The Noteslate Kuro is the Drawing Slate of Your (Pipe)Dreams
With its close resemblance to paper, E-ink could make an ideal drawing slate, but that market continues to be dominated by unique screen tech like the cLCD screens on Kent Displays' Boogie Boards, and by tablets with LCD or OLED screens. But Noteslate is bunking the trend.
The Noteslate Kuro is a digital writing slate with a 6.8″ E-ink screen. It runs a proprietary Noteslate OS on a 1Ghz Freescale SoloLite CPU with 8GB of internal storage, Wifi, and a microSD card slot. There’s no info on a frontlight, but we do know that Kuro has a capacitive touchscreen, and is shown with a stylus.
The Kuro bears a striking resemblance to the Shiro, the writing slate Noteslate announced last year, only now it has a black shell. Like the Shiro, the Kuro is being promoted as the perfect writing slate, although since there are no known user reports on the software it’s hard to tell just what percentage of the claims are true, and how much is hype.
Going by the product images which show a level of detail that is simply impossible on this type of E-ink screen, it’s about four to one in favor of hype. But if you would like to find out for yourself, you can sign up to be notified if and when the Kuro goes up for preo-rder.
Noteslate is a company which has spent the last five years teasing us with one digital writing slate after another, but to the best of my knowledge has not shipped a single unit.
Their most recent teases were an unnamed 9.7″ model and the Hero, a 13.3″ slate. It went up for pre-order in November, but has since vanished from the Noteslate website.
And now Noteslate has announced a new model. Do you think this one have better luck than the last two?
Comments
ediuj April 3, 2016 um 11:35 am
The web site mentions "adjustable natural darklight", which I read as some sort of frontlight. The table lists the exact same specs as for the Shiro, except for Bluetooth, which it doesn’t list (a pity, if true). It is basically a Shiro in black (and without Bluetooth).
Noteslate’s main site still lists the Shiro (both regular and signature edition) as scheduled for shipping in April. Since it is April, I wonder, whether that’ll finally end the long teasing phase. I’m still interested in one. Have yet to place an order, though. I’ll keep an eye on it. Do have up-to-date news directly from them about their schedule?
I certainly hope for an eventual release, but it has been such a long wait already, that any estimation of an actual release date would appear to be futile to make. I’m still waiting to meet Earl, by the way. The finish line has been marked long ago. We’re waiting the runners to reach it. Let’s just hope, Shizo Kanakuri won’t lose his record in "long trips" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shizo_Kanakuri).
Nate Hoffelder April 4, 2016 um 9:11 am
I saw that mention of a darklight as well. I’m not sure what that means, and given how much vaporware we’ve seen from this company I am not inclined to cut them slack or give their marketing claims much credit.
And the Shiro was supposed to ship last fall, and in February. So far I haven’t even much in the way real hands-on videos, not even from the company, so I have trouble believing the promises, much less that this device exists at all.
matteo December 1, 2016 um 5:49 am
So, I’d say almost end of 2016, and no sign of life from them. I am pondering what is the point in setting up all this fuss for YEARS and then not deliver… a mistery to me.
Nate Hoffelder December 1, 2016 um 7:56 am
Collecting payments without having to order the product.
That was the point.