First of all, the black and white models of Pandigital Novel are not the same device. When given a choice, go for the white one. It has better hardware and a newer Android version.
I happen to have a black version. My first impression was not so great. Since I wanted an ebook reader primarily to read public domain versions of old books in PDF format, this was my first test. I loaded a file and quickly discovered that it was very difficult to flip pages. Eventually I realized that Pandigital creates an off-screen version of the next page every time a page loads. While this is happening, you cannot flip pages. Rendering PDF pages (essentially images!) can take a long time. Hence the problem. If you are simply reading the text, however, you will not be noticing much. So, that's the good news.
Of course, general responsiveness of the device is not ideal. I have seen this with many similar Android platforms. Basically, if you need something like an iPad, you will have to pay the iPad price. Also, at the moment Pandigital lacks font management. The fonts don't look all that great and I think that simply using different typefaces could improve things a lot. Again, I have seen similar issues with other Android devices.
The US version of Pandigital Novel is locked down. You cannot install any additional apps. So, it is not a fully-fledged Android.
The bottom line is that Pandigital Novel can be idea if you need exactly what it purports to be: a simple ebook reader. I wanted to be able to read more books in more locations. Having a device that can do too much would be counterproductive. I would end up doing something other than reading in most cases.
Download Pandigital Novel (white) Manual (pdf)
Download Pandigital Novel (black) Manual (pdf)
