Just the very existence of the second and 3rd generation ereaders shows that the manufacturers constantly think of the ways to enhance the reading experience of the consumers. The Endless Ideas, who bought in the BeBook One and BeBook Mini, has collected ideas from the clients around the planet and included tem into their new eBook Reader and the result is the BeBook that takes pride in better technologies and a great deal of features. Being the first BeBook ereader with WiFi technology, the Neo is proud to be sporting easy way in to the book vendors from anywhere in the world, Wacom-powered touch-screen technology, a quicker browsing and operating means. Additionally, the new Neo is also said to be displaying PDF, e-Pub and interestingly, both of these will be available with and devoid of TXT e-Book formats and Adobe’s DRM. Read on to find more and analyse if it is worth your money.

Design:

Elegant:

BeBook Neo is one of the most stylish ereaders we have tested; its white plastic exterior gives it an elegant and simple look that is easy on the eyes. It is true that the Sony PRS-600 most likely pips it to the post for absolute style, thanks to its all-metal framework, but the white plastic front and simple control bunch of the neo gives it a clean simplicity that the consumers will just fall in love with. In addition to this, the sandblasted aluminium flipside gives it a rock-hard feel nothing like the all plastic models like the ones in Bookeen CyBook and iRiver Story.


Love it or Hate it:

When it comes to rear, there is split opinion when comfort is considered. Unlike a soft aluminium finish that is liked by most consumers, the Neo’s finishing is quite rough, like1000 grit sanding paper. While some of you might consider this as a surface with an excellent grip, others might find it distinctly uncomfortable, like it is slowly smoothing your fingertips away. It may prove uncomfortable for people who prefer smooth exteriors like that of Apple products. It also appears to add some weight, because at 312g, which is about the weight of a small hardback novel, it is nearly double the weight of the all-plastic alternatives.

Display:

The all important display is as nice to read as with any other e-book reader we have seen. This latest BeBook gadget still makes use of the e-ink display, but it now comes out with touch panel technology from WACOM to add writing functionality to the gadget. Thanks to its e-ink technology, it suffers no ill effects from being viewed at an angle and it remains visible, indeed it becomes easier to read, the brighter your surroundings. The grayscale is 16, and this means that it possesses 16 unique shades of gray. If you are asking us how will it alter your experience of reading, well, when it is just text, you will not notice much change. The excellent range of sixteen gray shades have their effect over the images. This also means that you will receive a cover art that is more detailed for your books and also broadens the spectrum of what you can browse on the internet. Since it does not have the backlight feature, it is also easy on the eyes, making it comfortable to read from for hours on end. As we have seen with most e-book readers, the screen is a bit small and its total area is only about half that of a typical novel page. However, page turning speed is better than on some first generation devices so "flicking" through pages is not quite so much of a hassle. The stylus provided allows you to flip pages, as well add footnotes to, add notes, sketch, and highlight stuff. There is also an QWERTY keyboard onboard for entering texts.

Interface and Navigation:

Below the six inch, 800x600 pixels resolution e-ink display is the navigation huddle, which sports two concentric rings and a essential select button. The user interface of the device is pretty simple and intuitive interface that is fairly easy to learn even for users who are not familiar with touch screen eBook readers. This six inch BB Neo presents a diverse character than Endless Ideas’ earlier entries. Those who love gadgets will notice the nonattendance of a numerical keypad, and the characteristic BB buttons is replaced by a single Dpad wheel. The outer ring is used for opening the menu, going forward and back a page, and going back a level in the menu. The inner ring functions as a directional pad while navigating menus and doubles in or out for increasing font size when viewing a document. A slider switch on the left of the BeBook Neo enables you to switch Wi-Fi on or off. Most of the ports and connectivity are restricted to the bottom edge where you will find the power button, a mini-USB port, the volume control, a 3.5mm headphone socket and an SD card reader. The only one that differs is the touchscreen stylus, which is housed in a slot on the top edge.

Features:

The inner specs:

The Battery life of a whooping seven thousand page turns is pretty much a benchmark, but a move from 400 MHz ARM processor to 532 MHz Free scale processor provides the Neo a superior browsing and operating speed. BeBook declares that the new processor makes the Neo more than twice faster than the rival eReaders. The Neo only has 512MB of internal memory and some people could probably fill that pretty easily but for the average user that much will last a very long time. When you get to the point that you need more memory, you can get up to 16GB of storage on an external SD card. That should be enough for anyone but you could always have multiples if all else fails.

Fun with the display:

We can understand why BeBooks makes a big fuss of the fact it has Wacom touch-sensing and it is certainly quite inspiring. You will be able to doodle over documents and scribble notes in compatible file formats, including pdf and images and use it to navigate the rest of the menu, which generally consists of large icons arranged in a grid. You can also use it to scroll around a page. While drawing, the display is quite precise enough to copy a signature and scribble a pretty high-quality pen and ink style drawing. It can also do well with fast movements, though there is still a diminutive delay while the screen updates. Nevertheless, there is no pressure sensitivity for shifting the stiffness of your scribbling. Furthermore, accuracy for the last 5mm or so of the edges drops off dramatically.

No use of your finger:

The above said program extends if you are presented with a touch interface, you would naturally want to interact with it just with a finger. Your finger will not work. It is deliberately designed in this way as the fingers are huge to be as precise as a stylus pen. Now that we have cleared that for you, you can just snatch a pen and jump right in to your favourite eBook. Wacom technology allows you to flick through the pages as you read but also annotate.

This is especially nice for various reasons. In particular, while navigating the menu it feels like a real combine to have to budge from one icon to the then with the silver navigation circle or take out the stylus. Moreover, there is no auxiliary stylus in the box so kick yourself, if you lose the original. For school books this is great for marking key points that you want to review just before the big test or add footnotes to words you will not know so you can utilise the dictionary look up function that the Neo has. For business you can make notes on the key points of your production to make sure that you cover everything in your presentation. The list of uses for annotation is never-ending and on the BeBook Neo it works great. Along with annotation you also can bookmark and annotate your favourite passages or mark where you left off from last night. In the menu you can jump straight to any annotation or bookmark. When the time comes to remove bookmarks or selecting parts that you had annotated, this function is easily accessed in the same menu.

Access to the Web:

Yet another feature that tells apart the Neo from the other BeBooks is its ability to access websites. It even asserts to be the first Wi-Fi enabled ereader with access to web stores from around the planet, allowing you to purchase from any local or international store of your choice. A world map of third party ebook stores is also preinstalled. Browsing the web is astonishingly good with complex page layouts handled appropriately and even animated stuff work; so, you will not miss out on some superb adverts. Of course, it is not quite up to screening video but you can positively get by for most day by day browsing. As for downloading e-books, there is not quite the sleek experience of the Amazon Kindle that lets you download the latest newspapers and purchase books from anywhere with its 3G data connection. In fact, all you can do is only browse to websites like Borders, Amazon, etc, while on Wi-Fi and download a book through that means.

A few grips:

There are a few oddities too. For some reason, the BeBook Neo has no recollection of which wireless network you have used, so every time you want to use an online service you have to select the network. It then hangs on the network select screen and you have to press the Back button to access the website. Attainment free books are also quite complicated, requiring you to go through Google to find a site that does free books. Unlike the Kindle the BB Neo does not present any kind of subscription services, or a built-in RSS reader. Instead, the purpose seems to be to get you to look at websites and shop online. In both times, we found it much simpler and quicker to fire up a laptop and use that instead.

Supported formats:

The formats supported by the BeBook Neo Touchscreen e-Book Reader are decent if unexceptional; the list includes EPUB, PDF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF. The key EPUB open format is supported and you can also read plain text and rich text formats along with pdfs. On the other hand, the proprietary formats used by the Kindle and Apple's ibooks and mobi are not supported. PDFs are done convincingly well with most formatting looking spot on, though larger, graphically rigorous documents can cause it to crash or take forever to load.

Open Architecture:

There are claims that there is speech to text, which allows you to listen to your books, but we were not able to find it. We think they might have meant it to be a firmware update on the go. But this is not an issue to worry about, as it has MP3 compatibility and as most audio books are in this format, you can at least have that. We can confirm this with the following phrase on the manufacturer’s site "The open architecture of the BeBook Neo makes it possible to expand its capabilities. Keep an eye on www.mybebook.com for firmware updates. We have some very cool features planned for the near future".

It is Overkill?

Overall, the BeBook Neo is up there with the top ten best e-book readers in the current market. However, what the iPad and indeed some other smartphones have hammered home for us, is that an e-book reader should just be a replacement for an actual book it wants to be small, long-life, easy-to-read, and cheap. It does not need the multifunction, multimedia oriented features of those other devices, especially when the e-ink display technology simply does not lend itself well to such interaction. So, if extra features are required on an ebook reader, they should just enhance the portable reading experience, which is precisely what Amazon has done with the Kindle. In contrast, the Neo's extras do not actually add that much to the reading experience. So, while the Wacom touch-sensing and web browsing may seem to justify this reader's high £280 price, we feel it is somewhat of a wasted effort.

Battery:

As we had mentioned already, the Neo eBook Reader has a battery life of 7000 Ink page turns. But, if you use its WiFi capability, you will often find yourself charging it. We found the device displaying the Shutting Down screen and requiring a recharge more times than we would have liked. It can use some work in the battery life department for sure.

Contents and Accessories:

Inside the box package, you do not get much besides the reader. There is a white USB cable for attaching the Neo to a PC for charging and transferring files to and from it. However, you will not be getting a case of any description or a dedicated charger, so you will have to get hold of a generic mains-to-USB converter for charging when away from a computer. As far as accessories go there are also protective sleeves, replacement stylus pens, etc.

Warranty:

The BeBook Neo e-book reader comes with one year warranty for parts and labour. We could not find any phone numbers available for technical support but there were plenty of online FAQs, manuals and documents. For specialised help they do have email support that is friendly and helpful with any problems that may occur.


Verdict:

The BeBook Neo e-book reader has some inspiring features, specifically its Wacom powered digitiser, web browser and its eink screen is also a delight to read from for hours. It is good looking, simple to use, and practical book reader with a nicely textured rubberised flipside. It displays books and PDF files swiftly and navigation of menus is swift and on-the-whole, the reading experience is enjoyable. It is definitely a big improvement on its predecessors. Still, at a price tag of £280, it is quite dear and we feel its additional features do not actually add a immense deal to its everyday use. For people looking for a device with great reading and writing capability and an easy access to a wide range of book vendors, the BeBook Neo is a good choice.

Check our exclusive Reviews on Amazon Kindle.

BeBook Neo eBook Reader - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Endless Ideas
Model Name	BeBook Neo eBook Reader
Colour	White
Dimensions (H x W x D)	196 x 121 x 10.6
Weight	298 grams
Display technology	Wacom touch panel technology
Display Resolution	600 x 800 pixels
Screen size	6 inch
Grayscale	Sixteen level grayscale
Navigation type	D-Pad
Keyboard	Yes
Built in memory	512MB flash memory   (stores up to 1,000 books)
Memory slots	USB 2.0 with OTG-support, SD slot (expandable up to 16GB)
MP3 playback	Yes
Compatible unsecured audio files	MP3
Compatible formats	EPUB, PDF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF
Speakers	Mono
Compatible Operating systems	Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.Mac OS X.
Ports	1 x USB 1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
Operating temperature	0 to 50   degrees celcius
Box contents	BeBook Neo eReader, USB cable, User guide (pre-installed) and Quick start guide
Battery type	Rechargeable   Li-ION battery 1600mAh
Battery life	Approx 7000 page turns
Warranty	1 year