Overview:

Pros:

• Sleek and stylish
• Amazing Display
• Solid hardware
• Supports a variety of formats
• Uses the eye – friendly E-Ink technology

Cons:

• Sluggish, even for an E-Ink device
• Lacks a standby mode
• The headphone jack is 2.5 mm, not the common 3.5 mm jack
• Unorganized library
• Lacks wireless and other common features
• Expensive

Review:

E-paper has been in the works for decades now, but only recently has started making its way into the commercial market appearing on products such as cell phones. However, the most common application of the e-paper technology has been electronic book readers or e readers. The promise of e books is that they offer reading a whole lot of books in your palms anytime, anyplace. Despite the bright promising future that e book readers have, it would take some more time for them to become the 21st century avatar of the good ol’ book. Several commercial devices such as the Amazon Kindle, iRex iLiad and HanLin V3 use electronic paper technology.

However, e book readers are not everybody’s cup of tea and hence have not achieved mainstream success yet.  Recently, the French company Bookeen introduced its own electronic book reader in the market called the Cybook Gen 3. Considering the fact that Amazon Kindle has not yet been launched in the UK market yet, does this e-reader hold promise? The following review will assess the Cybook Gen3’s strong and weak points and how it fares compared to the other devices in the market.

Design:

Sleek and Stylish:
Most e-books are designed in such a way that they can take up as little space as possible. The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 is a little smaller than a A5 page and is incredibly thin and light.  The device has a black finish with silver controls. At (H x W x D) 188mm x 118mm x 8.5 mm, the Gen3 is not really large, even by present standards.  About the size of an average paperback book, the book is lighter than the average book at 174g.

Minimalistic Controls:
The controls are sparse; there is an off/on switch on the top of the device. For using the menu functions, there is a four way d-pad on the front, for navigation. While the d-pad is easy to use, it is not the most intuitive way to turn the pages in the e book. A flip pad could have been better, as it would have allowed flipping between several pages at a time. Of course, there is the danger of accidental flip as well in this case. On the right of the Bookeen are the two plus and minus keys that increase and decrease the volume respectively while playing MP3 files. On the left side are four small menu keys. The upper button key gives access to the music library, the second key leads to a menu where one can change the screen. The third in the range is the document library key and the last button is the delete key, which would allow you to delete files.

Large Screen:
The screen is about 6 inches wide and is based on e ink, a technology that allows greyscale rather than colour output; four shades in this case.  The advantages of using e ink technology include high definition. ‘Flat’ screen without shine/glare and low power consumption. The screen is not touch sensitive and hence the only ways to navigate across the screen are the controls. The screen offers 4 grey scales, so it is not that great at displaying pictures. Another reason for it being poor at displaying images is its 600 x 800 pixels screen which is just adequate for text.

Hardware Interface:
On the lower part of the Bookeen Cybook Gen3 Digital Book Reader, is a rubber piece, below which is a charging and a sync connector. The mini USB connector is a good idea, in case you lose the wire that Bookeen provides. There is no speaker on the device; however, it has a 2.5mm audio jack that you connect your headphones to and listen to audio books.  Though one cannot explain why Bookeen has preferred a non standard socket than the common 3.5mm one. A keyboard (like that on the Kindle), better flip mechanism and inclusion of a slider would have increased its functionality many a fold.

Setting up is Easy:
When you switch ON the Cybook e Reader, it takes about 20 odd seconds to boot up before showing the home screen, called as the library screen. To start reading books on your reader, all you need to do is connect the Cybook with the USB cable to a host computer. Drag all the files you want to read and drop them in the drive. Hassle – free as it requires no software installation and no synchronization process.

User Interface:
The Cybook Gen3’s homepage is called the Library screen. It includes music, pictures and books in one list, which is irksome considering it is not very organized and it is hard especially if one would want to switch to music after reading a book or vice versa.  While playing music, Cybook displays the music part of the library only in the text format sans the album cover or etcetera. There have been reports of issues of ghost screens (screens/ images of a page of text remaining unchanged; the solution to that problem is by switching off the device). Page refreshes were slow and clearing the screen seems to be some sort of display bug. There is an option to read a material either in landscape or portrait mode as well.

It would have been better if there would have been a folder structure which could collapse and expand allowing better organization of data in an appropriate order. Let us hope that Bookeen would bring out firmware updates to solve this issue.

Powered via USB port:
On the bottom corner, is the USB port, below the rubber cover. While it is not the only way to get the content on the Cybook, it is the only way to recharge the battery. If the reader is switched off, but connected to a computer via the port, it automatically draws power and while it does, the LED at the top turns red. Switching on the eBook, the LED turns yellow and the eBook appears on the computer as 2 external USB drives – an internal flash memory of the reader and the SD card.

Features:

E-ink Technology:
The Cybook Gen3 runs using the E-Ink display - the same used by market leaders like the Amazon Kindle and the iRex iLiad. E-Ink is a power efficient display technology that draws power only when you refresh the screen that is when you turn the pages. It means one can leave a screen with text/information/images for several minutes without draining any power to maintain it. Because, it uses E-Ink technology, reading pages on the book does not have much impact on our eyes. As mentioned earlier, the only disadvantage with the E-Ink Technology is that turning pages, especially if you would like to skip a lot of pages, is very slow. The E-Ink flash is visible during page turns and it feels slower than the Kindle.

Audio Playback Capability:
The Cybook Gen3 is built in with audio capability. It lacks a loudspeaker and so playback, if any, is through stereo headphones only. The fact that the 2.5mm jack is not very popular, would restrict the choice of headphones as well.  When we tried to play some music to shut down the noise, we found out that the e book reader was very effective. Perfect for listening to audio books. To play music in the eBook reader, sort the library content by path and copy the Mp3 files into several directories within the Music subdirectory. This prevents the music from being played in the order of size (the shortest piece of music to be played first and the longest last). It lacks a shuffle playback capacity and continues sequentially. The Music segment is amongst the weaknesses of the reader as it is nice only for listening to music/audio books and drains the battery.

Memory:
The Cybook has an internal memory of 64 MB which can contain thousands of books. Mind you, since text files occupy much lesser space than music files, it is possible to store a large number of books in just 64MB. If that is not sufficient, you can expand the storage capacity storing a huge number of documents with you.

Formats Supported:
The Gen3 supports JPEG,GIF and PNG files. The eBook file format runs to PDF, TXT, HTML, PalmDoc and Mobipocket PRC. Unlike the Kindle, which supports only TXT and AZW and converts other formats to these, the Gen3 supports a variety of formats without conversion.

The audio format support is restricted to MP3, while this covers a majority of audio books, some great music and podcasts; there are several other formats such as WMA and AAC, whose inclusion would have improved its functionality. If you want to playback files other than MP3, try converting them to Mp3, before uploading it on the reader.

No Standby Mode:
The reader can be either switched on or off. It lacks a “standby” mode that is present in contemporary eBook readers. Unlike the Kindle or the Nook, it lacks a screen saver mode. What difference will that make? A standby mode makes sure that a reader can be back to active mode in just about 5 seconds, whereas a lack of it, means it would take 25 -30 seconds for the reader to revert back to the active mode.

Performance:

The eBook has been ergonomically designed to hold for long periods of time. The screen lacks a backlight and is not reflective. Yet, it is legible in a wide range of lighting conditions, indoors as well as outdoors. Extended periods of usage do not have much impact on the eyes and is not any more demanding than reading a paper. The text looks crisp on the sharp and amazing screen.  One could change fonts of the text and if you are not happy with the range of fonts supplied, you can add TrueType fonts as well. The navigation between pages is slow and the interface is too disorganized. However, turning a page is not extremely slow and there is a “flash” because of the E-Ink. Performance is one area where the Cybook needs a major firmware upgrade.

Limited number of Accessories provided:

There are not many accessories provided with the Bookeen Cybook Gen3 eBook reader. Apart from the reading device, all that are bundled along are a USB cable an instructions manual.

Battery Life:

The Gen3 e-Reader runs on a 1000mAh Li- polymer battery that is good for about 8000 page refreshes. Because the reader runs on E-Ink technology, which consumes power while only while turning pages (and no power while displaying a page), the strength of the battery is measured in terms of page turns. At about 80 pages a day, the battery can last about 2 months reading time before needing a charge. However, if MP3 playback is counted, the batter life dwindles down to about 3 hours.

Warranty:

The Bookeen Cybook Gen3 is provided with a warranty of 12 months from the date of purchase.

Verdict:

The Cybook Gen3 runs on the magnificent E-Ink technology and its support for multiple formats makes it perfect for users who would love to read books without straining their eyes or wallet. The hardware is great, but the software is lagging. If extras such as wireless, note – taking and dictionary lookup would have made it a great choice. The small minor issues such as slow page turns etc. are fixable with a firmware upgrade and do not have much impact on the way we read. If Bookeen would open up the interface so that third parties can creative alternative displays and other add-ons, there is no reason that it cannot challenge the Market leader – The Amazon Kindle.  But, considering its steep price and lack of features that eBooks in the same range have, there are more affordable options available.

Bookeen Cybook Gen3 Digital Reader - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Bookeen
Model Name	Bookeen Cybook Gen3
Colour	Black
Dimensions (H x W x D)	118 x 118 x 8.5 mm
Weight	174g (battery included)
Display technology	E Ink® “Electronic Paper”
Screen size	6 inch
Display resolution	800 x 600
Grey scale	Four level grey scale
Built in memory	64MB
Compatible free eBook and text formats	EPUB eBook, BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, Microsoft® Word, TXT, RTF
Compatible DRM eBook and text file formats	PalmDoc and Mobipocket PRC
Compatible unsecured audio files	MP3
Compatible image files	JPEG,GIF and PNG
Compatible Operating systems	Windows® XP (Home Edition / Professional, Media Center Edition, Media Center Edition 2004, Media Center Edition 2005) & Windows Vista® (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate)
Ports	1 x USB 1 x 2.5mm headphone jack
Battery type	Rechargeable lithium-ion
Battery life	Approx 8000 page turns
Recharging time	Five hours with USB
Package contents	Bookeen Cybook Gen3 USB cable Quick start guide
Warranty	Limited warranty - one year