Bookeen’s Cybook GEN3

A highly popular, light, small, fast, organized and easy to use eBook reader would be Bookeen’s Cybook Gen3 (Gold Edition) designed for ergonomic reading.  The Gen3 has an electronic ink high contrast display and a wide screen for comfortable reading of PDF and ePub book formats.  In addition it has 8-grey scale optimization for pictures and reading in various light settings. What adds to the Gen3’s popularity is the MP3 support to listen to music and audio books.  This paperback sized eBook reader stores up to 1000 eBooks with its 1GB data flash storage capacity.

The 6” E Ink® Vizplex screen display has a 600×800 pixels resolution with 166dpi.   The Cybook Gen3 has no backlight allowing for reading in the sun with no reflecting glare. You can change from portrait to landscape depending on what you are reading.  The Cybook Gen3 weighs a mere 174g allowing for comfortable reading for as long as you want.  You can view images in JPEG, GIF and PNG formats and read eBooks in PDF/ePub, TXT, HTML, and Mobipocket PRC formats.  What’s nice is that you can synchronize your Gen3 with your Mobipocket desktop software to get, for example, those RSS feeds.

Bookeen’s Cybook Gen3 (Gold Edition) has an amazingly low battery consumption as it only uses power when the screen is refreshed, in other words when you turn the page of your eBook.  The Gen3 supports 8000 page turns before the battery runs out.  Let’s analyze the 8000 page turns. The average paperback has approximately ±500 pages so that means your battery will run out on you after reading ±16 books.  I’d say that any book worm would be impressed by that. There are few but sufficient control keys on the Gen3 namely: the on/off power button, 5-way navigation, Menu Button, Back Button, Reset, Music, Delete and a Page forward/backward button.  See the table below for a summary of the features.

Notion Ink Adam Review

If you are looking for a stylish and well-designed eBook reader, Notion Ink’s Adam (Pixel Qi 3G) eBook reader is the way to go.  The geometric design makes it easy to hold and read. The Adam eBook reader has a fast custom made web browser, that has many features including Flash support for easy web surfing. What is impressive is that the Adam eBook reader allows you to take photo’s at a 180° angel with its remarkable swivel camera,  or face a person at a 185° angel for video chatting, or capture  a meeting at a 90° angel by setting it on a table.  You can turn your eBook into a landscape or portrait position and the page will auto-rotate.

Notion Ink’s Adam eBook Reader has a Pixel Qi 10.1” wide SVGA display at 1024×600 pixels with Matte coating giving the Adam a trans-missive, trans-reflective and reflective modes. The Capacitive multi-touch screen has a protective Matte screen guard which prevents a glare when reading your e-book in the sun, as well making it scratch and fingerprint resistant.  The Adam’s dimensions are 19.1 × 26.9 × 1.4 cm (7.5 × 10.6 × 0.51 in) and a weight of 1.6 lbs (730 g).   You can view those photos or video captures by plugging in your Adam eBook reader to your TV using the onboard HDMI port.  Moreover you can save your files or photos onto your computer or flash drives using the onboard USB port.

The Adam eBook reader has a Tegra dual core proc
essor making video games, 3D gaming and playing videos a walk in the park.  Listen to music with the stereo speakers has an amazing clarity which i sprobably better than your laptop’s speakers.  If you need more memory just add on using the MicroSD slot.  Another nice thing about the Adam eBook is that you do not need to buy any additional adaptors to plug in your keyboard, mouse or flash drives as there are two USB ports available for this.  The Adam eBook reader even comes with a drawing application that allows you to edit images.  In addition to the apps the Adam is equipped with a Quick-Office for PDF’s and office documents. I think it is important to mention that there is pending upgrades of the operating system to Honeycomb 3.0 which will make more heads turn towards Notion Ink’s Adam eBook reader. See a table below for a summarized view of the features.

Bookeen Cybook Opus Review

The Bookeen Cybook Opus eBook reader is so light (150g) and small (15.1 x 10.8 x 1.0cm) that you can slip it into your pocket and pull it out to read on the train, bus or on the beach (in direct sunlight without a glare).   You can store a variety of 1000 books in your pocket with the built-in 1GB memory and 8000 page flips which is approximately a battery life of 2 weeks.  You can show off your Cybook Opus eBook reader by choosing one of the seven trendy colors. Now that I have your attention, let’s look at the rest of the features that the Cybook Opus eBook reader has.

The display of Bookeen’s Cybook Opus eBook reader has a 4 grey-scale level E-Ink 5″ display with a resolution of 600×800 pixels and 200dpi. The g-sensor allows you to switch the Cybook Opus reader from portrait to landscape automatically and visa-versa.  There are 12 font sizes that you can choose from and the user interface is available in 23 languages namely: Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Slovak, Slovenian, Chinese simplified & Chinese.  The Cybook Opus reader supports the reading formats: Adobe ePub / PDF (native or DRM-protected), TXT FictionBook (.fb2) and HTML files without any conversions.

Keeping true to the simplicity of the Cybook Opus eBook reader has four control buttons and a 5-way navigation button, plus and on/off switch on the side of the eBook.  In addition you can expand your storage from 1GB up to 32GB with the MicroSD card slot which also allows for swapping of MicroSD cards between Opus Cybook readers to share other libraries.  Below is a short table view of the Opus eBook features:

Nook Color Review

Barnes and Noble added finishing touches to the perfect eBook reader by designing the Nook Color eBook Reader. The Nook Color eBook flaunts an impressive color touchscreen allowing for a real life experience to read your books, Newspapers, Magazines and children’s books all in color. Travelling no longer needs to be tedious, accompanied by your Nook Color eBook reader you can surf the web, chat on Facebook, play games, and listen to audio books or music. The Nook Color eBook reader personalizes your reading by letting you change the text size, font style, line spacing and background color. The Nook Color eBook reader makes for a formidable opponent on the eBook market.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook Color eBook reader has an impressive 7-inch VividView™ color touchscreen display. Now you can read to your kids their favorite bedtime story without having to lug around those bulky children’s books. The kids can follow the picturesque story on the 16 million high resolution color display at an extra wide angle of up to 178°. The Nook Color eBook uses a color IPS display, whether in portrait or landscape, to achieve this angle.

The Nook Color eBook reader gives you a free built-in WiFi connection to look up theories on Wikipedia, or look up words in the built-in Merriam-Webster Collegiate® Dictionary, or switch to your instant messenger to reply to a chat and return to your reading. Barnes and Noble provides for an endless storage supply of books with the 8GB built-in memory on the Nook Color eBook reader. In other words you can now store 6000 books on your Nook Color eBook reader, as well as an added plus of 50 kids’ books, 500 musical pieces and 150 photos. If that is not enough, you can expand your memory capacity up to 32GB to add pictures, music and other personal files. Connect to the Barnes and Noble store for a selection of over 2 million books, read your books while you listen to music or listen to the Pandora Internet Radio or enjoy games like Crossword Puzzles, Sudoku and Chess. Use your virtual book mark to return to the last page you were reading from any computer or mobile device with the free NOOK Free Reading App, including iPad™, iPhone®, iPod Touch®, Android™ smartphones, and Windows-based PCs, notebooks, or laptops.

Before buying a book from the Barnes and Noble book store you can research the book by looking at a detailed overview, editorial insights, customer reviews, ratings, see a list of similar books that you might like, sample read for free, add books to a wish list to refer to later or buy. Enjoy added features like the LendMe Technology which allows you to lend books to and from friends, share favorite phrases from books on Twitter and Facebook. In addition you can personalize your eBook reader with your personal photos or a choice of preloaded wallpapers. Finally there is an eBook reader that is affordable and compiled to suite the sophisticated and the plain. View the table below to see a summary of all the Nook Color eBook features.

Features Barnes & Noble NOOK COLOR
Operating System Android 2.1
Compatibility Mac ; PC
LCD Display Size 7 Inches
LCD Display Resolution 1024 x 600
Touchscreen Capacitive
Internal Memory 8GB
Expandable Memory microSD slot up to 32GB
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Headphone Jack 3.5mm
eBook Formats EPUB (including Non or Adobe DRM); PDF
Audio Formats MP3; AAC
Graphic Formats JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Video Formats MP4
Other Formats XLS, DOC, PPT, PPS, TXT, DOCM, XLSM, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX
Rated Battery Life 8 hours with wireless off
Size 8.1 x 5.0 x 0.48 inches
Weight 15.8 ounces
Warranty/Support One-year standard with rapid replacement, 24/7 phone and web support
Price $249

Barnes & Noble NOOK 3G + Wi-Fi eBook Reader Review

Can you imagine how much shelf space you would need to store 1500 books or have a library of a 2 million books to choose from? Well in Barnes and Noble’s Nook (3G +Wifi) eBook reader you can store 1500 books with a whole lot more options like the dual-display, share books with friends, select from a library of over 2 million books some of which you can download for free , or download free samples of a book before buying and color touchscreen navigation. In addition the Nook holds up 26 hours of audio.

The Nook eBook reader with its E Ink® 6 inch display and resolution of 800 x 600 pixels is like reading from an actual book. The Nook has a 16-level gray scale display without backlight which allows for clarity and no glare in the sunlight. The second display at the bottom of the screen is a color navigation panel which gives you the options: The Daily, My Library, Shop, Reading Now, Games, Wi-Fi, Audio, Web, and Settings. The Nook’s color navigation panel allows with a touch of the panel to open your book on the last page you read with the “read Now”, to play a game of Chess or Sudoku on various levels of difficulty, surf the internet, listen to music, send a mail, read newspapers, magazines, look up unknown words in the Built-In Merriam-Webster Collegiate® Dictionary, buy books and read books.

Barnes and Noble’s Nook eBook reader offers a free 3G connection which does away with those annoying connection fees or contracts. The Nook connects via the free WiFi network at all Barnes and noble stores as well as over 20 thousand AT&T hotspots. Enjoy reading your eBook without the hassle of recharging the battery for up to 10 days without the WiFi turned on, alternatively a 4 days with the Wifi turned on. If your Nook runs out of storage space with the 2GB built in memory you can add up to another 16GB using the expandable microSD slot.

A couple of additional features that are worth mentioning such as the ability to synchronize the Nook eBook reader with the last page you read on your iPad, iPhone or Android-based smartphone using the built-in Nook apps or the ability to password protect your Nook from unauthorized access of your eBook and lastly you can categorize your books by using the “My shelves” option. Take a look at the table below for a summarized view of Barnes and Noble’s Nook (3G +Wifi) eBook reader:

Features Barnes & Noble NOOK (3G + Wi-Fi)
Operating System Android
Compatibility Mac ; PC
Electronic Paper Display Size 6 Inches
Electronic Paper Display Resolution 800 x 600
Secondary Display Size 3.5 inches
Secondary Display Resolution 480 x 144
Touchscreen Capacitive (LCD Only)
Internal Memory 2GB
Expandable Memory microSD slot up to 16GB
3G AT&T
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
Headphone Jack 3.5mm
eBook Formats EPUB; PDB; PDF
Audio Formats MP3
Image Formats BMP; GIF; JPEG; PNG
Rated Battery Life 4 days with wireless on/ 10 days with wireless off
Size 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
Weight 12.1 ounces
Warranty/Support One-year standard with rapid replacement and toll-free phone support
Price $199

Amazon Kindle 2

Amazon’s second generation Kindle sets the standard for eBook Readers.   Upon purchasing your eBook, you can open and use it straight out of the box as there is no need to setup anything.  The design of the Kindle 2 eBook Reader allows for an easy reading of eBooks from a 6 inch display.  Curled up on your coach and sipping a cup of coffee you can use your other hand to hold the Kindle 2 as it is real light (8.5 oz.) and thin. You can turn the pages with the same hand from the buttons located at the bottom, on both sides, of the eBook Reader.   The Kindle eBook does not heat up in your hands while you are reading.

Reading your eBook with Kindle 2 makes it a pleasant experience with features like: the 50% improved contrast with E Ink Pearl type display making you feel like you are reading from an actual book, high contrast display making the turning of pages 20% faster as well as sharper fonts, there is no glare off the screen in sunlight, it has eight adjustable font sizes, three font types, you are able to manually rotate your view from portrait to landscape, image zooms for photos and images, a built in dictionary for looking up words, and if you accidently delete your eBook(s) or do not remember the last page you read, Amazon automatically keeps an archive free of charge for you to download at any time.

In addition Kindle Reader allows you to store up to 3500 eBooks. Amazon’s Kindle 2 eBook Readers are equipped with a U.S. Power Adapter that supports 100V-240V as well as a micro-USB cable for recharging on your computer. The built-in Wi-Fi automatically detects nearby Wi-Fi networks and keeps an archive of the login details so that you are automatically connected to the same Wi-Fi network, when in the same hotspot, via Whispernet.   Any U.S. AT&T hotspots will give you free downloading access.  In 60 seconds you can download your book using Amazon’s automatically detected optimized technology plus Wi-Fi network.

From your categorized eBooks you can select your favorite book.  If you have accidently lost your eBook or forgotten your place in reading Amazon’s automatic archive will freely allow you to download that lost copy or take you to the last page you were reading. Using Kindle’s 5-way controller you can easily read your newspaper.  The Amazon Kindle 2 eBook Reader allows you password protect all those important PDF documents.  Let’s have a quick view at the features of the Kindle 2 eBook Reader:

Pocketbook IQ 701 Review

An e-book reader’s main purpose is to serve as a reading device for people who love to read digital books and periodicals. They have come a long way though since the first time they came out, and nowadays e-book readers have definitely improved upon their predecessors in terms of functions and usability. Today we will take a look at the Pocketbook IQ 701, an Android e-reader from the company Pocketbook.

Hardware

The Pocketbook IQ 701 has a 7-inch TFT Resistive LCD touch screen (max res of 800×600), powered by a Samsung 800 MHz processor, with 256 MB of RAM, support for Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Accelerometer, built-in 2GB of Flash memory, with SD card slot for cards up to 32GB. It has built-in speakers as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker and a micro USB port on the side for connecting to your PC.

Out of the box the Pocketbook IQ comes with an AC charger, USB cable, slip cover, and 2 year warranty. There are three colors to choose from: blue, white and red.

Software and Apps

The Pocketbook IQ 701 runs on the Google Android 2.0 operating system. Upon turning on the device, you will be greeted with the standard pocketbook graphical user interface you might with other e-ink based electronic readers. Its main home screen contains the Pocketbook Library, Notes, Dictionary, Search, Settings, Calendar, Favorites and Programs folders.

The Programs folder contains all the applications that are installed in the device. It also functions as an Android Widget, and it comes with a number of pre-loaded applications. Examples of these are the music player, email, instant messaging, file manager, alarm clock, web browser and Email.

A very welcome addition to the feature-set is the inclusion of the Android App Client, which has a program that links to every major independent app store for android, enabling the user to download files and apps that they like. Through this feature the user is given the ability to browse alternative markets via quick links to the browser.

The formats currently supported are:  DOC, DOCX, FB2, TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, PRC, MOBI, CHM, EPUB, TCR and DJVU formats. Quite impressive indeed since this covers almost all of the formats you will see in an e-book reader. It can also play mp3s and offers photo-viewing support for the following formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG and TIFF. It also features AVI and 3GP for videos.

VERDICT

As an entry level tablet, the Pocketbook IQ 701 is one of the best choices in the market right now. With an impressive feature set, the user is guaranteed of bang-for-the-buck value for this device. Some might get turned off by the resistive screen, but at its price point one should not really expect the same fluidity that capacitive screens provide, and the resistive screen does a decent job of displaying content anyway. Being an Android device opens up a lot of multimedia and productivity options for the user, which is a huge plus, and as an e-Book device, the Pocketbook IQ 701 delivers what is expected and more through its extensive format support and right out-of-the-box content. A great, inexpensive tablet for those who are looking for a starter e-Book reader and a good complement to dedicated e-Book readers with its email, internet, and application capabilities.

Kindle eReader Review

If you have no intention of travelling with your eBook Reader and you have an internet connection at home then the Kindle (Wi-Fi) is the right choice for you.  You can easily download your eBooks to your reader from your wireless internet connection at home.

Upon purchasing your eBook you can open and use it straight out of the box as there is no need to setup anything.  The design of the Kindle eBook Readers allow for an easy reading of eBooks from a display of 6 inches.  Curled up on your coach and sipping a cup of coffee makes reading easy using only one hand as the Kindle eBook is real light and thin. You can turn the pages with the same hand from the buttons located on both sides at the bottom of the eBook Reader.   The Kindle eBook does not heat up in your hands while you are reading. In addition Kindle Reader allows you to store up to 3500

Amazon’s Kindle eBook Reader features are equipped with a U.S. Power Adapter that supports 100V-240V as well as a micro-USB cable for recharging on your computer. Any U.S. AT&T hotspots will give you free downloading access.  The built-in Wi-Fi automatically detects nearby Wi-Fi networks and keeps an archive of the login details so that you are automatically connected to the same Wi-Fi network, when in the same hotspot, via Whispernet.

Reading your eBook with Kindle makes it a pleasant experience with features like: the E Ink Pearl type display with 50% improved contrast making you feel like you are reading from an actual book, high contrast display making the turning of pages 20% faster as well as sharper fonts, there is no glare off the screen in sunlight, has eight adjustable font sizes, three font types, you are able to manually rotate your view from portrait to landscape, image zooms for photos and images, a built in dictionary for looking up words, and if you accidently delete your eBook(s) or do not remember the last page you read, Amazon automatically keeps an archive free of charge for you to download at any time.