 
The Good e-Reader Buyers Guide 2011

Michael Kozlowski

Copyright 2011 by Good e-Reader

Smashwords Edition

The Good e-Reader – eReader Buyers Guide for 2011 attempts to explore the myriad of e-readers in the market right now. Many devices have hit the market this year and it can be overwhelming to make the decision on what device is right for you. We explore over 25 e-readers that are widely available in the United States and Canada and give you a comprehensive review on each device.

The Holidays are quickly approaching and you might be keen on upgrading your own e-reader or maybe just buying one for the first time. You even might be considering a gift for that special someone and want to make sure you are buying the right e-reader for them.

We at Good e-Reader consider ourselves the definitive source on e-readers, digital publishing, ebooks and tablets. Our tech blog is visited by over 5 million people to get the latest industry news and look at all of the new releases. We extensively review every new e-reader that hits the market and often do a series of videos that give you tutorials on how to setup and manage your device. If you are the type of person that loves to load in their own ebooks or borrow them from the library, our videos also assist you in showing you how to do it, step by step.

If contests are your thing we do giveaways almost every few weeks for new e-readers and tablets that companies send us for reviews. Entry is free and it's our way of saying thanks for stopping by our site.

During 2011 at Good e-Reader we started our eBook of the Week feature, so if you love to read, it's worth checking out. We have been doing a series of author interviews, giving you an introspective on their writing process and give their book away for free, for one week. This is a great way to discover new authors and even speak with them, during one of our live chat events.

Finally at Good e-Reader we visit all of the key events that happen every year to provide the best news possible. We visit CES, Computex, the London Book Fair, Book Expo New York and many other industry events. When things happen in the industry we are there and we want to thank everyone for all of the love and support. You can visit our news site today and join in on the fun at <http://goodereader.com/blog/>

**Table of Contents**

Aluratek Libre Air

Aluaratek Libre Color

Amazon Kindle with Special Offers

Amazon Kindle DX

Barnes and Noble Nook Color

Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader

Jetbook Lite

Kobo Touch

iRiver Story HD

Pandigital Nova

Pocketbook 360 Plus

Pocketbook 902

Sharper Image Literati

Sony 350 Pocket Edition

Sony 650 Touch Edition

Sony PRS-T1 Reader WIFI

Skytex Primer

The Book by Augen

V.Tech V-Reader

**Aluratek Libre Air**

Aluratek showed off two new e-readers at CES this year; the Libre Touch and the Libre Air. The main question we are attempting to explore is whether or not the company is issuing relevant products in 2011 to compete with other popular e-readers such as the Kobo Touch or Nook Simple Touch?

**The Hardware**

The Aluratek Libre Air features a 5 inch reflective light LCD screen with a resolution of 640×480 pixels. It does not have a backlite screen like most LCD devices and feels like the full e-ink experience. One of the benefits of going for an LCD based e-reader is that you do not have the lingering flickering and refresh issues like you do on most entry level readers.

You have 200 MB of internal memory that will store your books, pictures, and music files. You can expand on this via the MicroSD card up to 32 GB to store tons more.

You connect up to the internet via the built in WIFI and you can enter password protected networks via the numbered keys on the side of the device. The numbered keys feel like a smartphone in the respect that you have to press the 2 button 3 times to get the letter C. This keyboard layout gets very tedious at times because any symbols involving periods or @ symbols for emails require you to hit extra keys to call up different symbol lists. One of the more unintuitive aspects of the keyboard layout on the side of the device is the unversial symbol key is the number 0. There are no visual cues letting the user know that the number key is what you need to press to call up symbols.

The Aluratek Libre Air has a Mini USB port in order to connect it up to your computer to copy ebooks, music, or pictures to your device. It also comes with a wall charger with a USB port on it, so you can use the cable that came with your device to also wall charge your unit. It seems also you can charge your device via the Micro USB cable as well.  
Since this is a device does not feature a touchscreen, it has many buttons for different functions. On the left hand side of the unit it has a magnifying glass and page turn buttons. These buttons do different things depending on what application you are viewing. For example, when you are in the picture or music apps, they allow the user to perform different functions. On the bottom of the e-reader is a D-Pad that has 4 different directions to move around the various menus. It has has a mouse in the center which helps you scroll around the Kobo Book store. Underneath the DPAD is a HOME, Back, and Settings button. These quickly help you access advanced settings and feel like an Android device in terms of their overall functionality. There is also a power button on the top of the unit and a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the bottom.

There is an built in accelerometer with the Libre Air that gives you the ability to switch from landscape to portrait mode. It order to switch perspectives you have to activate the function in the settings menu.

This e-reader feels very light and you should get around 20 hours of use between charges or about 2 weeks in standby mode. The device is made of a durable plastic shell and feels flimsy, but the company does give you a carrying case to protect it.  
**  
****Software**

The Aluratek Libre Air is running a Linux based operating system and it really feels like there is only 128 MB of RAM on it. Navigating menus and settings feels clunky and slow and internet browsing is a harrowing experience.

There is an internet browser on the Libre Air, but you have no ability to visit various websites on the internet. When you load up the browser it defaults you the Kobo bookstore in order to buy books. The e-reader does not allow you to register your own Kobo account so you will need a PC to do one first before you can download books. You have a wide selection of books via Kobo and can buy books in EPUB format.

Navigating the Kobo store is intuitive, albeit very slow, menus and different pages take around 15 seconds. If you want to download free ebooks from Kobo you need to also register with Adobe to get an account to read DRM content. It seriously took me 35 minutes to use the abysmal keyboard with the symbol keys to type in my user name and password and then my Adobe login name and password. The store experience with the hardware layout of the e-reader was easily the worst experience reviewing this device.

Hopefully via the WFI and internet that the Libre Air has, it will support pushed updates. We saw an update feature in the settings menu but there has been no firmware updates since the company has released it.

Lets talk about ebooks, since that is the bread and butter of any electronic reader. This model reads different formats such as ePub, RTF, TXT, PDF, MOB, FB2, and PRC. Different ebook formats give you different options when you are reading a font. For example when you read TXT books which come preloaded on the e-reader you can edit the font size and margins. If you load up an EPUB book you cannot change the size of the font, instead you have a clunky ZOOM function and no ability to edit margins. Also when you read EPUB there is no ability to make your device switch from landscape to portrait mode but you can do it with TXT formats. It seems reading TXT files gives you the most freedom in a solid ebook reading experience but EPUB books and other established formats such as PDF and PRC do not.

When you open and close books they are accessible under a Recent Reading application that lists the most recent 9 books you are reading and will put you right were you left off. To access them you can hit one of the number keys on the side of the unit instead of tediously navigating with the DPAD.  
The Libre Air has added functionality such as a music player and picture app. You can load in your own MP3, WAV and WMA into the music player and even setup a playlist. There are no speakers on the device but you can easily listen to audio books or music via the headphone jack. If pictures are your thing you can load them in PNG, GIF, or BMP, but none of the pictures I loaded looked crisp or well rendered at all.  
In order to access any media on your e-reader you have to manage your device via Windows Explorer. By default their are no folders other than the free books from Kobo. So I recommend recreating separate ones for your music, pictures, and books or your device will be cluttered very quickly.

**Our Thoughts on the Aluratek Libre Air**

What do you get when you cross the Jetbook Mini and the Augen Gentouch 78? The Aluratek Libre Air. This is a woeful e-reader that certainly does not do the company any favors with releasing a new product in 2011.

Firstly the company promotes the fact that you do not get any glare from being outside in the sun and I dispute this evidence, I found it was near impossible to read on the beach. Even in the studio under direct light it was horrible.

The entire Internet and Kobo store experience felt like a nightmare that would never end and there was nobody to wake me up. The built in keys that allowed you to call up different letters was tedious at best. If I only had to use the numbers it would not be so bad, but I had to physically press 3 different buttons on the device to switch between lower case and capital letters. If you want to delete letters if you mess up there are another 2 buttons you need to press, but keep in mind one of them would magically erase everything.

Buying books with Kobo was a daunting experience, I hope never to repeat on this e-reader and just thinking about it is making me cringe in utter and complete horror. The mouse wheel in the center of the DPAD is fine, but navigating menus and load times between screens made me want to fall asleep. Not only did it take forever to enter my Kobo ID, but then I had to enter an Adobe ID, for FREE BOOKS! If the Libre Air had a virtual keyboard used by clicking on things via the scroll wheel that would have been fine. They way they do it now feels like you are using a cell phone from the early 90's to type things.

The core e-reading experience was not that bad, page turn speeds were fine for an LCD based device. Since most ebooks on the internet are mainly available in EPUB and PDF formats, this device did not support them very well. It seemed like most of the effort in making this gadget shine from an ebook prospective went into making TXT files look great and everything else look weak. I found it terrible I could not adjust font sizes in EPUB files or edit my margins or line spacing. I could zoom sure, but all the text was centered and looked gruesome. I am sure if I wanted to convert all of my EPUB books to TXT files, it would be the only way I could ever seriously use this device to read anything. Finally when you read anything but TXT files you cannot really switch the device from landscape to portrait mode.

In the end, if you see this device in the stores RUN AWAY! The nicest thing about this e-reader is the box that it comes in and the carrying case. Once you take it out and load it up and spend ten minutes with it, you are doomed. The only redeeming factors is that it plays audiobooks and the TXT experience is decent. This e-reader felt like it could have done well in 2008 but in 2011 it already looks like a relic from the past.

Thank goodness Aluratek has better products then this such as the Aluratek CiniPad Android 2.3 Tablet due out soon. I would recommend a number of e-readers over this model for the price of $139 such as the  Kindle with Special Offers,  Kobo Touch,  Nook Simple Touch Reader, or even the  Jetbook Lite.

Finally what does Aluratek need to do to make this viable e-reader and not warrant our "head for the hills" forecast on this device? They need to implement a virtual keyboard to type. Take a look on how Pocketbook does this successfully with their e-readers. This unit needs a better, dedicated web browser. There is one in it, but it defaults too fast to the Kobo bookstore. Allow the users to check email and visit websites, this eventually can allow users to purchase audiobooks or music. The Libre Air needs more support for the industry standard EPUB; this unit NEEDS to get proper font changing, line spacing, margins, and the ability to increase the font size without having to magnify it. Many of the Libre Air's woes are software based and can easily be fixed if management was serious about updating this e-reader to actually make it work. It faces some hefty competition at this price point and needs to develop its own ecosystem and build proper brand identity to make their budget e-readers succeed in the current market climate. Aluratek needs to focus on their e-readers as community members and not a customer. There is no Aluratek portal, no community, and no way for users to talk to each other. The social fabric on these e-readers is nil.  
This concludes our review of the Aluratek Libre Air! If you would like to see full video and pictures of the device check out our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-aluratek-libre-air-e-reader/

**Aluratek Libre Color**

The Aluratek Libre Color is a full screen color device that gives you the advantages of being able to read magazines, manga, kids books and other content that shines in full color. How does this stack up against other rivals such as the Barnes and Noble Nook Color?

**Hardware**

The Aluratek Libre Color features 7 inch Color TFT active matrix display with a resolution of 480×800 pixels. The display itself is vibrant and the colors tend to pop out when the brightness setting is turned up to the maximum.

You have around 2 GB of internal memory to store all of your videos, pictures, and ebooks. If this is not enough, you can further enhance it via the SD card up to 32 GB.

One of the great aspects of the device is that it features a rear facing speaker and you can balance the audio with some equalizer presets. If you want to keep things quiet you can plug your headphones into the 3.5 mm headphone jack.  
The Aluratek Libre comes with a Mini USB to USB cable to facilitate a data connection with your computer. This is important to transfer ebooks you have purchased from other stores to your device. This USB cable is also used in conjunction with the charger that comes with it to power your unit. One of the drawbacks of this e-reader is that the battery indicicator is pure white and it's hard to gauge exactly how much battery life you have left. Speaking of battery life, you can get a solid 8 hours of it before you have to recharge.  
The build quality of the e-reader is not as solid as I would have liked. It seems to be comprised of a hardened plastic that draws parallels to the Ectaco line of ebook readers. There are built in page turn buttons on either side of the device. Many e-readers have both the forward and back page turn keys above and below each other. This unit has the page turn forward on the right hand side and the back button on the left hand side. It also has a D-PAD in order to select menus and options, with a center button that functions as your enter key.

Finally, the Aluratek Libre Color switches orientation from landscape to portrait mode in a full 360 degree orientation. This is useful when you are reading books, watching videos, or looking at pictures. You can even lock the orientation when you want to make sure you don't accidentally move the unit into a different position.

**Software**

The Libre Color runs a Linux based operating system and is more or less closed, so it ruins the fun of trying to root the device. For an entry level e-reader this unit is brimming with many options and features. It has a video, music, and dedicated ebook reading application. One of the most exciting features is the wide array of formats that it reads.

Let's talk about the e-book reading experience, since we at Good e-Reader do love our books. The unit reads PDF, EPUB, TXT, and FB2. It also features the capability of being compatible with Adobe Digital Editions. This is important because the e-reader cannot shop for books on the unit and you need your PC in order to purchase books and then transfer them to your unit.

The eBook reading experience with the Libre Color was very solid compared to its other recent e-reader, the Aluratek Libre Air. This gadget has all sorts of ways you can edit your reading experience. You have around 6 different levels of magnification to make the fonts larger and smaller. You can also change the color of the fonts and the background color. There are no advanced options, though, that allow you to change the margins, line spacing, or fonts. One aspect I liked was in the ebook library it tells you the formats of the books you have in a neat and orderly fashion.

The Video player is the most advanced aspect of the Libre Color and it supports a multitude of formats that are sure to impress even the most jaded. It can easily read MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG 4(Xvid), Divx, H.263, H.264, RM/RMVB, WMV7/9, MKV, MOV, VOB, and FLV formats. You can change the video to play in fullscreen mode and video looks solid. Naturally, it also supports landscape and portrait mode.

The last major aspect of the ebook reader is the audio player. It may not support as wide an array of formats, but you should be able to get by. You can import MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, and OGG formats, and it even displays the cover art of the albums you listen to. One feature I enjoyed was the equalizer, which is lacking in most e-readers that have audio functionality. It has over 6 different presets which will help with both audiobooks and music.

Finally as far as software goes you can view pictures in JPG, BMP, GIF, and PNG formats, and create your own slideshows. So it can even function as a digital photo-frame if you can somehow get it standing up correctly. It also has a File Explorer that allows you to navigate all of the contents on your reader.

**Our Thoughts**

This device provides plenty of bang for your dollar in the respects that it easily does music, videos, pictures, and ebooks. It lacks the advanced functions that most e-readers on this price point enjoy, but it does provide a full color experience.

Some of the things I liked was the sheer amount of formats it supports, which means I do not have to spend time converting content from one format to another. The e-reader is also fast and does not lag very much. Programs open and close quickly and I never have to wait long for pages to turn. It also does kids books! Being a full color e-reader means that full color books look really great.

There are a number of drawbacks with the Libre Color that I found may be deal breakers. First of all there is no way to purchase content on the device. It does not have WIFI and the box it comes in is plastered with Kobo logos, giving you an indication that the company is providing you with the content. In reality they are just giving you the ebooks that come with the device. There is also no internet browser, which means you cannot surf the internet or do anything online. Partly the absence of internet connectivity helps bring down the price to the end user and keeps Aluratek competitive in an increasingly saturated market.

In the end, this e-reader is for the intermediate or advanced user. Many new users may not know how to shop for ebooks on the PC and then transfer them to their ebook reader. It makes the entire process of buying ebooks a little bit more trouble than its worth. Aluratek does deserve some credit, though, they do package the reader with instructions on how to shop for books online and then transfer them to the device. It would have gone a long way to film video tutorials documenting the entire process. Speaking of video tutorials we have our own tutorials on how to load ebooks onto the Libre Color, so make sure you check out our YOUTUBE Channel.  
Be sure to check out our website for video, pictures and more content;  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/aluratek-libre-color-e-reader-review/

**Amazon Kindle Special Offers Edition**

The ubiquitous Amazon Kindle 3rd generation got repackaged with a device this year that services advertisements to subsidize the cost. Many people are apprehensive on this new method that company has taken and we give you our full review of this new device.

**Hardware**

The Amazon Kindle WIFI with Special Offers and Sponsored Screensavers is the new darling of the Amazon e-reader portfolio. It gives you a six inch e-ink pearl display with 600 x 800 pixels at 167 ppi. It is powered by a Freescale i.MX353 processor which quickly speeds up most tasks. One of the best aspects of the device is that it has a full QWERTY keyboard to navigate the e-reader. Your storage is limited to 4 GB of data and there is no expansion to increase it further.  
The new Kindle with Special Offers slimmer and weighs less than previous iterations of the Kindle e-reader. It also has a increased battery life, giving you about a solid month if WIFI is turned off.

The Amazon Kindle with Special Offers has a Micro USB port in order to facilitate a data connection with your computer. You can easily copy over music and ebooks using Windows Explorer or Calibre to manage your collections. It also has two speakers on the device and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. This allows you to listen to music or audio books right on the device.

The Amazon Kindle with Special Offers has two different models right now a WIFI only and a 3G variant. Both models cost significantly less than their non-advertising brethren.

**Software**

The Amazon Kindle with Special Offers includes advertisements to make the device cheaper to purchase. The only way you see the ads is if you are on the home screen or the screensaver, that's it. There are no adverts when you are reading books, surfing the internet, or browsing various settings and menus in the device. Many people, when they initially heard of this more cost effective e-reader, had some trepidation about intrusive advertisements. I was very happy that the ads never permeated to the overall book experience.  
The Advertisements are displayed when you initially configure your device and setup your internet connection. The adds change over time thanks to various facets of the advertising backbone. The term "Special Offers" is where customers can get access to weekly deals. Current and future offers include; $10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card, $6 for 6 Audible Books (normally $68), $1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store, and more.

Amazon in the coming weeks will also be showing off their new program called "AdMash" – the free Kindle app and website where customers choose the most attractive and engaging display advertisements that will become Kindle sponsored screensavers. Kindle's sponsored screensavers are specially-designed display advertisements that take advantage of Kindle's high-contrast, no-glare electronic-ink display. Before these advertisements can be presented to Kindle customers, they are first previewed by customers using AdMash. Users are presented with pairs of sponsored screensaver candidates and asked to select which one they prefer. Screensavers with the most preferred votes qualify to become sponsored screensavers.

This advertising project centered around the approving of screensavers from a community point of view is the fruit of the recent Amazon purchase of coupon site Living Social. They spent 178 million on this Groupon competitor and the company hopes that the quality of the deals it offers will end up being a welcome intrusion rather than a nuisance.  
The Kindle is a closed ecosystem which means if you buy the Amazon Kindle with Special Offers you are locked into buying books only from Amazon. They use a proprietary format called AZW and a new encryption system called TOPAZ. These book formats are only compatible with books purchased directly via Amazon. Although the Kindle will not let you shop at other book stores and copy your books to your gadget you can download books that do not have DRM (Digital Rights Management) and easily convert them to PRC or MOBI which is a format the Kindle does read. We have made tutorial videos that show you how to do this if you need assistance.

The Amazon bookstore currently has over 600,000 books, many of them bestsellers and quality books. Their store is intuitively laid out and you can easily to buy books with one click. Many of the books range in price from .99 to 12.99. Amazon also has an independent publishing program that allows authors to write and submit books to the store, giving you a chance to discover new indie authors.

Reading books on the Kindle is a great experience the Pearl e-Ink display makes the text very vibrant. There are options to increase the font size 8 different levels and 3 different Fonts to choose from. You can also change the line spacing, words per line and even text to speech. The last option you can employ when reading a book is the screen rotation. You can switch it from landscape to portrait mode. Regrettably there is no way to change the margins on this unit.

Finally, Amazon instituted a new program that allows you to share select books you have purchased from their store with your friends and family with a lending program. Books can only be lent out once and many websites have sprung up to connect users with each other. Amazon also is planning a new library lending service soon that will allow you to borrow books from a public library.

**Our Thoughts on the Amazon Kindle Special Offers Edition**

The Amazon Kindle line of e-reader continues to be overall the most popular e-reader in the world due to its high availability in most countries. It is easy enough to order a Kindle online in most major countries and to buy content. The Kindle has come under fire recently with higher quality touchscreen e-readers issued by Kobo and Barnes and Noble. The  Kobo Touch enjoys a wide availability as well, but Barnes and Noble only works in the USA.

The advertisements that the Kindle serves are not as intrusive as I originally thought when I first heard about this new e-reader. Since they are only limited to the homescreen and the screensaver they are easy to manage. Most of the adverts are relevant as well if you are locked into the Amazon ecosystem. You get a chance to buy some audiobooks and save some money and ebooks too.

I highly recommend the Amazon Kindle Special Offers edition to anyone looking to buy a new e-reader. Page turns are very fast, the internet browser is well refined, and buying books is very easy. It retails in the USA for around $114.00 and is not available online outside the USA. So if you want to get your hands on this new gadget you will have to buy it from our retail partner www.shopereaders.com. Also be sure to check out our website for video and a photo gallery of the e-reader;  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-amazon-kindle-with-special-offers/

**Amazon Kindle DX 3rd Generation**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader Review! Today we take a look at the new ** Amazon Kindle 3 Graphite DX E-Reader**! This little guy has a 9.7 inch screen, full keyboard and tons of features for all of your e-reading adventures.  
The Amazon Kindle DX Graphite edition continues the trend of being Amazons largest e-reader to date. Featuring a 9.7 inch screen and 50% better contrast and resolution from previous models, it is certainly worth the $379 pricetag. Its screen displays a 1200 x 824 pixel resolution at 150 ppi, features 16-level gray scale, and a new 10:1 contrast ratio.  
The Page turns on this device are lightning fast and only increase with some of the latest firmware updates. There is no lag turning the pages, and even accessing some of the menu functions is quick and easy.

This e-reader towers over the competition. Most electronic readers are only 6 inches or so, having a 9.7 inch e-reader is like reading a magazine, it is also as slim as one. It currently reads e-ink with greyscale which means you get a complete e-reading experience, with no eye strain. Maintaining the tradition of e-ink, means there is no glare in the direct sunlight. For a great comparison of the Amazon Kindle DX VS. the Apple iPad in direct sunlight,  click here.

**Menu Features**

Now lets talk menu features, the Amazon Kindle DX has tons of menu features that allow you to access a dictionary, highlight and bookmark pages. There are also many options to adjust the size of the font, and even change it altogether. There are many stand alone options such as a web browser, to visit websites such as Facebook, Twitter and others. You have the entire internet available to you. Other menu features include being able to register your device with Amazon, so you can start purchasing books right away. The menu system is intuitive and robust, it is one of the most stable, in terms of refresh rates out of most e-readers.

**Connectivity**

Menu Features are all quite well enough, but what about the Connectivity? You can access 3G from any AT&T hotspot and offers global WI-FI coverage. HSDPA modem (3G) with a fallback to EDGE/GPRS; utilizes Amazon Whispernet to provide wireless coverage via AT&T's 3G high-speed data network in the U.S. and partner networks outside of the U.S. See Wireless Terms and Conditions

**Battery Life**

The Battery life on the DX is great, dispite the fact that it uses 3G and WIFI you can litterary leave this unit on for 2 to 3 weeks, with WIFI turned off, if you leave the WI-FI turned on, you get about 1 week of constant use.

**eBooks and Reading**

The Amazon DX has a built in PDF reader, traditionally PDFS are meant to be read on large screen displays, such as netbooks and computers. Most e-readers only have a six inch screen and do not have the ability to show PDF's out properly. With the 9.7 inch screen, you get the full PDF experience being able to read ebooks. It will also read Kindle (AZW), PDF, TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion. If you are looking for audio books or to listen to MP3's you can certainly copy your own to the device, or purchase it from other stores. The device itself has 4 GB of internal memory, so its enough to store thousands of books. If you choose to buy your eBooks or Audio Books from other stores, other then Amazon, you have to use Adobe Digital Editions to copy it to your device. If the content you bought does not have DRM (Digital Rights Management) You can simply just copy and paste it directly to your E-Reader, using Windows Explorer. If you are having trouble with copying eBooks to your device, check out our Amazon DX eBook Video Tutorial.

It also has the Read to Me function, this is basically a text to speech function. It will read blogs, newspapers, ebooks, and more out loud to you. You can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and your spot is automatically saved. Pages automatically turn while the content is being read, so you can listen hands-free. You can speed up or slow down the reading speeds or choose a male or female voice. In the middle of a great book or article but have to jump in the car? Simply turn on Text-to-Speech and listen on the go.

**Other Features**

Some of the other hardware features the Amazon Kindle DX has is, a mini USB port, Stereo Speakers, and a headphone jack. The Kindle DX also features a Accelerometer, which means you can switch it between horizontal and landscape mode.

**Our Experience**

We have played with MANY different e-readers, and this one is a giant Mount Smurfs. It takes a few days getting used to such a large screen display. We have played with the Barnes and Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle 2, Kobo E-Reader and many more. This one is big, but after awhile it does not feel that big, and really feels natural. With such a large display, more words fit on any given page, and you can get through books a lot faster. Because this unit is the lightest Kindle DX, it weighs hardly anything and you can easily hold it in one hand for marathon reading sessions.

Many people compare the Kindle DX to the Apple iPad. I would say, the Amazon Kindle 3 DX Graphite is currently the large screen e-reader to beat. Amazon has been making e-readers for 4 or 5 years now. They really have the science down pat. Buying books is a breeze, and so is shopping for ebooks on other stores. If you know how to convert ebooks from one format to another, you can literally shop anywhere for ebooks and then load them on your Kindle. If you have trouble converting ebooks, check out our Video tutorial.  
It's our estimation that although the price is a little bit more expensive at $395, it is worth the price if you want the best of the best. Although this will not fit in your pocket or purse as easily as a 6 inch e-reader will, if you are reading in the home, cafe, beach, or on vacation, pick this up. Reserve your Kindle 3 DX Graphite 3G today at our retail partner **Shop E-Readers**. With every e-reader they sell, you get 100 free ebooks, will ship anywhere in the world for a low cost, and you even get a free DVD Video Tutorial disk, that walks you through the entire process of setting up your e-reader. This is perfect if you are buying it from someone who is new to technology or e-readers and needs a helping hand! You also get 24/7 technical support via our own Good e-Reader Forum.  
Be sure to visit our website for videos, pictures and bonus content \-  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-kindle-3-dx-graphite-wifi3g-e-reader/

**Barnes and Noble Nook Color**

We just got our hands on the latest offering from Barnes and Noble just in time for the holidays, the new  Barnes and Noble Nook Color e-Reader. Is LCD worth it, when until now the company has only offered e-ink ebook readers?

**Hardware**

The  Barnes and Noble Nook Color is a 7 inch capacitive color touchscreen with a resolution of 1024×600. It has a built in accelerometer that will switch the screen between landscape and portrait mode. One of the things we noticed straight off is how some ebooks will open in landscape mode, such as children books, and most adult ebooks will only open in portrait mode.

The Nook Color comes with around 8 GB of internal memory, but you only really have 5 GB to work with, because the operating system and key programs take up a fair amount of space.

This device comes with WI-FI but no 3G, but it does allow you to connect up to open networks and closed networks. While online, you can surf the internet, send email and more in full color.

Like previous iterations of the Nook e-Reader, this model supports both DRM ePub and PDF and NON-DRM. Which means you can load ebooks onto the device that you download from the internet, if you do not just want to do business with Barnes and Noble. It also supports Microsoft Office formats such as XLS, DOC, DOE, PPT, PPS, TXT and more.

This model supports lots of multi-media content, audio, video, images and more. Audio formats are relegated to AAC and MP3, you can either listen to music through the built in Stereo speakers, or you can plug in headphones o the jack on the top of the unit. If images are your thing, you can load in JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF, you can also use these images to customize your wallpaper. Video formats are lacking, and only plays MP4 formats, which means you will have to do a fair amount of converting using 3rd party tools in order to convert your existing videos to an accepted format.

The unit weighs as about as much as the Barnes and Noble Nook, around 449 grams. The dimensions of the unit is around 8.1 inches x 5 inches x 0.48 inches and the battery life lasts around 8 hours of moderate use. It does have a standby feature though that allows you to put the unit into stasis to get more life when you are not using it.  
**  
****Software**

The Barnes and Noble Nook Color runs on Google Android 2.0, but do not expect to get any access to the Android Market. You can expect more games and applications to be released in future firmware updates that are normally done over the air via WI-FI, but you can also manually load them in as well.

The Nook Color comes with a fair amount of applications right out of the box, you get access to Pandora, but only if you live in the USA, or register your device with a USA based address. Speaking of such, that is the only way non-USA based customers can get access to ebooks, magazines, newspapers and more, dispite the fact you can register the device in MANY countries, you cannot actually buy any content on it.

Along with Pandora, you get a media player, contacts list, a picture gallery, as well as games such as Chess, Crossword, and Sudoku.

The Nook Color takes advantage of the new Barnes and Noble "Lendme" feature that's been out the last four months, that allows you to share bought ebooks from Barnes and Noble with friends, and family. When you share your books with other people, it disappears from your device during the two week lending period, to prevent users from sharing the same book with many different people.  
Many new software and menu systems have undergone a radical shift from people who have used the original Nook 3G or Nook WI FI e-reader. First of all, all options are interactive via touching icons. Many programs are new and unique to the Nook Color.

First of all, let's look at the Shelves, it allows you to customize different book shelves and name them. So if you share your device with other people, each person can customize their own shelf, from wallpaper, to the books that appear. So if you have a small child, you can populate their shelf, with rich colors and just have their own ebooks there. For the more adult reader, or people who share you can have your books visible on your shelf, and theirs on other. This is a great feature because although your device may have MANY books on it, they are not visible unless you manually add them to your shelf. They do show up though on the main shelf, along with all of your other content.

The main Library allows you to sort content more effectively than ever before, vs. B&N previous offerings. They have sortable tabs that allow you to segregate Magazines, Newspapers, Shelves, personal files and Lendme books.  
You also have access to a whole ton of different device settings, some great new features include security and being about to share across social media platforms.

Let's look at the new Security settings, they allow you to block waking up the unit with a password, or allow you to just password lock access to the Barnes and Noble Store, to prevent other people from making purchases on your device.  
Social Media is very evident in this device; it allows you to share book passages, via Facebook, Twitter and Google. This is a great feature to promote books and getting more people inspired to read.

Other settings you can configure of note is locking portrait and landscape mode, changing WI-FI on the fly, and dimming your screen depending on your environment.  
Finally, when you power the device on for the first time, there is a multi-step process to get you familiar with the Nook Color. It allows you to watch a bunch of getting started Video Tutorials that walk you through most common steps of getting your device setup for the first time.

**Content Distribution and eBooks**

The Nook Color main focus is Barnes and Noble own eBook store. The store itself loads lightning quick, and has access to a ton of content.

You can easily browse between New Releases, Bestsellers, New York Times Bestsellers, kids' books, newspapers and magazines. This new version of the store is only available via the Nook Color.

Say you have a child and you are interested in kids books. There are allot available and most have the options to have the book read aloud to them, or they can read it by themselves.  
Newspapers are magazines are available in a subscription; the price depends on the publication. For example, Popular Science monthly subscription is only $2.99 and to buy just one issue costs around $4.99. You can take out free trials on magazines, but you need an active Barnes and Noble account with a USA based address. We found so far, they have lots of tabs when you are looking at the magazine for reviews, editorial reviews and so on, but most of it has no content at all. If newspapers are your thing, you can for example take out a subscription to USA Today, for $11.99 a month, or one issue for $.75, free trials exist for that as well.

Most of this content such as Kids Books, Newspapers and Magazines are exclusively available to the Nook Color, and are oozing full color goodness. We really like how you can view kids books in full color and swipe for the next page. One of the draw backs that we noticed with the kids books, is if you are zoomed in, on a specific picture or bit of text, you cannot turn the next page unless you zoom out. Hopefully this problem will be addressed in a future firmware update.  
Although the Nook Color is in essence tailored to the Barnes and Noble store, you can load ebooks you get from other sources, or have downloaded from the internet. The Nook Color supports Adobe and ePub DRM, which means you can purchase books from Kobo or Smashwords and then load them onto your device via Adobe Digital Editions. If you download ebooks that do not have DRM you can load the ePub books directly on your e-reader via plugging it into your computer via USB cable.

The Nook Color, offers users to really self-manage their content really well, the directory structure offered by Windows Explorer, makes it so everything is neatly in its own independent directory. It makes it very intuitive right out of the box to be able to manage your content. They have directories for audio, pictures, music, video, and ebooks. When you load content into your device, you actually on the Nook Color have an Explorer based Tab called "My Files" you basically have a graphical view of all of the folders on your device, so you can create your own folders, and they will show up under My Files. When browsing content you have uploaded to your device, via My Files you can tap on say a video, or a music file and it will automatically load, which is very good.

**Our take on the Nook Color**

The Nook color is one of the best LCD based e-readers we have seen to date. We have played around with many, including the Sharper Image Literati e-reader, but the Nook Color is the best of the lot currently.

You can tell that they put a ton of time into the development of this little dandy and it looks really polished. The unit itself is sleek and black and all of the buttons are almost sunken into the frame, so nothing needlessly sticks out. Ascetically it's a very well designed unit, and the Vividview LCD screen really makes it a viable e-reader to read out in the sun, or under direct light without getting the glare as you would on an iPad.  
What we really like about the unit, is that its head to toe almost one giant touch screen, all of the icons and menu items are easily clicked one, with rarely any accidental clicking. Even the small tabs built into the GUI of the Nook Color, respond to touches very well. The one drawback with clicking is browsing the internet. There is only one degree of zooming, so when you double tap the screen to zoom, it often does not really zoom all that much. The device constantly implores you to visit the B&N website to configure your Nook Color, and it's an arduous endeavor to say the least. This is mainly due to the fact, that internet browsing is not really indicative to the Nook Color, especially if there are user fields for you to enter, we missed clicking fields many times, because even when we were totally zoomed in, they seemed small and feeble. We almost were wishing they included a Stylus to be able to interact with the device while internet browsing.

Although some websites that mainly written content, such as our own Good e-Reader Blog, were easy to navigate while surfing the internet, websites that had lots of fields, or complex websites did not look so good, and were a nightmare to navigate.

From beginning to end, this device is great! The one feature I would say is going to create a ton of controversy is the LCD aspect of it. Many e-ink purists may knock this device, saying LCD is not conducive to a proper e-reading experience. E-Ink shows things in sharper contrast, and shows between 16 and 24+ levels of greyscale. It comes down to a matter of preference. Some peoples prospective, is LCD is actually better, mainly because how saturated we are with LCD based devices. From Televisions, to MP3 Players, to Smartphones and computer screens LCD dominates our lives; some people find adapting to e-ink this late in the game is something they are not willing to do. Most people, who find themselves reading in lowlight conditions or reading at night, find e-Ink is not the best option for their environment. With LCD it does offer a back-lite screen so you can read in most circumstances, and with Vividview the new proprietary anti-glare system Barnes and Noble is employing, it actually reads better outdoors. It will be interesting to compare Pixel-QI screens with VividView technology to see how they both rate.

When it comes down to it, this unit is not as expensive as an Apple iPad, which is the device of choice for LCD based e-reading, if sales numbers do all the talking. Both screens are made with the same IPS screen technology, minus the Vividview, which allows for 178 degree viewing angles of the screen. Also both devices fail to play Adobe Flash content, where as Apple never will do it, maybe a firmware update will allow the Nook Color to do it, it would certainly give it a LARGE edge over the iPad. Also the unit plays Youtube videos, although the resolution over WI-FI is not that great, it makes up for it when you load your own videos into it.  
I think Barnes and Noble scored a total win with the Nook Color. After a few days of playing with it, it has been stable and easy to manage. I have encountered a few bugs and drawbacks of it, but nothing huge.

For example, if you are on a website that has image bases Google Adds, they do not display well, it seems like the Nook Color has a hard time loading the animations that are built into them. While browsing Youtube videos we have had some troubles getting higher quality, even with 1080P videos. Also, there is an ongoing problem with the USB cable and various versions of windows. Apparently some of the cables that have shipped with the Nook Color are defective, and I had to use my Blackberry cable in order to even work the device. Other users report troubles with 64 bits of Windows 7 and Windows Vista and recognizing the device as a valid USB device. I also had this problem, and had to use my Laptop which only has Windows 7 32, and it had no problem recognizing the device with my Blackeberry USB cord, but the one supplied from Barnes and Noble did not work at all.

In the end, the pros outweigh the cons, and if you are looking for an e-reader to give to someone for the holidays, I cannot recommend this unit enough! I have reviewed over 30 e-readers just this year, and this one is at the top of my list for color based electronic ebook readers. I would even say, for its price, it is the most viable device you can get with your money, followed by the iPad, and there is a huge gulf in price between the Nook Color and even the lowest end iPad.

I can really see this device catching on, if they lower the price a bit, it retails from $254 to $299. You can purchase this device if you live outside the USA, since Barnes and Noble does not ship e-readers outside of the USA from our retail partner Shop e-Readers. They currently have the Nook WI-FI, Nook 3G and Nook Colors in stock.

If you would to check out bonus video content and tons of pictures to see how this device performs in real world tests check out our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-barnes-and-noble-nook-color-e-reader

**Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader**

Today we give you a comprehensive review on the newest e-reader from bookstore giant Barnes and Noble. The  Simple Touch Reader, or the Nook 2, is the first touchscreen e-ink reader the company has released. We first saw this new gadget when we were at Book Expo in New York and got a spontaneous invite to the big unveil at Union Square. We were one of the first sites to give you a preview on the new device and now that it is officially released we give you the highs and lows of this brand new e-reader.

**Hardware**

The Barnes and Noble Simple Touch Reader features a six inch e-ink Pearl display. The new display that the Nook 2 uses is similar to the Amazon Kindle 3rd generation,  Kobo Touch and  Sony PRS-650. The screen gives you a solid resolution of 800×600 pixels and displays 16 levels of greyscale. One of the benefits of the new screen they use is that it has 50% sharper contrast than previous versions of the Nook WIFI or Nook 3G.

Underneath the hood is a 800 MHZ CPU processor and 2 GB of internal storage. The storage is where all of your ebooks and pictures are housed and if that is not enough you can increase it via MicroSD up to 32 GB.

The Nook 2 employs WIFI in order to surf the internet and has a built in web browser in order to visit webpages. It has the ability to display your password as you are typing in, but we found it does not have support for wireless N routers.  
When you look at the hardware in general, the e-reader is smaller and lighter than the Amazon Kindle and other competing devices. This is partly because the keyboard and all of your buttons are virtual and not built into the device. Another reason is because there is no audio functionality which makes it lighter to carry around and helps reduce the cost to the end user.

On the device is a simple "N" which is your homescreen button that can be pressed from any menu or while reading a book. It also has a power button and MicroUSB. The USB port is used to facilitate a data connection to your computer to transfer content to your device or to charge it.  
In the end, the Simple Touch Reader is lighter and is a tremendous upgrade from previous iterations of the Nook e-ink based e-readers. One of the drawbacks is the lack of audio, which may be a deal breaker for some people. There is also no accelerometer or gyroscope so you cannot switch the device from landscape to portrait mode.

**Software**

The Nook 2 – Simple Touch Reader runs Google Android 2.1 as the backbone to the device. Barnes and Noble was the first company offer a pure e-ink based reader running this OS. Normally, most readers run Linux. Additionally, past iterations of the Nook, such as the 3G and WIFI, both ran Android 1.5.  
The ability for the Simple Touch Reader to run an updated version of Google Android gives advanced users a little bit more flexibility in "rooting" or adding alternative apps and games. Older versions of Android do not have the type of support to run modern day games and applications, but the new version allows it. We have even seen Angry Birds ported on the STR, although it suffers from some frame-rate issues.  
One of the features on this new device that did not officially get announced, but is available for the e-reader, is the web browser. The browser is only available via the Search button, but then you can access webpages if you write a proper website address in the search field. For example you can write http://goodereader.com and you will open the internet browser to our website. Once you visit a few websites you can really tell the app is unrefined and lags while you scroll up and down a website. It also does not render the entire website when you load one up, instead only loading a certain area, such as the top right hand corner. Whereas the Kindle e-reader will render the entire website customized to the six inch display. Hopefully in the future they will fix the internet browser and make it more stable for regular use. The fact that they did not announce it as an official feature of the STR is probably a result of its tremendously sub-par performance.

The Barnes and Noble Store is a very solid content delivery network and there is no shortage of new books to read. When you load up the store application you get a small home screen that shows you the current New York Times Bestsellers, Magazines, and Newspapers. You can also expand these listings for a more comprehensive listings, such as book genres and so on. The nice thing is that you never need to really go beyond 2 sub menus to find anything that you want. You can also preview books for the first chapter or two to get a sense of what the book is about before you buy it. Although newspapers and magazines look way better on the Barnes and Noble Nook Color, they are indeed readable on this e-reader.  
Reading ebooks on the Nook 2 is a great experience and I liked it better than then the Amazon Kindle. The device has manual page turn buttons sunk right into the unit, but I found it was easier to just tap on the left or right hand side of the screen to flip forward or back. Page turn speeds are also tremendously robust and suffered from no e-ink refresh problems that plague other ebook readers.

When you read books you have a ton of customizing options! You can choose between six different fonts and they change in real time. You can also scale the font size up or down, which is handy if you need bigger fonts to read. The ability to change line-spaces and margins is also tremendously handy and something most other e-readers lack.

I love the ebook reading experience with the Nook 2. Making notes and highlights was super easy! All you have to do is tap a specific word with your finger and you are good to go! If you make a ton of highlights and notes on specific words and passages you can hit the menu button and get a uniform list of all your edits on the book. This is perfect if you are in a bookclub or reading a textbook.

One thing that the Simple Touch Reader does very well is allow you to load in ebooks you have purchased from other stores via Adobe Digital Editions. Since the new Nook reads EPUB and PDF files you can easily shop at other bookstores such as Borders, Kobo, Smashwords, and Bookbaby, and then load those books into your e-reader.

The new Nook 2 has a feature called "Nook Friends" that allows you to share recommendations for books and also sends the books you dig to Facebook and Twitter. They also have developed a new website called "mynook.com," giving customers a new and unique experience to buy and download ebooks online.

In the end, the software side of things with the Nook felt very refined for a new product. Considering there is hardly any firmware updates available, everything just seems to work. The only problems I have is the web browser being tremendously sub-par and the settings menu does not have many options to configure your device. There is also no current integration of popular Barnes and Noble programs such as "Lendme."

**Our Take on the Nook 2 – Simple Touch Reader**

This new device from Barnes and Noble certainly is an upgrade from previous iterations of their pure e-ink line of readers. Not only are page turn speeds better, but the entire navigation and simplicity of use is a boon.

There are some flaws on this e-reader, such as the web browser not rendering the full page and the lack of options to customize your online experience. I also do not like the lack of support for wireless N networks. The fact that it didn't offer any audio capabilities was, for me, another big disappointment. This means audiobooks and listening to songs will never be a part of the Nook 2 experience, but since many people only buy e-readers for a pure reading experience and do not care about the bells and whistles, lack of audio doesn't have to be considered a flaw. I found the absence of Lendme and other pivitol B&N experiences to be unfortunate, and hope that in future firmware updates they will rectify that. Right now there is no comparison between Barnes and Noble STR and the Kobo Touch with their much elevated "Reading Life" social media application.

The benefits include the entire touchscreen experience! Although in our side by side tests the Amazon Kindle was faster in page turns and other things, it ended up proving itself to be slow at times due to the requirement of manually scrolling to highlight words and access settings. The Nook 2 makes your everyday tasks more robust and efficient and you will ultimately save more time, which means you will get to do more reading.

I think Barnes and Noble did the right thing with the implementation of the touchscreen and they sure needed it. Many of their competitors, such as Kobo, Sony, and Hanvon, have all released touchscreen readers and B&N needed to keep pace. They are presenting a very slick device that weighs next to nothing and is one of the best e-readers we have reviewed all year. The build quality is not as high on this device as the Kobo Touch, but fundamentally it is a superior e-reader.  
The Nook Simple Touch is a solid e-reader and many people have it on their lists of things to buy this year. If you would like to check out videos and pictures visit our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/barnes-and-noble-simple-touch-reader-review/

**Jetbook Lite**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader review! Today we take a look at one of the best e-reader offerings from Ectaco, the Jetbook Lite! How does the Jetbook Lite compare with the companies other offerings and against other e-readers on the market? We shall soon find out.

**Hardware**

The Jetbook Lite features a 5 inch TFT LCD screen with a resolution of 640×480. Although it is not E-Ink it does use a monochrome based technology allowing it to be read in various lighting conditions. One of the great aspects of the screen they use is that there is no flicker as pages turn. Entry level e-readers are well known for the delay in page refreshing when you turn pages or access different menus. The  Jetbook Lite fairs very solid in the respects of its screen.  
The Jetbook Lite has 100 MB of internal memory to read books and can be further increased via SD card, up to 32 GB. This is a great upgrade compared to the  Jetbook Mini, which has a paltry 1.4 MB of internal storage. Literary you can store thousands of books on your electronic reader.

Most Electronic Readers have an internal battery used to power it, not so with the Ectaco Jetbook Lite. It runs on 4 AA batteries that gives you around 20 hours of constant usage. The one great thing about using tangible batteries is that it brings the cost down significantly, although in the long term your end cost is increased having to buy batteries. We recommend buying some rechargeable batteries to make this device a viable way of charging it. Another great benefit is how accessible batteries are worldwide. Many different countries use different voltages for charging devices, where as a AA battery anywhere in the world would be compatible with your e-reader.

There is a Mini USB port on the device that you use in order to hook it up to your computer and directly copy pictures and ebooks. This also serves as copying Jetbook Lite firmware update files which greatly enhance your e-reader. Some benefits of loading in the firmware updates include the ability to load in DRM-EPUB content.

The design elements of the Lite make it very slick and intutive to use. There is a D-PAD that you use to scroll up and down in menus. There are also other buttons devoted to turning a page forwards and backwards. Also, there are numerical buttons on the side, these are used to launch programs and settings. For example, some setting menus have six or seven options, instead of having to scroll all the way down, each option has a numerical value. If the option you want to hit is near the bottom, instead of scrolling on the D-PAD, you can simply hit the number key and launch the setting. We found this very convenient and something entirely unique to the Jetbook Lite, against any of its competition.

This e-reader has the ability to flip between landscape and portrait mode, unlike many of its direct competition.  
Finally, the Jetbook Lite does not have WIFI or 3G, so there is no way to connect up to the internet. Ectaco does not have an eBook store, so they leave it in your hands to be able to locate and download the books yourself.

**Software**

The Ectaco Jetbook Lite runs a Linux based operating system, which is very stable and has yet to hang or crash. The main main has three main options, to view pictures, settings and read books.

The Ectaco Jetbook Lite is a great e-reader in the respects of its ability to read many types of ebook formats. It has direct support for ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, txt, pdf, and FB2. It also is one of the few Ectaco readers that are able to display pictures, it supports jpg, gif, png and bmp formats.  
Not only does the Jetbook Lite support many type of ebook formats, but has direct support for many different languages as well. It has direct support for eBook contents in Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian and other European languages. It also has menu and settings languges to be able to be localized, including; English, German, Spanish, Polish, and Russian.

There are 100 free classic ebooks that come with the device, along with the user manual and CIA World Factbook. So there is enough on the e-reader to get you reading as soon as you buy it.

You have the ability with this device to be able to look up words using the built in dictionary. The dictionary itself is available in many different languages, so if English is not your main spoken tongue, you do have options. The one great feature about the built in dictionary is that it gives you the bare essentials to know what the word means. It does not over-complicate the feature used to give you the meanings. There is the direct pronunciation and 3 quick half sentences that tell you the different meanings.

There is a number of font selections you can employ on this particular e-reader. The Ectaco e-Book Reader provides multiple choice of sizes and types to suit your reading preference.

We mentioned prior that Jetbook does not have a content distrubution system, but does read a ton of different formatrs for ebooks. This is a mixed blessing, for people new to e-readers they might have a complicated time finding ebooks to download. If you want to buy an eBook from another store, you have to make sure its only in ePub format. A ton of stores sell books in this format including Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Smashwords and iBooks.

**Our Take on the Jetbook Lite**

Compared to the prior offerings of Ectaco the Jetbook Mini and the original Jetbook this is the most superior device they have launched to date.

Some of the factors that led us to arrive at this conclusion was the fact that it has very solid organizational structure. The main menu has three options, Books, Pictures and Settings. When you select Books you see your current library of books, with the book title and authors name. Pictures are very basic just showing you the title of them. The settings menu was our pleasant surprise. All of the main settings are broken into main categories and then launch corresponding sub categories. This serves not to overwhelm you with the sheer amount of options to select, like the Jetbook Mini does.

We also really liked its ability to read every major ebook format that is easily downloaded from the internet. The internet is rich in being able to download a ton of free content. Project Gutenberg and Google Books has a ton of classics that you can spend your entire life reading. There is also plenty of websites that sell ebooks in ePub format that you can easily load into your e-reader via Adobe Digital Editions. If you are a person that loves their torrents or private sites, you won't have to do tons of formatting and conversion to be able to read the books.

All in all, the Jetbook Lite is a worthwhile investing if you live outside of North America. We are blessed in Canada and the USA to have such an extensive selection of e-readers at our hands, both in stores and online. Outside of North America the pickings get very slim and prices dramatically increase. To give you an idea, the Kobo e-Reader sold in the USA retails for around $99.00, in Canada it retails for $149 and in Australia $220.00. You can see the dramatic gulf in price and allot of e-readers do not even ship outside of the USA, such as Barnes and Noble.

The Jetbook Lite retails anywhere between $99 and $170 and if you decide to pick one up you are getting a solid device for your money. We recommend this one to people who are independent and tech savvy enough to be able to locate books on your own, without being locked into a specific ebook store. If you are interested in purchasing the Jetbook Lite, check out our retail partner **Shop e-Readers**! They ship all over the world at cheap affordable prices. Also if you want the latest video and pictures of the Jetbook Lite visit our website review -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/ectaco-jetbook-lite-e-reader-review/

**Kobo Touch**

The Kobo Touch e-reader just came out today and we have been fiendishly playing around with the first touchscreen device from Kobo. How does it stack up against the previous iterations of the Kobo e-Reader family?

**Hardware**

The Kobo Touch has a full touchscreen e-ink Pearl display that has a full six inches of screen real estate. It features an Infrared Touch or IR touch that drastically enhances the touchscreen sensitivity and makes interacting with the screen a pure delight. Part of the reason why the unit is so responsive is due to the Freescale 508 Processor.

You have by default 2 GB of internal storage, which should be enough for around 1000 ebooks. If this is not enough for you, it can be enhanced via the MicroSD card up to 32 GB. Keep in mind the SD card slot does not have a flap or any kind of protection, so you might want to make sure water does not get into the device.

Unlike the Kindle e-reader there is no QWERTY keyboard on the device, instead everything is touchscreen. I was pleasantly surprised with the virtual keyboard the Kobo Touch employs. There is little to no screen lag when you type in characters. My first experience with the keyboard was to setup the WIFI. The alpha-numeric keys went very fast and I was happy with a show-password option to make sure you did not make any mistakes.

The Kobo Touch was designed very minimalistic in comparison to previous models. There is a single home button and a power button, and that's it. Previous models had a DPAD to navigate the menus and page turn buttons. It also had buttons for shopping, menus, and various other functions. This new model is VERY intuitive and makes navigating a breeze. There is a single port for a Micro USB connection which allows you to connect it up to your computer. This is how you charge your e-reader and facilitate a data connection to transfer ebooks.

One of the drawbacks with the Kobo hardware is that there are no speakers, headphone jacks, or audio functions. I would have liked the ability to listen to audio books. Battery life is solid thus far and is said to last around 2 full weeks.  
The Kobo Touch is designed very well and really brings the company into 2011 with a solid product.

**Software**

The Kobo Touch runs on a Linux based operating system which makes the unit very snappy. When I plugged the Kobo into the computer for the first time it kept prompting me to install the Kobo Desktop software, which I already had on my system. It seems that Kobo issued a new version of the Desktop manager that you will need to install in order to work your device.

The Kobo Desktop Manager is completely necessary in order to use your device at all. You cannot setup your WIFI, Web browser, or anything else until you do this. The new Kobo Desktop Manager actually updates your Touch with new firmware which solves many problems before the unit was officially released.

There are 3 main components to the Kobo Touch that really make this e-reader shine. The first is Reading Life (a social media add-on), the Kobo Store, and your Book Library.  
The Kobo Library is the source from which you can intuitively access your ebooks and other content. It is divided into various sub-menus such as Books, Newspapers and Magazines, Previews, and Shortlist. The Library is your main bookshelf where all of your ebooks are located. It lists everything in alphabetical order and has arrows to go forward and backward. You can also access all of the newspapers and magazines you purchase via the Kobo store. Since I purchased my device from Canada, most of my newspaper options are all of the major newspapers, and same with magazines. The previews menu gives you a short introduction to various bestselling books. Finally, the Shortlist function allows you to basically create your own shelf. This is a handy function to make your short term reading list a little bit more manageable.  
One of the most important aspects that differentiates Kobo from its competition is the store. They currently have over 2.3 million titles, so everyone should find something they want to read. The store allows you to browse by bestsellers, categories, recommended reading, and free books. The free books section mainly contains public domain books, but there are some short stories as well.

The last major component of the Kobo Touch is "Reading Life." This is an application that got its start with the Apple iPad, where it became the best of the reading applications on the Apple Appstore. Reading life allows you to Tweet and Facebook passages from books and has advanced functionality for special books. These books allow you to tweet from the perspective of the hero or villain, which is very unique. It also gives you statistics of your reading patterns, how much you read, how often, and how many books you have read. Finally it gives you awards based on certain criteria; think of it as Xbox achievements for books.

Reading on the Kobo Touch is a great experience and compared to past models the page turn rate is very fast. To move forward and back a page you simply tap on the right or left hand side of the screen. You can also highlight words or look them up in the built-in dictionary. You do this by long-pressing on a word or randomly on the page and it will bring up a prompt for you to expand a dialog box to either look up or highlight a single word or a complete sentence.

Kobo makes editing your fonts on the fly easy. You have to tap in the center of the screen while reading a book and it will give you a menu prompt. In this menu you have the option to switch between two different fonts, Georgia or Avenir. You can also increase the font size, giving you 16 different levels of making the text larger or smaller.

Finally, the one standout feature on the Kobo Touch e-reader is the built-in web browser. Web pages load very fast and are very responsive when on a WIFI network. There are no FLASH or crazy internet experiences with it, but the web browser is faster and more robust than the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook 2 – A Simple Touch Reader.

**Our Thoughts on the Kobo Touch**

Kobo hit a home-run with the Kobo Touch due to the quality build design and the robust functionality! I had the original Kobo e-Reader and the Kobo Wireless. This model seriously puts those two to shame! The touchscreen display should be easier for your average user to wrap their heads around, since almost all hand held mobile devices are touch screen. I found the older Kobo models to have flimsy design and the DPAD was awful, not to mention you would hit a key and 12 seconds later the command would go through. I hardly experienced ANY LAG at all when using this e-reader extensively.  
This new Kobo Touch gets everything right and is an upgrade in every way from previous models. The two great functions are the inclusion of a web browser to surf the internet, check your email, and even buy books from other stores directly. Also Reading Life is a very unique program that currently no other e-reader company has sought to implement. Sure some companies, like Amazon, have Facebook and Twitter integration, but they do not give you statistics, graphics, bars, achievements, or other cool things.

Another great thing about the Kobo Touch is the slim design; it weighs less and is slimmer than previous models. It maintains the matted back design so it will not slip out of your hands and provides a good grip.

If you are a fan of loading in your own ebooks you are in luck! The Kobo Touch displays EPUB and PDF books. It also has support for Adobe Digital Editions. So if you have purchased books from other bookstores such as Barnes and Noble, Borders, Smashwords, or others, you can easily transport the books via Adobe Digital Editions.

One of the downsides is that there is not more Font flexibility. There are only two built in fonts with no instructions on how to add additional ones. Kobo has told us that via a firmware update new fonts will be added in the future. Many of the advanced options require you to tap the screen in weird areas to call up different functions. Quick taps, long taps, and other actions make all of the difference in the world. Another downside is the mandatory usage of the Kobo Desktop manager, there is simply NO way to get around registering your Kobo by yourself on the device. You have to use your PC or MAC to register. Finally, one of the largest flaws with this e-reader is the fact that you cannot highlight or look words up in the dictionary with books you manually load on your Kobo Touch. The long-tap function does not work with side-loaded content.

We have just completed a new video review of the Kobo Touch so make sure to  check it out. Be sure to also visit our website for a full review including pictures, audio, video and even an interview with the CEO of Kobo at the New York Book Expo -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-kobo-touch-e-reader/

**iRiver Story HD**

Today we finally got our hands on the Target exclusive iRiver Story HD e-Reader! This is the first e-reader in the world to tap into the Google Books ecosystem for content. How does this new device rate against the competition and what does the HD mean?  
**  
****Hardware**

The iRiver Story HD e-reader features a six inch e-ink display with a tremendous resolution of 1024×768 pixels. It certainly packs a punch and you can see where they fit the HD into the selling point. Pictures and comic books look wonderful and very vibrant in comparison to other e-readers on the marketplace.

The screen itself features the latest generation e-ink PEARL technology and displays 213 DPI. You can see other examples of e-readers that use a PEARL screen, if you go check out the Amazon Kindle 3rd generation,  Sony PRS-650, and  Nook Simple Touch.

The e-Reader does have a Freescale i.MX508 800 MHZ CPU processor, which _should_ make the device snappy, but sadly it does not. The page turn speeds are on par with the lightning quick Amazon Kindle, but you really notice the lack of speed with this e-reader when you are doing routine tasks. When I clicked on an ebook to open it, it look almost 35 seconds for the book to actually open. I also noticed the lack of speed when opening the bookstore.

There is a 2GB memory to store your ebooks and content, but only 1.5 is really usable. You can further enhance the memory via the SD card up to 32 GB.

Looking at the device physically, it has a full QWERTY keyboard in order to make typing easy and convenient. It bypasses the D-PAD found in most devices and instead uses a slider bar to scroll up/down/right/left. Most e-readers that have a D-Pad or Trackpad make you click in the middle to function as the ENTER button. The Story HD instead has a physical ENTER key on one side and a back key on the other. In order to access numbers and symbols you have to hit the corresponding buttons in order to access them. This makes it tedious if you are entering passwords that require captial letters, numbers, and lowercase letters.

The design of the Story HD is very minimalist. Aside from the keyboard there is only a Mini USB connection and a slider on the back of the device to turn it off and on. There is no audio functions, no headphone jack, or anything else. This e-reader is JUST for reading.

You can connect up to the Google Bookstore to buy your books via the WIFI connection. If your router password has more then 20 characters you are out of luck. The Story HD has a restriction on long WIFI passwords and simply says "Password is too long." We had to disable our WIFI password in order to get this to work.

In all, the design of it is very nice. It is white on the front and an accented brown on the back. It has pseudo gold keys that make it look very solid. I found this device was far too slow in doing any task, other than reading. Whenever you connect to the Google Book Store, even though you are connected via WIFI, it constantly lets you know that it is looking for a WIFI connection. This makes the entire shopping experience an exercise in patience. iRiver has not divulged how much RAM is in the Story HD, but I would guess 64 MB.

**Software**

The iRiver Story HD uses a Linux based operating system for the basis of its software. It allows for a stable and robust OS and we did not notice any crashes, aside from when the firmware update was pushed to us during the initial setup. This was due to us having a long WIFI password and with the update, a limited the number of max characters.

This is a very basic e-reader with no dedicated picture viewer or anything else. Your sole premise of buying this is to buy books or take advantage of the Secret Web Browser.  
The eBook experience with the Story HD is as fast as the Amazon Kindle in terms of page turn speed. Books take forever to initially open, which can be a drag to some people. The device can read plenty of formats, so you can shop with other stores or download them from the internet. It reads PDF, EPUB, TXT, DOC, PPT, XLS, HWP, DJVU, FB2, CBZ, and Adobe Digital Editions EPUB and PDF.

You heard us right! This e-reader reads CBZ books, which means if you are a Manga, Anime, or graphic novel freak this is the device for you! If you are into non-CBZ comics you can easily read them in JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF, and ZIP, but not CBR.

One of the major ways this e-reader falls short is you cannot tailor your book reading experience the way you can on other devices with the same price. You cannot change line spaces, margins, fonts, or anything else that the Kindle, Nook Simple Touch, or Kobo allows. The only thing you _can_ do is increase the size of the default font. Lastly, you can change the orientation from landscape to portrait mode, but only when you're reading books.

The Google Bookstore for non-USA based customers is nonexistent. They sell this device in the USA at Target for a reason. You can only shop and download free or paid books if you reside in the United States. If you live outside you can't even download the free books. Instead you are prompted to visit the Google Book Store on your PC under the same email account you use with your iRiver Story HD. When you purchase books on your PC they can be synced to your Story. I found this entire process rather woeful. Google is trying to compete with other companies on the ebook front and only allow USA customers to partake in book buying on the iRiver e-reader? I hope Google realizes that people do like to read outside of the USA. Terrible.

When I said this e-reader is only good for reading, I meant it. There are no games, picture viewing options, and hardly any general options in the setting menus. This is as bare bones as you can get for an e-reader and considering it is on even par with the Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch, and Amazon Kindle, the choice is clear. The software on the iRiver Story HD is lacking to say the least. It offers zero flexibility in crafting your e-reading experience. The only glimmer of hope is that Google sent us an email today saying Google Books is coming to Canada soon. I will believe it when I see it, since Google also promised Google Merchants in Canada for Google Checkout, 3 years ago.

**Our Thoughts**

If you live inside the USA and want to try out downloading millions of free books via Google this is the right device for you! You also get access to over one million paid titles, mainly modern books by the quintessential bestselling authors. If you live outside of the USA the only hope you have is loading your own books in. Speaking of loading in your own ebooks, it does read graphic novels, which is cool. Sadly it does not do CBR scanned books.

The overall design of the Story HD is elegant. I was quite taken with the gold keyboard, which made me feel like a rich rapper without the grill and gold chain. I really dug the very refined, clean white front color. The keyboard is very easy to use and it's refreshing to see the absence of a D-PAD and the inclusion of a slider.

The Story HD does have a secret web browser that may be refined further and included in a future firmware update. We do have a video in our YOUTUBE channel that teaches you how to access it. Sadly, you can visit websites, but you cannot click on any links within a website!

**The Pros**

  * Tremendous resolution

  * Solid keyboard

  * Google Books ecosystem (USA based readers)

  * Can read CBZ comics and graphic novels

  * Easy to use

  * Reading books is easy and pages turn fast

**The Cons**

  * No functionality outside of the USA

  * No customization of eBooks other then Font Size

  * No extended features

  * Internet experience is _slow_

  * Web browser took us 2:31 seconds to find and open up a website

**Verdict**

If you live in the USA, it is a solid e-reader and taps into millions of free books. This is perfect if you are on a budget, and want classics or open source books delivered right to your device.

If you live outside of the USA, there is _no hope_! Avoid this e-reader at all costs and flee in the other direction. Considering this costs $139 at Target, the other options—Amazon

, Barnes and Noble, Sony and Kobo—do a far better job than the iRiver. If you want to see pictures of this device and full review videos visit our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/full-review-of-the-iriver-story-hd-e-reader/

**Pandigital Nova e-Reader**

The Pandigital Nova is the most recent entrant to the ultra competitive market of lower end tablet computers. The company has been issuing hybrid tablets and e-readers since early last year with the Pandigital Novel as its first device. Pandigital continues to be popular because of its solid distribution chain with most popular electronic stores in both the USA and Canada and continues to be in the Top 5 in sales for e-reader devices. How does it stack up against the competition and is it a good investment?

**Hardware**

The Pandigital Nova is the followup to the Pandigital Star and Pandigital Planet that have been released in the last six months. The e-reader is a 7 inch resistive color touchscreen with a resolution of 600×800 pixels. The one thing it has going for it on this model is that it is multi-touch, so you can hit more then one key at the same time. This shines during keybaord typing and playing higher quality games.

Most of the Pandigital line of devices employ the resistive screen technology, which means there is a thin film on the screen. On the visual end I am not a huge fan of these types of screens because colors on video and pictures often look very washed out. You also cannot type or interact with the screen as easily as you would with a compacitive touchscreen device. The Barnes and Noble Nook Color does so well on the market because it uses the capacitive screen and is easier to interact with. The Pandigital Nova ideally is used with a Stylus or with your fingernail. Aesthetically, the resistive touchscreen technology it uses does not really hinder the overall reading experience, because most books are black text on a white background. It is sometimes painful to turn pages because you need to be extra firm or have to use the tip of your fingernail.  
There is a fair amount of internal memory in the Pandigital Nova that allows you store apps, games, and books. There is around 4 GB total, but you really only have 3.2 GB in the shipped model due to the space the operating system and default installed apps take up. You can also expand it up to 32 GB via a MicroSD card. Ram-wise, there is enough to run most things you would ever install on the tablet, which is 512 MB of RAM. This is the de facto standard on most low and mid range devices.

The audio experience on the Pandigital Nova is severely lacking! There is a single mono speaker on the bottom of the device. The worst part of this is when you hold the device in portrait mode and grip it on the left and right hand side, your hand covers the speaker. This gives you very muffled audio and I really cannot stand speakers that are on the bottom of tablet. You can get around this by plugging headphones into the 3.5mm headphone jack. Sadly, the Nova does not actually ship with headphones so you will have to get your own.

The one thing that boggles by mind on the Nova is how they built the hardware inputs and is in mind my mind a tremendous design flaw. The DC IN, Headphone Jack, Mini HDMI out is on the top of the device, rather than the bottom. This makes things very odd and hard to wrap your head around. Almost every single e-reader and tablet have these connectors on the bottom of the device. The Nova has only the headphone jack on the bottom of the side and the power button and volume buttons on the right hand side. On the left hand side you have the Micro SD slot.

Rounding off the hardware is two web cams! This is one of the first devices issues by Pandigital that actually allow you to do video conferencing, take pictures, and shoot video. The lackluster aspect is the feeble quality of the cameras with 1.3 MP on the rear and 0.3 VGA on the front. Do not expect any high quality pictures or video on either side, but it is a positive that the company is actually putting these new hardware features on their devices.

Finally, you can connect up to the internet via the WIFI and it has a moderately strong connection. You can use encrypted or un-encrypted networks and access hotspots.  
In the end, hardware wise this is a tremendous positive step forward by Pandigital and moves the company in a positive direction. The dual cameras are something the average customer may find appealing for the price. This edition is also more pocket friendly with a seven inch screen vs the nine inch from the Pandigital Novel.

**Software**

The Pandigital Nova is running Google Android 2.3! This means the screen is multi-touch and you can run live wallpapers. Previous versions of Pandigital devices ran outdated versions of the Google OS which made the tablet feel outdated as soon as it was released. Obviously, this is a low cost entry level tablet, so it does not have the hardware necessary to run Honeycomb.

The Nova uses the more recent firmware that displays almost a library shelf experience to your home screen. The main app you would use for your reading experience is the Barnes and Noble Bookstore.

The Nook Bookstore allows you to purchase a ton of content from the store, including many bestsellers. You can set up bookmarks and craft your reading experience with many different options, such as fonts.

If you want to load in your own books you have many popular Android Reader options such as Aldiko, FBReader, or many others. You can easily load in your own books from your PC! The default formats the Nova reads is PDF and EPUB, but with the 3rd party Android readers you have a more wider array of options available.

One of the best uses of a color tablet/ereader hybrid is being able to read graphic novels, manga, and comic books on the device. It does not come with any apps to do this right out of the box, but you can download Droid Comic Viewer or other alternative apps. You can read CBZ and CBR type formats, which are the most easily accessible ones to find online.  
With the Nova you are also not limited to just dealing with Barnes and Noble that comes loaded on the reader. You can of course load in the Android version of Kobo, Amazon, Borders, and many more. Remember the Barnes and Noble app only works for USA based accounts.

The Pandigital Nova does not have access to the Google Android Market but you can easily download apps from Getjar, which is included. If you live in the USA I would recommend the Amazon App Store as your destination app of choice to find new content. Not that Getjar is bad, but Amazon offers way more content and even free apps of the day. It is also organized more properly to find games and apps easier than ever.

The Nova comes with plenty of other apps to get you loving it right out of the box. It has a dedicated Youtube Player, music, audio, and other default apps that normally come preloaded.  
Finally, let's talk about the internet experience. The keyboard supports multi-touch so it's easy to type web addresses in the search bar. Websites load rather fast, you can pinch and zoom, and it is very responsive.

**Essential Apps for the Pandigital Nova**

  * Dolphin HD – Web Browser

  *  Meridian – Best Multimedia Player for Music and Videos

  * Slide Me \- App Market

  * Andappstore – Android Market

  * Amazon Appstore for Android – Best Android Market for USA Residents

  *  Kindle – The Amazon Kindle for Android App

  *  Kobo – The Official Kobo Reading App for Android

  * FBReader – A Great Android App That Lets You Load in Your Own Books

  * Barnes and Noble – The Official Barnes and Noble Android App

  *  Droid Comic Viewer \- Simply One of THE Best Comic Readers and Reads Most Popular Formats

**Our Thoughts**

This device feels really cheap from the screen that they use to the overall hardware build. I really got thrown for a loop when they decided to put all of the inputs on the top of the unit rather than the bottom. The audio quality is really poor with the single mono speaker on the back of the device. It does have a wide application selection that comes pre-loaded on the device. The Android 2.3 OS is a solid addition to the Pandigital tablet lineup.

Pandigital does not really know what they are doing in terms of the construction of their devices. On the box there is conflicting information on whether they are making a tablet or an e-reader.

The $189 you would spend on this device at Best Buy might be better served purchasing the  SkyPad Alpha **,** which is the same with specs but has way better functionality. Also if you want to see a full review of the Alpha including pictures, videos and audio content visit our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-skypad-alpha-by-skytex/

**Pocketbook 360 PLUS**

The Pocketbook 360 Plus is the latest generation e-reader issued by a company well known for its diversity of ebook supported formats. It just hit the retail market and we give you a very comprehensive hands on review.

**Hardware**

The Pocketbook 360 Plus features a 5 inch Vizplex eink display with an impressive resolution of 800×600 pixels. Its backbone is a 533 MHZ Samsung Processor and it has 128 MB of RAM. The storage is quite modest at 2 GB to store your media, but of course you can further enhance this up to 32 GB via the MicroSD.

One of the most highly advertised features on this device is its ability to access the internet via the integrated WIFI. This will allow feature firmware updates to be "pushed" right to your Pocketbook. The ability to use the internet is something the direct competition (Jetbook Mini) is incapable of doing.  
One of the drawbacks of the WIFI internet access is the inability for the e-reader to recgonize hyphones, slashes, and other common characters found in secure WIFI networks. The only way we got the internet to work was to make it OPEN.  
The Pocketbook 360 Plus has a Mini USB port for syncing it up with your computer and transferring media to the device. This port is also used to charge your device because it lacks a DC port.

You interact with the Pocketbook 360 Plus mainly with the 3 main buttons built into the chassis. The center button, which is your ENTER button, is surrounded by a clickable D-PAD that allows you navigate around the various menus. The top and bottom buttons are mainly used for turning pages forward or back when reading ebooks.

**Software**

The Pocketbook 360 Plus runs on a custom Linux interface and contributes towards an elegant and simplistic design.  
The main settings menu is comprised of various options such as Books, Pictures, News, Notes, Dictionary, Settings, Applications, and Calender.

The News Application is basically a simple RSS feed application that lets you add in feeds from various internet websites. The Dictionary is very basic but helps you easily look words up using the dedicated application. The dictionary also has intergration to automatically look up words when you are reading books.

There are some various applications on the device such as a web browser, calculator, and various games. Mysteriously the Doom Demo that surfaced on the internet to hype up the device is nowhere to be found.

The Web browsing experience is one of the main draws of the device and is hampered by the software driven keyboard. When you type in a single character the positioning of the keyboard defaults to the center. So if you type the letter A, instead of the letter being highlighted it defaults back to the letter G. You will have to exercise some degree of patience if you are reguarly browsing the internet and typing in search terms.

We found from our internet experience that the device does not really handle javascript or CSS very well. Most webpages lost all of their formatting and were messes of text and graphics. In retrospect, it is an e-reader and not a dedicated internet device, so we can make exceptions.

Reading eBooks on the Pocketbook 360 Plus is great! The text is very crisp and is easily magnified if the default font is too small. You can also change the font in the settings menu if the default font is not to your liking. The main draw of all Pocketbook e-readers is their ability to read so many ebook formats and the Plus is no exception. It will easily read B2, FB2, TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, PRC, CHM, DJVU, DOC, EPUB, and TCR. There is no audio player or headphone jack on the unit so you will not be able to listen to music or audiobooks.

**Our impression of the 360 Plus**

Pocketbook has the amazing ability to continually innovate and release new products and have them do well. Pocketbook and Ectaco have a fair bit in common as companies that support a high degree of localization for alternative languages to English. Where most e-readers cater exclusively to the English market, Pocketbook makes its e-readers very accessible in many different languages.

The Pocketbook 360 Plus feels like a solid device, it is lightweight and easily transportable. The stick on screen protector is both artistically relevant and does provide screen protection when you are on the go.

This is by far not a high-end device, it feels mainly like a basic entry level e-reader. It has all of the main elements to make it successful in 2011 such as a WIFI, web-browser, and games.  
What I really like about Pocketbook as a company is that it is perfect for people who download their own eBooks and do a lot of Calibre maintenance. It also reads a ton of eBook formats and currently the company leads the industry in its ability to display so many different types of eBooks.

In all, I would recommend this device if you want a entry level e-reader. It is on par with price with the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook WIFI. If you want to support a great independent company I would recommend this e-reader. If you want to see a full review including pictures and video check out our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-review-of-the-pocketbook-360-plus/

**Pocketbook 902**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader Review! In this edition we take a comprehensive look at the new Pocketbook 902 PRO 9.7 inch Linux based electronic reader! This is the largest offering that Pocketbook has released and is much akin to the  Kindle DX in terms of screen size and abilities.

**Hardware**

The Pocketbook PRO 902 is a 9.7 inch e-reader with a resolution of 1200×825 and 166 DPI. At its core it features a Samsung, 533 MHz processor and has 256 MB of internal RAM. It also has 2 GB of internal FLASH memory and you can further enhance it for up to 32 GB via the micro USB port.  
Internet connectivity of the new Pocketbook 902 is done via WI-FI, and will connect to open and secure networks. We found connecting to longer password protected networks with a combination of upper and lowercase letters to be very hard to get correctly. There is no way for passwords to be visible as you are typing, so it is very easy to make mistakes.

This new device battery life is around 7000 book turns, or around 40 different novels. You interact with it via the D-PAD, as it does not feature any type of touchscreen technology.  
You have the ability to use the accelerometer and flip it into a 360 degree arc, so this insures that left and right handed people can use it very well. The accelerometer technology implemented in the 902 is a little bit sub-standard. Often when you switch it from landscape and portrait mode you have to hit the back button or any button in order to prompt the system to re-draw the lines of pixels in the new mode.

The Pocketbook PRO 902 has a 3.5mm twin stereo speaks and headphone jack in order to listen to music or audio books in mp3 format. It also has blue-tooth capabilities.  
Charging the Pocketbook e-reader is done via the wall charger, it is not possible to charge the unit via the Mini US.

**Software**

This large screen e-reader runs on a Linux 2.6.28 operating system and the applications tend to load pretty quickly. By default you have a fair number of applications that come with the e-reader including a web browser. The web browser only seems to launch though when you visit the Bookland site, there is no short cut or independent program to launch the internet browser.

On the default homescreen you have a clock, calender and dictionry widget that is placed to allow you to always know whats going on and so when you get lost in a book you can make yourself aware that hours or days have passed! Also on the homescreen is a huge navigation array that allows you to launch all of the applications, without hiding them away on sub menus. You have options to launch your eBook Library, Notes, Applications, Dictionary, Music Player, Photo Gallery, Search, Configeration and your favorites directory.

Your library contains all of the ebooks that come bundled on the device, which is around 1000 in different languages. It also reads a TON of ebook formats, which is quite redeaming. We found that Pocketbook leads the e-reader arena in formats supported, such as; CHM, DJVU, DOC, DOCX, EPUB, FB2, FB2.ZIP, HTML, PDF, PRC (Mobipocket), RTF, TCR, TXT and PDF. It will even read content protected by Digital Rights Manegement, such as PDF and ePub.  
When you read a book on the Pocketbook PRO 902, you can switch between landscape or portrait mode at any time, and lock in your preferred prospective by tapping on the power button. You can launch a number of options while reading a book, such as the ability to take notes, look up words in the dictionary or record voice notes or your thoughts as you are reading. You can also bookmark the page you are reading, in-case you come back to it in the future, as well as zoom in on specific content.

In the settings menu you can do everything from switching the boot logo and background art to customizing your fonts. Font selection is actually quite extensive with support for around 30 different fonts.

The Pocketbook 902 PRO has a fair number of built in applications such as a calculator and clock. It even has some popular games such as Chess, Kosynka, Snake, and Sudoku. The games actually do not look too bad when you play them and via the e-ink has tremendous resolution.It is through this resolution that pictures really shine in e-Ink. Often the pictures we take and video we do, does not really do it justice. The new 9.7 inch e-reader comes with around 10 built in photographs and has support for BMP, PNG, JPEG and TIFF.

**Content Distribution System**

Pocketbook delivers its content via its service called Bookland, often it is not as it sounds. It is not a mythical land of books with a large amount of selection. It mainly features free books by project Gutenburg and a few paid books, but the selection is very sparse.

The redeeming factor is the large number of ebook formats it supports, so you can do business with other stores whom deliver their paid content in EPUB or PDF and the 902 will read it just fine.

Often people just download ebooks from the internet that does not have DRM or from sites such as Smashwords and other ebook stores. You can easily sideload in ebooks by connecting it to your computer via the micro USB cable. Copying data to the e-reader is a breeze if you use windows explorer, but we will shoot a video that teaches you how to do this.

**Our thoughts on the Pocketbook PRO 902**

This new e-reader is solid in the respects that it reads a ton of different ebook formats and allows you do business with other stores, and be a device that easily reads ebooks from any other site.

Its price of around $399 is a little bit daunting, for that price you can get a higher range tablet computer that will do a fair ton more for you. If you are fixated on e-readers like we are, you can see the advantage of a 9.7 inch display to be able to read textbooks for school or university science reports.

This e-reader will obviously draw parallels between the Kindle DX in terms of its large screen and is in the exact same price range. If you were to choose the two, the Kindle DX would make good purchase if you were willing to do business exclusively with Amazon. If you want to be more independent with your ebooks or possess a little bit more tech know how the 902 might be a better investment. The Kindle wins in the page turn speed department and the large community it has, and don't forget Amazon dominates the ebook market with around 75% of all sales.

Generally the Pocketbook line of e-readers are put together very well, the design is heavy and ascetically it is pleasing to the eye. It comes in Dark Gray or White for color options and the back of the unit can slide off to give you access to change the battery or to remove it.  
Check out our website for added video, pictures and more -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-review-of-the-pocketbook-pro-902-9-7-inch-e-reader/

**Sharper Image Literati**

We just managed to get our hands on the new  Sharper Image Literati color e-reader! It's one of the oddest ones we have ever played with, from a design point of view. It's powered by Kobo, and for the price, it may be a winner.

Let's talk hardware before we get into our thoughts of the device. It features a full QWERTY keyboard, with a full line of numbers at the top. It also has symbol buttons for slashes, stars and the @ symbol. It's a full color device with 7 inch screen and resolution of 480×800. It also has around 250 MB of internal memory and you can increase the memory to 8 GB via a SD Card.

Sharper Image has partnered with Kobo for their official bookstore and you can download up to 2 million titles in one click. Once you configure the WIFI you can shop for ebooks as soon as you configure your Kobo Account.

As far as eBooks go, you can shop with Kobo or you can load your own ebooks you have purchased or downloaded from other stores. The Literati supports ePub, Doc, PDF, and txt. Its very easy to just copy ebooks directly to your device if the ebooks do not have DRM. If they do, you can simply use Adobe Digital Editions.

Now that we have looked at the eBook formats, let's talk about reading on the device. You have capacitive touch screen page turning buttons to go forward and backwards. They have these on both the right hand and left hand side. So no matter if you are right handed or left handed, page turning is a breeze. Page turning is robust, and although we did notice a little bit of lag, the developers have assured as that they will soon release a patch to fix this. When you are reading, you can hit the menu button to get different features such as jumping to the table of contents, looking at the dictionary, and jumping to specific chapters.

Although the E-Reader is full color, there aren't any books that come loaded with the device that really take advantage of it. Sharper Image has told us that in October they are going to be offering magazines and cookbooks that really make the Color aspect of the e-reader, more viable. Speaking of up-coming changes, in November or December a number of reading enhancements will be rolled out, such as; Night Reading Mode, Custom Bookshelves, and "Dog Ears," which is a good way to bookmark a specific page.

As for menu and features, you have different font and brightness settings so you can increase the font sizes. You are stuck with the default fonts of Serif and San-Serif. Really, the menu features are pretty bare bones.

Now that we have covered all of the details on this device, let's talk turkey. What impressed us about the device was the full color LCD that gives you nice resolution and is not crashing and bug prone like the Pandigital Novel. Partnering directly with Kobo gives you long term feasibility in terms of dealing with a great company and loading your own books on it is a snap. The casing is also firm, not cheap plastic, it has a nice feel and weight to it.

What did not impress us is that there is no audio on the device. There are no speakers or a head phone jack, so there is no way to listen to MP3 or audio books. There is also no books - other then the sample Winnie the Poo book - that take advantage of the full color aspect of the e-reader. There is no way to access or install apps on the device, such as a web browser, email or otherwise. The WI-FI aspect of the device did not work at all, we tested it on a Encrypted and Non Encrypted WI-FI network and nothing worked. Sharper Image has told us that an October firmware update will fix this issue. There was also lag on the page turns and some unresponsiveness in the D-PAD and menu functions. Most of these issues can all be easily fixed in a future firmware update, so it did not a make or break our opinion with some of these drawbacks. One of the big negative aspects on this device is that the screen is very long up and down. It does not switch between landscape and horizontal mode. That is to say, it does not have an accelerometer or gyroscope.

All in all, for the entry level price of $159.00, it is a GREAT entry level e-reader. Obviously you are not paying $300.00 or more, so a lot of the features lacking in the device are not that bad. It functions good as an e-reader, which is what it is being billed as. It also comes with 150 free open source ebooks, all in epub format, so you will have no shortage of things to read when you buy the device. We dig the fact that Kobo is behind these guys. Compared to a lot of other colored e-readers out there, this is one of the best bangs for your buck. If you compare it with other pseudo e-reading devices such as the  Augen Gentouch78 or the  Pandigital Novel, this is a great item to buy for the holidays. If you want to see pictures and video reviews of this Literati e-reader check out our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-review-of-the-sharper-image-literati-e-reader

**Sony 350 Pocket Edition**

The Sony Touch Screen PRS 350 Pocket Edition is Sony's latest entry into the competitive e-reader arena, and we feel it is one of their best offerings yet.

**The Specs**

The Sony PRS 350 is a 5 inch e-reader which offers 16 shades of gray scale e-ink and has a resolution of 800×600 pixels. It weighs around 155 G and feels very light in the hands. It has around 2 GB of internal memory which is enough for over one thousand ebooks. It also comes with a Stylus to take advantage of the touch screen.

**eBooks**

Now let's talk about ebooks. The Sony e-reader allows purchases from their own Sony store, but because this e-reader does not have WIFI or 3G you will have to make your ebook purchases on your computer and then copy them to your e-reader. You can either deal with Sony's own online store, or you can purchase ebooks from other stores and copy them to your e-reader via Adobe Digital Editions. The Sony e-reader supports a ton of different ebook formats including; ePub, PDF, DOC, TXT, RTF, LRF and BBeB.

The PRS 350 allows you to read your eBooks with 6 different font sizes, it starts at small and goes to XXL. Sony seems to give you the font size selection in T-Shirt format. From our experiences we recommend the Medium setting, as it allows lots of text to be displayed on the screen.  
You also have access during setup to configure the Time Zone, Dictionary Language and localization. It seems Sony only allows the UK and the USA.

**Menu and Settings**

The Sony PRS 350 does not have the extensive menu features that the Amazon Kindle Graphite or the Barnes and Noble has, but there is something to be said for the simplistic minimalist approach.

Firstly, lets take a look at the e-reader, in the applications menu it allows you to display a picture slide-show, which this e-reader displays pictures very crisply. It also has an option to take notes via a special handwriting tool. This allows you to take notes in long hand format. Although there are not a ton of options with this application, it does allow you to erase things by just clicking on it, and does not have different brush sizes, like Adobe Photoshop or other imaging programs. Despite this, this application provided us with a ton of fun.  
In the settings menu, you can find options such as checking out your Firmware Version and other features. One of the features we really liked was the ability to switch your on-screen orientation. You can manually switch between landscape and horizontal mode. The screen itself does not orientate automatically like the Amazon Kindle DX Graphite does, but this is a boon because while reading you will not accidentally move your e-reader and change the orientation. Finally, the other application worth mentioning is the note taking one, that allows you to write notes, highlight and write things down via a full touch screen virtual keyboard.

Other options include being able to setup a date and time, different clocks, keyboard settings, menu language and more.  
**  
****Summary**

This e-reader is only 5 inches and is one of the lightest e-readers around, the name Pocket Edition really sums up how light and portable this newest offering from Sony really is. We like the fact, it seriously just fits in your jeans back pocket, and more portable then say the Nook, Kindle, Kobo and others.  
We also compared the page turning speed vs the Barnes and Noble Nook and Kobo, and in all cases page turns with the Sony PRS 350 were quicker then their competition.  
Some of the draw backs include no WIFI or 3G, so you have to load up books on your device manually on your PC, many people find this is no problem. If you are going to go on vacation or commute during the day, you will have a ton of books on your device that you can choose from.

This model is perfect for the person on the go, with e-ink you can read perfectly under direct light and will receive no screen glare. The Silver edition we tested out, looks really polished and professional. This is a great piece of equipment that looks sexy, while menus, books and everything loads super quick, and is worth the $200.00 + price tag.

If you want to purchase this e-reader, you can buy it from our new retail partner Shop e-Readers. All sony e-readers come with 100 free ebooks, a DVD Video Tutorial disk that teaches you how to use your device, load ebooks and shows you step by step every single menu option and setting option. This e-reader makes the perfect holiday gift and you can see video and pictures on our website  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-sony-prs-350-pocket-edition/

**Sony 650 Touch Edition**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader Review! Today we take a look at the new Sony PRS 650 Touch edition.  
This new offering from Sony is the follow up to the original PRS-600 and was just released a few weeks ago. This model is comparable to the  Sony PRS-350 Pocket Edition.

**Specs**

The Sony PRS-650 features a 6 inch e-ink touch screen, with 16 levels of grey scale. It has a built in storage capacity of 2 GB, which means it can store up to 1200 ebooks. It also has dual memory upgrades, which is unique in e-readers! It has a SD Port and a Memory Stick MS DUO. This means you can enhance your memory to more then 32 Gigabytes. This device does not have WIFI or 3G so you will have to download your content first to your computer and then to your e-reader.  
You interact with your device via the stylus provided and can leave your e-reader on for up to 2 weeks without a battery recharge. We found from checking the unit out, that is very responsive not using the stylus and using your fingers to open up menus and options.  
**  
****eBooks and media**

This device reads a ton of different ebooks formats, such as ePub, LRF, PDF, Doc, TXT, RTF and more! With the ability to read tons of ebooks, you are not relegated to just doing business with the Sony Store. You can make purchases from any company that distributes their ebooks in ePub format, which is really the industry standard. You can buy easily from Barnes and Noble, Kobo,  Borders. You can also deal with independent companies such as Smashwords and  iPulpfiction. You also have the ability to get ebooks with your local library which is a solid way to get free content.

There are some subtle differences with the Sony PRS-650 vs the PRS-350 e-Reader. The 650 allows you to listen to audio books and music. Both models have the ability to load pictures on your device, as JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG and others. The supported audio formats are AAC and MP3, but the device has trouble with DRM audio content. Both models have the ability to take notes, via the stylus or with the virtual Keyboard. Both models also have the exact same page turning speed and high degree of contrast.

When you are reading an ebook, you can hit the Magnifying Glass option and have the ability to zoom into any display. You can also select up to six font sizes, from XS to XXL for font size increases. This is perfect if you wear glasses, or want to read on a larger font setting.

You also have the ability to bookmark pages and switch back to them on the fly. As well, you can make annotations to highlight passages on screen.

Finally, the device comes bundled with no real ebooks to speak of, but you do have a 19 page excerpt from Harlan Cobans new book "Caught". It does come bundled with 12 different dictionaries, and 12 translation dictionaries.

**Other Features**

You can see from our pictures that we reviewed the Silver model, but it does come in Black. The device is only bundled with a Mini USB to USB cable that allows you to plug it into your computer to charge it. The device is very light, and only weighs 220 grams.

**Our Thoughts**

This is one great e-reader! The page turns are super quick, and when we compared the Sony to the Nook we found the page turns more responsive, as well as the Kobo, and Sharper Image Literati.

Being a pure touch screen device means it weighs less and is more portable then its competition. Most other e-readers, although their screen size is 6 inches the device itself is much larger. If you look at the Amazon Kindle line of e-readers, they all have full QWERTY keyboards, so the device is larger than the Sony to take account these design factors. Even the Nook has a dedicated color touch screen at the bottom, which makes it much larger.

The Sony PRS-650 is one portable device, and is easily more transportable than most of its competition. The PRS-350 basically fits into your back pocket completely, where as this one does not.

We highly recommend the Sony PRS-650 if WIFI or 3G are not essential in your day to day operations. This may be a real big deciding factor in some people's buying decisions. We found that the perks in reading, holding a large amount of books, and being one hell of a sexy device makes this a must purchase.

If you would like to purchase this e-reader, please visit our retail partner Shop e-Readers! Because the Sony does not come with ebooks, they will give you 100 free ebooks in ePub format! You can also check out a photo gallery and video on our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/review-of-the-sony-prs-650-touch-edition-e-reader/

**Sony PRS-T1 - Reader WIFI**

Sony has finally taken the wraps off of the new  Sony PRS T1 e-Reader! It seems much akin to the Sony PRS-650, with the addition of WIFI and a multi-touch screen.

The new Sony PRS-T1 features a six inch Pearl e-ink display with a resolution of 800×600 pixels. It has 16 shades of grey, so it should provide tremendous resolution with books and pictures. You should be able to store all of this content via the 2 GB of internal memory. If this is not enough you can certain expand it up to 32 GB with the Micro SD card.

This is truly an international based e-reader with support for up to 16 different languages. If English is not your primary language you can easily do Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and much more. It also has built in dictionary support so you can look up words while you are reading books.

Speaking of books, this new unit will mainly just read PDF and EPUB. You will also have access to Wikipedia and Google search.

One of the greatest enhancements of this new e-reader is the fact you can buy books directly through Sony with the new store application. You can buy newspapers, magazines, and eBooks directly through the store. In Japan you will also be able to buy Manga and other comics.

We have been tracking this new e-reader ever since we heard murmurings of its development earlier in April. There has been a bit of a saga with the old "he said, she said" argument with Sony executives dropping the ball and then different departments countering the statement. It seems as though the wrappings have come off and we should see this new device within a month.

**Skytex Primer**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader Review! Today we take a look at the latest Skytex Primer Colour eReader Media Tablet! This is a full color e-reader and comes bundled with a ton of accessories. The full model number is SX-EB700. How does this rate against other multimedia tablets such as the  Pandigital Novel?

**Hardware**

The Skytex Primer Colour eReader features a 7inch TFT color display with a resolution of 800×480. Under the hood it is running a 400mhz ARM9 and has 2 GB of internal memory. It does have a MicroSD card so you can enhance your storage capacity up to 16 GB.

On the back of the unit is a single speaker used for listening to music or audiobooks and also has a 3.5 mm headphone jack. There is also a mini USB port to connect up to your computer in order to facilitate a data connection. You can then transfer music, movies and pictures to your device.

Since the core functionality of the Skytex Primer is to read ebooks, it does the job very well. It supports a multitude of formats such as PDF, ePub,FB2, HTML, TXT, and Mobi. It also supports a myriad of audio/video formats such as MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC, AAC, RMVB, VOB, DAT, MP4, FLV, and 3GP. One of the more interesting aspects of this device is the inclusion of a built in microphone to do your own dictation or recording.

You interact with the Skytex Primer via the keyboard and D-Pad. The keyboard alphanumeric and each number key as 3-4 letters associated with it. This means you have to sometimes press the number 4 times to get the letter you want. This makes typing in email addresses or writing an email an exercise of patience. You can scroll between various menus with the D-Pad and then press the center OK button in order to call up various menus and functions as your ENTER key.

On the side of the device sit your page turn buttons and volume keys. The page turn buttons are on the right hand side and positioned very well in order to function properly.  
The unit came with a ton of accessories to get you going right out of the box. It came with a neat little carrying case and headphones. It also had a Mini USB to USB cable and a DC charger to power your unit.

Finally, although it does not have an accelerometer or gyroscope it does have a manual button you can press when reading ebooks. It will allow you to switch between portrait and landscape mode, but only has two options, which means it does not have 360 degree orientation.

**Software**

The Skytex Primer Color is running a custom built Linux based operating system. The menus are just brimming with features and I was very impressed by the scope of its functionality. The main menu has a ton of options and is intuitively laid out. You can choose between ebooks, music, videos, photos, radio, record, explorer, calender, search, and options.

Navigating the menu systems is VERY snappy and everything loads very fast, which impressed me with a $99 device.  
The eBook experience is great! The Backlite allows you to read in any kind of situation and even in direct sunlight the screen makes it readable. One of the more interesting features when reading a book was not only could you turn the page by hitting the manual page turn buttons, but you could press the volume buttons to slowly scroll up and down within the book. There is also a button on your keyboard to change your orientation from landscape to portrait mode which is handy because most budget e-readers don't even allow you to do it.  
While reading, do not expect any fancy e-reader functionality with changing margins, fonts, line spacing, and so on. The best you are going to get is changing the screen brightness and hitting the magnifying button. It seems to do the job while reading though and I am firmly impressed with the experience.  
Finally on the reading front it does have support for Adobe Digital Editions so you can shop for EPUB books via various stores on the internet and then load them into your gadget.  
The Video player is very bare-bones with just a file explorer type interface to open and close videos. Video playbook on this little device was more than what I was expecting. There was a number of videos preloaded on the device in MP4 format and defaulted to landscape mode. The resolution on this multimedia tablet is really nothing to write home about but does have 800×480 pixels. Videos actually looked really good, though of course they were not true HD, but I was pleasantly surprised.

The Music Player was really developed very well and you can tell the company put a priority on this. Your main music interface is broken up between a ton of different options such as All Music, Resume Play, Album, Genres, My Favorites, Recordings, and so on. You can easily create your own playlists and even artists are easy to find. Within the music menu is an option called "Media Update," this is the button you want to press to copy over your own music to sync it up to the device. Music on the MONO speaker did not sound that bad. Unfortunately there is no EQ or any kind of ways to augment your sound other than edit the volume button. On the bonus side of things, if you play an audiobook or music you can exit the music player and do other things on your Primer and it won't stop.

One of the best features on the Skytex Primer is the inclusion of an FM transmitter! This means you can scan FM stations and listen to live radio. You can use the page turn buttons to automatically scan for stations. I think this is the most unique feature in any tablet I have reviewed over the course of the last few years and the only tablet able to do it. Sure you have internet radio with most devices, but nothing beats FM radio!  
The only factor to make this e-reader not the best deal for your money is the absence of a web browser and the inability to purchase any books on the device itself. It does come preloaded with around 60 free ebooks from Project Gutenberg but does not give you ANY way at all to purchase books directly. It leaves it entirely in your hands to not only buy books by yourself but also copy them over too. Most users may not have any any idea on how to do this and may account for many returns to the retail locations selling it.

**Our thoughts**

The Skytex Primer is tremendous value for the money. Most retail locations are selling it only for $99, which is a must buy in my opinion. The entire unit looks sleek and the build quality is above average. It does allow you many options from listening to music, watching videos, reading books, and listening to FM Radio.

On the downsides there is no way to browse the internet and the inclusion of a dedicated web browser would have went a HUGE way into making this one of the must have entry level devices of 2011. It also does not allow you to buy books directly on the Primer at all. You must use your PC to buy the books and then copy them manually to your e-reader yourself. We will be making video tutorials outlining this entire process and even Skytex on their home page gives no information on how to do this.

Web browser and buying ebooks aside this gadget has everything to make it a great solid investment. I like the fact it reads so many different ebook formats and does switch from landscape to portrait mode at the touch of a button. Truthfully I was not expecting much when I opened this up for the first time and decided to review another tablet billed as an e-reader. What surprised me is how much I enjoyed playing around with it. The Primer can be viewed on our website with photos and video on our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/skytex-primer-colour-ereader-review/

**The Book by Augen**

Augen has just released a new e-reader simply called 'the book.' It is an LCD based edition, so do not expect any fancy e-ink type display. Can Augen produce a better following up to their woeful  Gentouch78 Tablet?

**Hardware**

The new Augen e-Reader has a 7 inch TFT LCD color touchscreen with resolution of 800×480 pixels. It features a Ingenic 4755, Arm9 400 MHZ processor, and the operating system is on a Linux platform.

For memory you are looking at only 2 GB, although you can further enhance it up to 32 GB via an SD card. The SD card does not have a flap or any kind of protection. So you might have to be careful if you are reading near water or on the beach.

This is more a multimedia tablet than e-reader and supports a myriad audio codecs such as MP3, WMA, FLAC, and AAC. If you feel like watching videos you can import in WMV and MP4 formats. Videos on the device do not look too bad, they play both in landscape and portrait mode. Pictures also don't look too shabby, but are only really viewable in landscape mode. It does JPEG rather well. There is a built-in mono speaker and an audio jack so you can listen right from the device or via headphones. There is a menu option for audiobooks and music, and you can actually listen to music outside of the music application. This means you can surf the web and listen to tunes at the same time, or vice versa with an audiobook. You can connect up to the internet via the built in WIFI and battery life is around six hours.

**Software**

The Augen e-reader comes with over 200 classic eBooks so you can get reading right away. It is run on the Linux platform, so don't expect any great Android applications for it.  
Augen has partnered with a small website to deliver content for its books . It allows you to buy most new books by popular authors. The books are available via ePub and can be saved right to the device. Where the Augen e-Reader really shines is the supported ebook formats. You can easily load in TXT, HTML, ePub, PDF, CHM, RTF, FB2, and MOBI/PRC. It also reads books you might have purchased from other stores. The device is compatible with Adobe Digital Editions and the formats it reads are PDF and ePub. We found that the amount of books that the device comes bundled with makes running Adobe Digital Editions a very slow process. It often took me about ten minutes for everything to be synced as far as cover art and books go.

If taking notes is your thing, you can take advantage of the full QWERTY keyboard. There is a dedicated notes application at your disposal and the keyboard also has number keys on it. So you do not need to do any weird shifting or function keys to hit common place numbers.

Most of the lack of polish on the software side of things is allocated to the poor landscape and portrait mode support. Some apps support it, others do not. When you web browse for example, you are locked into portrait mode. Also when you browse the web, web pages do not load the mobile version and full versions are often not centered properly. This means to scroll from one side to another seriously takes about a minute. The little mouse icon you control with the joystick on the e-reader seriously moves PIXEL by PIXEL, in 2011 (oh lord).

**Our thoughts**

'The Book' by Augen feels really cheap with its plastic covering, the lack of an SD cover, and coupled with the mono speaker. Most of the functionality, like controlling volume and brightness, is all software based. It works poorly, too. The joystick is often the bane of my existence. Augen mentions clicking on the joystick that controls

UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT motions and clicking on it acts as an e-reader button. Clicking the Joystick for ENTER is awful and you have to really just use the ENTER key in order to dive into menus or launch any of the built in applications.  
When I loaded ebooks on the device all of the books manually had giant fonts, all in bold! When I configured the font and size I wanted to use, it did not apply to the entire device, just that book. There are rarely any settings you can do that affect the entire e-reader, just specific content such as books.

As far as settings go, there is nothing you can do to really lock the orientation of the e-reader. Many of the apps only have one prospective landscape and portrait. When you view books, movies, or the internet in portrait the UI does not move with your prospective. For example, the UI on the bottom of the screen shows you the date, time and how far along you are in a book or video. When you are in landscape mode the UI does not conform to the new perspective, so you have to constantly tilt your head, lest you miss any important information.

Augen is going to be producing firmware updates, but you have to install them yourself via the SD card. Augen does not give you an SD card with purchase, so you better buy one. The fact that the over the air updates are non existent really sucks in 2011.

In the end, I could not in my heart endorse this. It costs only around $139, but in its class the Literati makes a better pure e-reader and is half the price. Your money is better spent on a Kindle WI FI or the Nook WIFI in terms of better quality and functionality. If you want to check out video and pictures you can view the entire review on our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-review-of-the-book-by-augen/

**V.Tech V-Reader**

Welcome to another Good e-Reader Review! Today we got our hands on the new Vtech VReader aimed at kids 2-5. This new E-Reader raises the bar for interactive learning devices. Parents might remember spending their youth with Typing Tutor, Oregon Trail, and Records with read along books. This new device is sure to bring the old school mentality of a fun way to do word correlation with achivements and more.

**The Hardware**

The V.Reader features two different colors, pink and blue and features a 4.3 inch color touchscreen, and it also comes with a stylus. It has a full QWERTY keyboard to be able to type things like your name, welcome message and profile options. It runs on 4 AA batteries and seems to have a life of about a few days of constant use. There are built in speakers to give music and narrative a way to interact with your child and there is even an audio jack, for headphones. This is a lifesaver, because kids tend to have anoying repetitive audio gadgets, and this is a pleasant option. It also has an audio and screen dampener. So you can switch the audio on a low to high settings, and make the screen darker, or lighter.

There is buttons also on the device, that let you bookmark specific things, and go forward and backward in a book. It also has a USB port and SD memory card slot for expansion. This device is VERY durable, it features rounded corners and rubberized plastic on the edges for added protection against dings and bumps. This means that will take quite the thrashing and will not dent the screen. It comes with a built in case, that will protect it, when not in use, or if the child is running up stairs and drops it, it will be fine. Even the touch screen is contained within the unit, making it well protected.

**eBooks and Multi-Media**

The VTech V.Reader is a full interactive learning device, that features animated stories, that include your child into the story.  
Lets talk about eBooks first. Most VReaders will come bundled with a game that is based on a cartridge. New Books will set you back around $25.00 and can be purchased from the VTech Site or at retail merchants like Toys R US.  
The games often have an interactive narrative feel to them. Often you will be faced with word association games and clicking on items for the on-screen character to pick up. It also has a built in dictionary, so you can click on words and get their meaning. Stories as well, have keywords, the built in one we had, which featured the escapades of Rufus the Dog, allowed you to click on keywords and get a background story on the character, or a tangible object.  
All of the books are read out loud to the child and all the voices are done by actors and voice actors, so it does not come accross as cheesy that one person does all of the voices in the game.

The V.Reader has tons of interactive content such as Built in games, such as Word Mole. Each of the mini games you can download for free from the VTech website, allow you to have 3 or 4 difficulty settings and challenges your child to spell words. The better you do at the stories and games, the more achievements you will get, and will take place on a scroll that is on your main menu. The achivement based system is solid, because it gives the kids a reason to try things at a higher difficulty to get the reward.

You can connect your V.Reader via your USB cable to the internet, and download interactive content, new stories, mini games and more freebies. Most of the content you download will be stores in your "backpack" on the main menu.  
Although this device is aimed at childern between the ages of 2 and 5, it does not mean its a little kids toy, older users, over the age of five, may choose from more difficult categories of activities including phonics, vocabulary, and word recognition games.

**Our Views**

We like the fact that this is a well designed piece of technology that is one of the most durable e-readers we have ever seen. Its rounded edges and plastic makes it bounce, rather then splat when dropped. The built in case with a see-through plastic protective cover is also good. The stories and games are rich and immersive and will give kids hours and hours of enjoyment! The fact that it has a headphone jack is also great, because lets face it, gadgets that make too much noise are fine and well. But after you have heard the same story or noises 100000 times in a row, it gets old fast.

Kids seem to love this device, its the perfect blend of educational and interactive learning. When i was young, I used to play all the educational games, because they were either software programs for my Commodore 64, or MAC computers. Games like Typing Tutor and other word association games were fun! This is a great new item, that takes all the most important factors from the past, and blends it into a modern device.

Our verdict is, buy it. If you have a child between 2 and 5, they will love this! Its rich in content and allot of free stuff is available on the VTech website! Games also are cheap ($25.00) when you compare it to a modern video game. It teaches children a love of books at an early age. Many parents I talked to, that have this device, see their 4 year old daughter reading books to her younger sister. Some kids don't even leave home without it, bringing it in the car, to school and other places. I think its great to have the kids doing something thats FUN and EDUCATIONAL to spend their time doing, instead of watching Television or Movies all of the time.

This e-Reader will soon be available at our retail partner **Shop e-Readers** for around $95.00 and it is a great gift for the holidays. You can also check out video and tutorial reviews on our website -  http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/vtech-v-reader-for-kids-a-review/
