Toshiba Bookplace DB50 Review

E-reading hasn’t quite caught on in Japan, for example, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle Fire are still largely non-existent in the Japanese market. With the Bookplace DB50, Toshiba wants to fix that, it is a 7″ tablet at 1024db50 pixels resolution, with 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM. The 8 GB internal storage should be able to store hundreds if not thousands of e-books.

Toshiba is taking similar route with the Amazon Kindle Fire by using a heavily modified version of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). The simple interface allows you to get to key areas easily and quickly. Toshiba’s own Bookplace is the largest e-book seller in Japan with more than 100,000 books.

The e-reader costs about $285, which includes $64 worth of credit for purchasing any item in the Bookplace Store. The e-reader is good for about 8 hours of battery life.