JDRead Review: Highly Cost-Effective E-book with Deep Localization Customization

As one of the few products in China that can compete with Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, JDRead has received a lot of attention since its release due to its extremely high cost-effectiveness.

However, an e-book list with powerful performance does not necessarily become the darling of the market. This is why Amazon can still firmly hold more than 60% of the e-book market share simply by squeezing the toothpaste method.

I believe many people are also curious about which one is better, JDRead, which also has a huge amount of book resources, or Kindle, which occupies a dominant position in e-books.

As it happens, I have been using Amazon Kindle Oasis 2017. Today, we will eliminate the high premium attribute of Kindle Oasis 2017 and only start from the concept and content as a reference for JDRead evaluation to see what this e-book reader from JD is like .

JDRead's appearance is more focused on experience

In terms of appearance, JDRead is very similar to Amazon Kindle paperwhite. Both have a large curved back shell and a 6-inch display area. Although the overall design concept is similar, JDRead has made considerable breakthroughs in details.

First of all, JDRead has compressed the left and right upper borders of the screen to the minimum, so the screen utilization rate of the body is higher than that of Kindle Paperwhite. According to the official introduction, the length and width of JDRead are 156mm and 110mm respectively, while the length and width of Kindle Paperwhite are 167mm and 116mm respectively.

The advantages brought by the reduced body size are obvious - the weight of JDRead is also reduced to 155g, while the weights of Kindle Oasis 2017 and Kindle paperwhite are 195g and 182g respectively. Don't underestimate this slight weight reduction. When we are immersed in a few hours of reading time, the lighter weight of JDRead can undoubtedly relieve wrist pain more effectively.

In addition, what is more commendable is that the bottom of the JDRead body is equipped with a USB Type-C interface. In contrast, even the flagship Oasis series of Kindle still uses the outdated previous generation Micro USB interface, which invisibly increases the burden of use for consumers.

In general, although the general design direction is similar, after careful polishing, JDRead is one level higher than Kindle paperwhite in details, which allows consumers to focus more on the book itself when using it without being disturbed by design flaws.

Specially optimized for the single function of "reading"

The reading experience is an important indicator to measure the quality of an e-book reader. JDRead is equipped with a 6-inch, 300ppi resolution e-ink screen and a built-in 20-level evenly distributed reading light.

When reading in the dark, you can find that the backlight of JDRead is more uniform than that of the kindle Oasis 2017 that I personally use, and there is no light leakage problem on the four sides of the screen.

Due to the characteristics of the e-ink screen, the page-turning speed of JDRead is almost the same as that of Kindle Oasis 2017. However, perhaps due to the special optimization of Kindle, the moment our fingers touch Kindle Oasis 2017, Kindle will give feedback, while JDRead feels a little hesitant. Therefore, the overall page-turning experience of Kindle Oasis 2017 is better.

At the software level for reading books, JDRead supports adjusting fonts, font sizes, layouts and other options. Among them, I personally think the most useful is the layout adjustment - users can customize the line spacing, paragraph spacing, top and bottom spacing, and left and right spacing, which is of great help for reading e-books of varying quality.

Interestingly, JDRead also has a Bluetooth function. You can turn on JDRead's listening mode by simply connecting to a Bluetooth playback device via Bluetooth. When driving or in situations where it is inconvenient to read e-books, listening to books through JDRead can also allow us to immerse ourselves in the world of books.

Through experience, we can find that JDRead is not only equipped with powerful hardware, but also fully optimized for the single function of "reading" at the software level in order to give consumers the best reading experience. Therefore, through JDRead, we have seen the most ideal product form of e-books.

Books are JDRead's main business

After talking about software and hardware, let’s take a look at JDRead’s achievements in content. After all, no matter how good the e-book device is, without high-quality content, it will be useless.

Like Kindle, JDRead also has JD.com, a huge book content provider, behind it. In order to fairly compare the pros and cons of JDRead and Kindle in terms of content, we selected the top ten books on Dangdang.com's e-book rankings as a small sample, and compared the content richness and price differences of books on the two platforms, JDRead and Kindle.

In terms of the number of resources, JDRead and Kindle are on par with each other, basically covering about 90% of the books on the market. I believe that if the book is not particularly unpopular, it can be found on these two platforms.

In terms of price, JDRead basically maintains its price below 30 yuan, while "The Great Qin Empire" on Kindle is sold for nearly 300 yuan. However, the advantage of Kindle is that some books are free, while most of JDRead's books are charged.

However, according to the introduction on JD.com's official website, in the first year of purchasing JDRead, JD.com will give consumers one year of JD Reading VIP qualification, which allows us to enjoy a large number of books at free prices.

In general, since JD.com and Amazon have been cultivating the traditional paper book market, these two companies have natural advantages in the e-book track, so they can meet the needs of mainstream consumers in terms of both the quantity and price of resources.

1000 yuan, it is definitely worth buying JDRead

Although JD.com entered the e-book industry relatively late, from the product perspective, JDRead is not immature at all. On the contrary, by comparing it with Kindle, which has been working in the e-book industry for more than ten years, it can be found that JDRead has considerable strengths in localized customization and product design.

In a horizontal comparison, at the same price of 1,000 yuan, JDRead is not only lighter in appearance than Kindle paperwhite, but also has a lot of localized optimizations. In addition, JDRead is exploring the field of listening to books through Bluetooth. It can be said that buying JDRead will definitely get more surprises than buying Kindle paperwhite.

On the other hand, since there has not been a sufficiently strong competitor in the market, Amazon has been making slow progress on the Kindle. I believe that with JD.com's efforts in the e-book field, it will invisibly put huge pressure on Amazon. Therefore, JDRead will also play a very positive role in promoting the progress of the entire e-book industry.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.