Full Review of the Meebook M8C Color e-Reader

Meebook isn’t as big as it once was. Though the company is doing its bit to stem the slide, the recent launch of the Meebook 8C is ample proof of that. Also, with the M8C, the company seems to have ticked all the right boxes. That includes a K3 color e-paper display, a Wacom pen, Android 14 out of the box, an octa-core processor, 4 gigs of memory, 64 GB of storage, and more. But is that enough? Let’s find that out in this review.

Style and Build

The M8 C’s design does not break any new ground. Its looks and build are par for the course without being extraordinary. The rear lacks any texture, so it can be a fingerprint magnet if not correctly handled. The company marking is at the top center, while the usual tech stuff is inscribed towards the bottom.

The power button is at the top right, while the USB C port, dual speakers, and status indicator light are at the bottom. The SD card slot and dual microphones are on the right side.

UI

If the UI seems familiar, it looks similar to what you have with the Onyx Boox or Bigme devices. Swipe down from the top left, and the familiar controls and shortcuts will be shown in the Control Bar.

Most of the elements of the Control Bar are self-descriptive. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth buttons are on the top, followed by the Home, Auto Rotate, Screenshot, and Background Management buttons.

Other buttons include Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb, Screen Cast, Screen Mirroring, Refresh, Color Adjustment, and Refresh Setting.

Thereafter, there are the display controls with a few pre-set display modes. However, you also have the customization option to set the brightness and contrast individually.

At the bottom lies the volume slider bar.

While all of this is okay, the usual Meebook character is grossly absent from the UI, which isn’t good.

The Color Adjustment feature, which allows for finer display control, must be mentioned. All controls are arranged under three tabs: Refresh, Color, and Display.

Under Color, you have different pre-set modes for viewing different content types. Those include Default, Photo, and Cartoon. You can also create and save customized display modes by setting the Contrast, Vividness, Brightness, and other controls.

Under Refresh, you have Regal, Default, Fast, High Speed, and Top Speed options.

Lastly, the Display tab reveals two settings: black-and-white display mode and image 256 grayscale mode. Toggle switches are available for each control, though the image 256 grayscale mode is always on by default, regardless of whether you explicitly turn it on or off. In other words, you have no control over it, and it does not make much sense either why the company provided it in the first place.

On the other hand, the Black and white display mode can be invoked simply by turning the switch on or off. It is as simple as that. The M8 C is among very few devices that offer the option to toggle between monochrome and color display just by the flick of a switch. Only the Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color offers such a feature. Otherwise, a dedicated button to turn on or off black-and-white mode is a rarity and isn’t available on any other Kaledio 3 device. Having such a feature is always lovely; you can quickly turn it on or off depending on the content you are viewing.

Otherwise, the touch input is not up to the mark. Many times, it fails to register a touch input or does not lead to the desired result. In some cases, you might even be transferred back to the home page, where you must restart the whole thing again. This makes the UI very shoddy and unreliable in performance.

Stylus

The Wacom Stylus is the same as what iFlytek offers, except that it is now in white. There is nothing wrong with that, as Meebook might have sourced the pen from the same OEM. The eraser is at the back, though, and owing to its plastic build, it offers no of that natural rubber-like feel when erasing. It comes with a graphite composition nib. There is also a side-mounted button as well. In short, there is nothing special about the pen. That said, it being very common, getting replacement units just in case something goes wrong will always be easy.

Note Taking Experience

Those who prefer that natural pen-on-paper-writing feel will be grossly disappointed here. Instead, it is like writing on a slippery surface without feedback. Otherwise, the pen is responsive, with zero lag times. You can choose from 16 input colors or set the line thickness. There are 5 different pen types available. You can also set the most used pens in the shortcut section on the left.

The left panel also has an eraser in case you aren’t eager to use the one on the top of the pen. As already stated, the pen-mounted easer is also slippery and lacks the natural rubbery feel. Other tools available here include undo, restore, lasso tools, zoom, and graph, which, however, is very basic with only a few shapes provided. There is also the text input feature and the option to expand your canvas further, which seems to have been taken straight out of an Onyx Boox device.

Reading Experience

Manga

Meebook can well be considered the unofficial ambassador for promoting manga content. The M8 C is also an excellent device for reading manga. The 7.8-inch display is just perfect for the manga layout. As Peter demoed in the video below, you can turn the refresh setting to Regal, making the display incredibly clear and sharp. You will be able to pick up even the minutest details easily. If you think the Regal setting is slowing things down, you can always opt for a high page refresh speed setting for viewing pleasure.

Book

The M8 C can also serve as an excellent e-book reader device. The display is as good or bad as on any other e-reader with the Kaleido 3 display. One of the most significant issues here, if it can be so said, is that the background isn’t as white as on a device with a monochrome e-paper display. The best thing to do is to turn the front light on, illuminating the screen so things look brighter.

Otherwise, the reading experience will depend on the app you are using. Also, almost all apps have a standard set of features. You can set the font or the font size, bookmark a page, or write notes. Long pressing on a word should reveal additional details, including its meaning in simple terms. The advantage here is that you can download the app you want from the Play Store and continue reading.

Conclusion

Meebook has tried valiantly to regain the market share it lost during COVID-19, but it just doesn’t seem to get back to the status they were held. The M8 C is currently a disaster. And I say ‘currently’ because a lot of this can be solved with some software updates. But hear me out. Taking the device for face value, it’s pretty poor. The English is unnatural, misspelled, and ill-spaced. Which results in a huge learning curve and a ton of misunderstanding

It has Wacom, a huge plus, but it’s so slippery and slimy that it almost feels like you’re writing on a glass tabletop with pancake syrup. No thought or care was applied to the note-taking feel, realism, or even features, as they almost forgot to add straightforward integral features to the functionality of note-taking.

Meebook has been heavily marketed to Southeast Asia, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, as a manga reader solution. And it does do it well. It has many speed modes and contrast levels to augment the page how you want it to look, so we’ll give them that. I suppose that dual speakers allow multimedia to play back fine, and the speed modes allow video to play smoothly.

The thing that shines on this device is that they are the first unit in 4 years to have a direct user-accessible way to TURN OFF THE COLOR, unseen and unheard of by any Kaleido-utilizing manufacturer. But that’s really where it begins and ends with this unit. It’s slow, sluggish, unresponsive, requires a considerable learning curve, and has some of the worst touch recognition I have ever experienced in my career.

Everything you interact with, everything you toggle, everything you touch, just gets miss inputted, it misses, it resets, it fails, and sends you back to the home screen; it’s not a practical execution of a user interface by any degree which they also skimmed and copied from the likes of both Bigme and Onyx, seemingly at the same time.

The M8 C can honestly be fixed with many software updates, but it is simply impossible to recommend this unit in its current state, as it is a mess.