always at hand;
• A record number of formats without conversion – PocketBook Viva supports 23 formats (19 book and 4 graphic formats), including formats of comics;
• Support for 6 audiobook formats - listen to audio files in M4A, M4B, OGG, OGG.ZIP, MP3, MP3.ZIP formats;
• Dual band Wi-Fi and PocketBook Cloud services - for synchronization with other devices and convenient management of the library;
• The vast number of dictionaries – in addition to 11 pre-installed language combinations, users have 42 combinations available for free download.

Price and release date

As you may know, the Pocketbook brand is distributed all over the world (except in France where it is Vivlio that sells Pocketbook e-readers).

Pocketbook announces an availability in many countries for April 2023. We'll probably know a little more in a few weeks.

It should be noted that the price will be high since the recommended retail price seems to be $599 - which seems quite high for a reading light, even if it is the best color reading light possible.