PocketBook Touch Lux 4

PocketBook Touch Lux 4: At a Glance

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4, as the name suggests, is the fourth generation of the Touch Lux lineup, which has been a major influence on the German eReader market for years. This eBook reader brings compact dimensions and a low weight to the already handy 6-inch segment, paving the way for the company’s future design strategy.

The Lux 4 is essentially a careful facelift, primarily aimed at bringing the new design language introduced with the InkPad 3 to the 6-inch segment. As such, the eReader offers a preview of the premium Touch HD 3 model.

The new look is not only easy on the eyes but has some tangible benefits as well: weighing in at just 152 grams (as measured by us), the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 is the lightest 6-inch eReader since the Kindle Oasis 1 (without a cover). The PocketBook Sense was 3 grams heavier. This extremely low weight makes handling a breeze. Of course, it’s worth noting that not everyone appreciates such lightness—some people find entertainment devices that are too light feel “cheap.”

Even if the build quality isn’t quite as flawless as the more expensive Touch HD 2, the overall feel is still excellent. Nothing creaks or rattles, and the buttons have a satisfyingly clear tactile response.

Few Technical Innovations

Despite all the praise, there are a few drawbacks to mention. The PocketBook Touch Lux 4, like its predecessor, features a display with a pixel density of 212 ppi. Its competitors (Kindle Paperwhite, Tolino Shine 2 HD) already offer 300 ppi displays in a similar price range.

To be fair, without a side-by-side comparison, the sharpness difference isn’t particularly noticeable—but if you’re comparing eReaders, it’s something you’ll want to keep in mind.

That said, the Touch Lux 4 makes up for this with features like expandable storage via memory card and physical page-turn buttons—both of which are missing from its main rivals. Another plus is the doubling of RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB, which improves operation, especially when viewing PDF files.

Well Executed in Practice

In addition to its snappy software, owners of the Touch Lux 4 can also look forward to the even frontlighting and high-contrast E-Ink Carta display. This means it’s easy to read at any time of day or night. You should be prepared, though, for a bit more ghosting than you’d see on the latest 300 ppi panels.

The built-in (freely assignable) buttons make operation very comfortable. Even if you don’t use them all the time, being able to switch between the touchscreen and physical buttons is a refreshing change from the uniformity of other manufacturers.

Summary and Commentary

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 is a solid further development of the Lux 3, boasting excellent portability thanks to its light weight and compact size. The new design is certainly a success.

However, for current Touch Lux 3 owners, there’s no urgent reason to upgrade—aside from the increased RAM, not much has changed technically.

Compared to the competition, the lack of a 300 ppi display is a bit of a miss—it’s a feature that would have been a welcome upgrade. Still, you shouldn’t get too hung up on the lower pixel density, as the difference is barely noticeable in day-to-day use without a direct comparison. And unique features like memory card expansion and page-turn buttons more than make up for this, making the Lux 4 well worth a look.

PocketBook Touch Lux 4: Full Review

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 succeeds the Lux 3 and remains positioned as an entry-level model in the illuminated mid-range segment. The biggest change is without a doubt the design:

PocketBook has followed the design of the InkPad 3 and brought it to the 6-inch segment. The result is an especially compact and lightweight body that still offers the benefits of physical buttons. Below, we take a look at how the new Lux 4 performs overall.

The PocketBook InkPad 3 (left) was the first eReader with the new case design

Build quality and features

With only minimal changes and few deviations, PocketBook had essentially stuck with the same case shape in the 6-inch segment since 2012 with the “Touch“. The devices had a relatively wide, easy-to-grip bezel and the same button layout below the screen. Recognition value and usability were consistently very high.

Changing a tried-and-true formula always carries a certain risk, which PocketBook was clearly aware of. They didn’t reinvent the wheel; instead, there’s now a visual reinterpretation of the familiar design: while the basic layout with the buttons below the display remains the same, both the buttons and the bezel around the screen are now significantly slimmer.

The buttons below the display are lower, but still very easy to use

Feather-light handling

In its press release, PocketBook proudly states that thanks to the reduced dimensions, the eBook reader now easily fits in a “normal” back pocket of a pair of pants. That’s indeed no problem. To be fair, though, the predecessors also fit in a pocket—just not quite as comfortably.

Ultimately, this is more of a marketing gimmick, because most E Ink displays use glass as a substrate and are prone to screen breakage if mishandled. If you accidentally sit on your eReader while it’s still in your pocket, things can go south quickly.

Be that as it may: the handling of the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 certainly doesn’t suffer from the smaller dimensions. On the contrary: thanks to the very low weight (measured 152 grams), it’s extremely comfortable to use. The somewhat narrower bezels don’t have a negative impact. To put it in perspective: the Touch Lux 4 is lighter than many 6-inch smartphones.

Can be comfortably gripped with one hand

Top-notch feel, build quality is fine

Not only is the handling excellent, the feel in hand leaves nothing to be desired either. Despite its low weight, the eReader makes a high-quality, sturdy impression.

The four buttons have a crisp, clearly defined click, without being too stiff. A small downside: the buttons are quite audible when pressed. If you’re reading in bed next to someone, using the touchscreen to turn pages is probably the better choice so you don’t disturb your partner.

The clearly defined click points are definitely preferable to the indistinct feel of the Touch HD 2’s buttons.

Along the bottom edge of the device is the LED-lit power button. It lights up to indicate when the eBook reader is working. If you find this distracting, you can disable the LED signal in the device settings.

USB port, microSD card slot, and power button along the bottom edge of the case

Build quality is also very good for the most part. Our review unit does have a small flaw on the top of the back: between the frame and rear cover, a tiny bit of the screen’s frontlight peeks through if you look straight at the edge. This is truly just a minor cosmetic issue and doesn’t affect reading in the slightest. No dust accumulated in the tiny gap during the entire test period.

Storage expansion still possible

In terms of features, there’s just one change: the Touch Lux 4 now has twice as much RAM as its predecessor—512 MB. In direct comparison, this primarily improves handling of PDF files. In everyday use with ePub files, the differences are minor.

Happily, the 8 GB of internal storage can still be expanded via microSD card. Wi-Fi is available for wireless connectivity. You’ll have to do without built-in waterproofing and blue light reduction.

The PocketBook Touch Lux 3 (left) doesn’t look as modern with its wider bezel as the Touch Lux 4 (right)

Display and lighting

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 has an E Ink Carta display with a resolution of 1024×758 pixels, yielding a pixel density of 212 ppi. You’ll have to do without the so-called “retina” resolution of 300 ppi. That will essentially be the only noteworthy criticism of the Touch Lux 4.

When needed, the screen is illuminated by 5 LEDs via a light guide layer.

Contrast and resolution

Even though the Lux 4 lacks 300 ppi, it’s only fair to note that the difference in resolution is mostly visible in direct comparison with other models and isn’t a problem on its own. Still, this point naturally lingers in the back of your mind when comparing and (potentially) buying.

Display contrast remains very good and is on par with current E Ink Carta models. Text is easy to read during the day even without the light on. Turning on the built-in LEDs noticeably boosts contrast, so you can read comfortably at any time of day or night.

The E Ink Carta display offers the reliably good readability it’s known for

I’ll skip the usual contrast measurement here, as the E Ink Carta panels used are practically indistinguishable now. Contrast, as with the Lux 3, is around 7.5:1.

With current models, maximum contrast ratio is essentially determined by brightness. Modern light guide layers typically deliver very similar results at the same brightness settings. In other words: if you want the most readable model in daylight, pay attention to maximum brightness. With other light settings, there are currently no significant differences between brands and models in terms of contrast. It’s a different story with lighting quality, where there’s still a lot of variability between eReaders and manufacturers. 

Lighting quality and brightness

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4’s lighting quality proves to be good. A slight brightness gradient doesn’t disrupt reading, but compared to its predecessor it’s somewhat more pronounced and noticeable on closer inspection.

The most obvious difference from the Lux 3 is the changed brightness range: the Touch Lux 4 doesn’t get as bright as its predecessor. Maximum brightness is about 33 percent lower and on the level of the Aqua 2.

Lighting at similar brightness compared: PocketBook Touch Lux 3 (left) and Lux 4 (right)

On the other hand, the lowest brightness setting can be made significantly dimmer than you typically see outside of Kindle. Those particularly sensitive to light will welcome this change.

Maximum screen brightness in cd/m² (higher is better)

• Kindle Oasis 1 159
• Kindle Voyage 122
• Tolino Vision 3 HD 120
• Kindle Paperwhite 3 115
• Kobo Glo HD 114
• PocketBook Touch Lux 3 111
• Kobo Aura One 105
• Kobo Aura H2O 99
• Tolino Shine 2 HD 89
• PocketBook Touch HD 79
• PocketBook Aqua 2 74
• PocketBook Touch Lux 4 73
• Tolino Vision 2 53

Minimum screen brightness in cd/m² (lower is better)

• Tolino Vision 2 2.2
• Kobo Aura One 2.1
• Tolino Shine 2 HD 2.0
• Tolino Vision 3 HD 1.7
• PocketBook Touch Lux 3 1.6
• Kobo Glo HD 1.4
• Kobo Aura H2O 1.2
• PocketBook Aqua 2 1.2
• PocketBook Touch HD 0.8
• Kindle Oasis 1 0.4
• PocketBook Touch Lux 4 0.4
• Kindle Voyage 0.2
• Kindle Paperwhite 3 0.2

Color temperature

There’s no blue light reduction. The LEDs’ color temperature is a slightly cool 6700 Kelvin, but remains within a good range. To the naked eye, the light appears fairly neutral. This puts the Lux 4 in the solid mid-field of the PocketBook lineup and roughly on par with its predecessor. To the naked eye, the differences between Lux 3 and Lux 4 are hard to spot. Only the first Touch HD looks a touch more neutral in direct comparison.

Note that color temperature measurements can only serve as a guideline; due to manufacturing tolerances, light color typically varies by up to 400 Kelvin from unit to unit within the same model line.

Touchscreen, ghosting and interim verdict

Operation is via the capacitive touchscreen, whose responsiveness leaves nothing to be desired. Inputs are reliably recognized. While there are no notable differences from the predecessor in day-to-day use, there is a small tactile change: the surface of the PocketBook Touch Lux 4’s display isn’t as rough as on the Lux 3.

As with the predecessor, you’ll sometimes notice ghosting. You can avoid this by setting the screen to refresh on every page turn instead of the default every fifth page (settings: never, always, after 3 pages, after 5 pages, after 10 pages).

All in all, the PocketBook Touch Lux 4’s display is virtually identical to the Aqua 2 and delivers the familiar good E Ink Carta level.

Reading and usability

PocketBook may have tweaked the Touch Lux 4’s case design, but the user interface remains as familiar as ever. The modern, airy UI now feels more in tune with the streamlined case design.

On first startup, you can select the language, then accept the license agreement, and after setting the time and date you land on the home screen. There’s no need to log in anywhere, so there’s no forced registration to worry about with the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 either. If you wish, the eReader can still be connected to various services. The notification bar points this out, with prompts to sign in to PocketBook Cloud, Dropbox, and ReadRate.

Notification bar

If you don’t want the eBook reader to “phone home,” you can completely disable anonymous error and usage data transfer under “Settings > Maintenance > Privacy > Diagnostics and usage.” A welcome option in an increasingly transparent world.

The home screen presents the familiar cover view. In the middle are your most recently read titles, with your most recently added eBooks below. Swipe across the screen or use the page-turn buttons to load more titles.

Program list

The three menu items Library, Shop, and Browser are still at the bottom edge of the screen; the expandable program list contains the following items:

• Library
• Browser
• Dropbox PocketBook
• Settings
• Gallery
• Klondike
• PocketBook Cloud
• RSS News
• Chess
• Scribble
• Sent-to-PocketBook
• Sudoku
• Calculator
• Clock/Calendar
• Dictionary
• eBook shop

Library

PocketBook still offers the most comprehensive virtual library function in the eReader market—and of course it’s also used on the Touch Lux 4. It features numerous filters, customization options, and settings—more than anywhere else. This lets you manage even large eBook collections directly on the device and navigate them with ease.

eBooks can be sorted by last opened, date added, title, and author. You can also filter by authors, genres, collections, favorites, folders, formats, series, and PocketBook Cloud—ascending or descending. Or you can simply display all eBooks unfiltered. You can choose between a more visually appealing cover view and a more sober list view.

The library offers numerous sorting and filtering options

A distinctive feature of PocketBook’s library is the scroll direction: instead of switching horizontally between multiple screens like the competition, PocketBook lets you scroll smoothly with your finger—just like on smartphones and tablets. After a short adjustment period, this works fine on an E Ink screen as well. If you don’t like it, the buttons also allow stepwise paging through the library. There’s a search function, too.

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 offers maximum flexibility with the dual sorting option via Calibre’s tag system (genres) and by displaying the folder structure. Whichever sorting you prefer, the Lux 4 lets you use both. No other manufacturer offers display options this flexible.

Reading

The eReader is just as flexible when it comes to page turns: you can tap or swipe on the display, or use the page-turn buttons. Depending on how you’re holding the device, one option may be more comfortable than the other.

What’s still missing is the ability to customize tap zones (as, for example, on Kobo). The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 makes up for this with configurable hardware buttons. In the settings menu, you can assign different functions to the four buttons so they suit your needs perfectly.

Press the menu button (unless you’ve reassigned it) or tap the middle of the screen to open the options menu.

Text appearance settings

Text options are divided across three tabs. The first covers font size (between 6 and 40 pt in 1-pt steps), as well as line spacing and margins (each in 3 steps). You can also (de)activate hyphenation here. A pinch-to-zoom gesture is also available for adjusting text size, which works precisely thanks to a preview.

The second tab lets you change the font. You can choose from numerous preinstalled typefaces or add your own via USB transfer. Separate buttons let you switch the style between Regular, Italic, and Bold.

The third tab contains options to show and hide the status bar and page display. You can also choose whether to use the built-in page numbers or have the software determine reading position.

Highlights and notes

Unfortunately, our criticism of the note-taking function also applies to the PocketBook Touch Lux 4. As a legacy from earlier days, the software offers two different note modes, which is anything but intuitive. Press and hold a word for about 2 seconds to start the “simple” mode for creating highlights and notes.

The note-taking could be more intuitive

Open the “advanced” mode via the reading menu. This also offers highlighting and note-taking, plus a screenshot mode. Created notes can only be read in the advanced mode. It takes four taps to read a note. With Tolino it takes two, with Kindle just one. Besides the extra effort, this split is also confusing from a user perspective.

What PocketBook gains over the competition in library management, it still needs to catch up on in note-taking.

All highlights, notes, and bookmarks can be viewed in an overview list, but position info and filter/organizing options are still missing.

Dictionaries

The second (smaller) weak point is the dictionary function. Looking up a word still takes two taps—competitors sometimes do this faster (Kindle: 1 tap; Tolino: 2 taps). If you read a lot of foreign-language books, that extra tap can get annoying.

Depending on where the word is on the page, the definition pops up at the top or bottom of the screen. If a word isn’t found, you can use the search function to look it up yourself. Depending on the dictionary, some grammatical forms may not be recognized, so you’ll need to enter the lemma yourself.

Dictionary function, here German -> English

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 earns praise again for the number of bundled dictionaries, even if they’re primarily for to-and-from English. The following are available:

• Webster’s 1913 Dictionary
• English-German (unnamed)
• KD (Cs-En)
• KD (Da-En)
• KD (De-En)
• KD (En-Cs)
• KD (En-Da)
• KD (En-De)
• KD (En-Es)
• KD (En-Fi)
• KD (En-Fr)
• KD (En-Hu)
• KD (En-It)
• KD (En-Lt)
• KD (En-Lv)
• KD (En-Nl)
• KD (En-No)
• KD (En-Pl)
• KD (En-Ro)
• KD (En-Sk)
• KD (En-Sl)
• KD (En-Sv)
• KD (Es-En)
• KD (Fr-En)
• KD (It-En)
• KD (No-En)

PDF viewing

One of the PocketBook software’s strengths is unquestionably its extensive PDF support. Unlike its competitors, the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 offers clear, useful options to sensibly display large A4 documents on a 6-inch screen.

The following modes are available:

• Fit to width
• Fit to page
• Columns (2 & 3)
• Reflow
• Zoom (between 30 and 300 percent)
• Margin crop (off, automatic, manual)

The only thing missing from the list is a contrast enhancement option, which would sometimes be helpful with small fonts due to anti-aliasing.

PDF features

Thanks to the doubled RAM, handling of large, image-heavy files is even better than on the already-good predecessor. You shouldn’t expect smartphone- or tablet-like snappiness, but overall the PDF experience is among the best on the market.

Miscellaneous

Of course, you can buy eBooks directly on the PocketBook Touch Lux 4. Either the Bookland shop is used, or the store of the bookseller from whom you purchased the eReader. Usage is fundamentally the same.

PocketBook has worked for a long time to be more than just a hardware maker, offering partners and users various services to enhance convenience. The PocketBook Cloud is the result of these efforts and has been on the market since 2015. As the third ecosystem alongside Kindle and Tolino, it offers similar options and convenience from the user’s perspective: all eBooks purchased in partner shops are automatically stored online and can then be synchronized. This requires signing in to both the shop and the Cloud.

The web browser, which is more prominently placed on the start page than on competitors’ devices, is fast enough for quick research online or for visiting an alternative eBook store or Onleihe. Features include pinch-to-zoom, panning the viewport with the page-turn buttons, a landscape mode, and favorites. Images and JavaScript can be disabled if desired.

Good web browser

Even though the browser is generally quite snappy, it can’t quite keep up in responsiveness and speed with Tolino’s Android-based competition.

A great, underrated feature is Dropbox synchronization. Once you’ve entered your login details on the device, you can sync a cloud folder with the eReader. For Calibre users, Dropbox compatibility opens up great possibilities: for example, you can fetch news feeds in RSS format, convert them automatically to ePub, and save them in your Dropbox directory. The directory syncs with the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 so you can read the news directly on the eReader.

As another sync option, there’s Send-to-PocketBook: this lets you send emails directly to the device.

Conclusion

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 is a rather unusual new release for a mid-range device in an era of 300 ppi. But instead of entering a display arms race with the Kindle Paperwhite and Tolino Shine 2 HD, PocketBook has chosen to tweak a few other things.

Thanks to its compact dimensions and very low weight, the new Lux 4 offers especially comfortable handling. The weight difference compared to its predecessor isn’t just visible on paper—it’s noticeably positive in real life.

The PocketBook Touch Lux 4 is a well-executed eReader

Together with the doubled RAM, extensive software, and numerous sync options, the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 shapes up as a serious competitor to Amazon and Tolino. Only if you take a lot of notes or use the dictionary function particularly often does the Lux 4 fall a bit short of the competition. If you mainly read without these extras, or plan to keep a larger eBook library on the device, the new PocketBook eReader is definitely worth a look.

All in all, the PocketBook Touch Lux 4 earns a solid grade of 1.7.

PocketBook Touch Lux 4: Technical Specifications

All information provided without guarantee.