Product Spotlight: Onyx Youngy Boox
Following its showing at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair earlier this month, the Onyx Youngy Boox has made its European debut at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The e-Reader has been designed for the EdTech sector in China and boasts a 10.7” screen capable of displaying colour.
The device includes a 150dpi black and white E-Ink display manufactured by Plastic Logic, with a RGBC (Red/Green/Blue/Clear) colour filter applied over the top. The filter adds colour on top of a pixel on the E-ink screen, requiring four pixels on the greyscale screen to provide one pixel on top, meaning the final resolution is 75dpi. Combined with a touch interface from Wacom, it’s able to offer visual clarity and intuitive interaction in a lightweight package.
The device is intended for the educational sector, being distributed without the availability to download time-sink apps like YouTube and Instagram, and is currently only available in China.
In EdTech, the e-reader is very well suited to children of all ages. E-paper interfaces are known to be extremely durable so there’s little risk of damage from being dropped or scratched, and the display requires very little power which makes it perfect for long study periods. The touchscreen also lets children interact with the e-reader as they would with paper, allowing them to develop hand-eye coordination in an intuitive way.
There are also some unusual technological features for an e-reader that gives the Youngy Boox a further boost. It includes a camera on the back to let children take pictures of their homework, Bluetooth compatibility for headphones, and both a speaker and a microphone to record and then listen back to lectures and lessons.
With great interest in the Youngy Boox even at this early stage, it wouldn’t be surprising to see similar devices crop up outside of China in the near future.