To most of us, the idea of reading a book on a computer screen is about as threatening as root canal treatment, however that attitude might change when you place your eyes on the iRex iLiad's display. The iRex iLiad is certainly not on the tip of everyone’s tongue as a choice in the electronic reader category, but it sure has its fans and followers. With a huge 8.1 inch screen, the iLiad is not just a reader, but a writer as well. It uses a technology known as the E Ink, which does not flicker and does not use a backlight, so you are offered with a rock-steady image that is quite easy on your eyes. The Irex Iliad EBook Reader seems to be more advanced than rivals like the Sony eBook Readers which is only available in the US and Japan, as it has built-in Wi-Fi, comes with a stylus you can use for making notes onscreen and uses software that allows you download the RSS newsfeeds. While its price puts it in the top price range of electronic readers, does this product live up to its price tag?

Design:

The delightful display:

The single most impressive thing about the Irex Iliad is its display. We can even go so far as to say that it will be as easy on your eyes as an actual printed page. The first time we saw it, we thought it was covered with a printed protective sticker until we made the text change. Instead of relying on the LCD technology used on most laptops and PDAs, it has employed a display technology called E Ink. eInk is a technology for black and white displays, which offers a wide viewing angle, good visibility in sunlight, non reflectivity and, very importantly, long battery life. This creates a high contrast monochrome image that is completely free from flicker and does not even need a backlight. It can be even read in direct sunlight, and since Irex Iliad eBook Reader has a high resolution of 768 x 1,024 pixels, texts look quite smooth and clean. The display is capable of displaying 16 levels of greyscale, which means image reproduction is OK, but perhaps more importantly the resolution of the screen allows for several variations of text size. We counted 14 different text sizes for plain text based ebooks, which should be enough to let anyone find something that suits their eyes.

Build:

The iLiad Electronic Book Reader certainly does not look anything like a normal book. Although the fascia of the reader is around the same size as the average hardback, the device is actually quite sleek, and at just 390g feels very light to hold. The design is mostly functional rather than flashy, but the rear of the unit has odd rectangles cut out of it for no apparent reason which gives the reader the look and feel of a prototype rather than a polished product targeted at the mass consumer market.

Most of the real estate of the front of the device has been taken up by the large screen, but there are also a number of controls available that aids you in navigation in the user interface. The navigation system is easy enough to get to grips with. The most prominent of these is what iRex calls the Flipbar. This is really a very long rocker switch mounted on the left-hand side that you flick back and forth to move through the pages of a book or document. This flipbar is quite intuitive to use and makes the device feel just that little bit more like a normal book. Hold it and it will take you forward or back five pages. We found it counter-intuitive to flip the bar left to go forwards and right to go backwards, but we got used to it. At the bottom of the screen, iRex has also added four buttons marked News, Books, Docs and Notes, which act as shortcut keys to the relevant folders held in the ebook reader's memory. They provide a fairly effective way of keeping your documents in some kind of sensible order.

Features:

Memory:

Irex Iliad Digital Book Reader has equipped with 256MB of internal flash memory. Since this memory is shared with the operating system, you are left with just around 128MB of space for storing e-books and documents. That may not sound like much, but when you take into account that the average ebook comes in at less than a megabyte, it is not actually too stingy. Anyway, if you need more space you can always push in a memory card into the Compact flash or MMC/SD slot at the top, or use the host USB socket to attach a memory key.

File transfers:

If you wish to transfer new files to the iLiad, you will have to connect the travel adaptor to the expansion port at the base of the device. This includes not just a USB port that can actually be used for connecting the device to a PC, which is the one built-in to the reader is only for connecting up external storage, but also has an Ethernet port to connect the device to a home network. Transfers over USB are quite slow, but then the file sizes of ebooks are so small it was not exactly a deal breaker.

Compatibility and Software:

iRex, the company behind the iLiad Reader, suggests a myriad of uses from the educational to business sectors. If you only think of it as a way of reading the occasional novel then according to iRex, you are missing a trick. It is compatible with a seriously useful array of file formats. The device can read PDF, HTML and TXT plain text documents, as well as showing images in the JPG, BMP, PNG formats. Thanks to a recent software update you can now also use it to read books in the PRC format, which are available through the Mobipocket online store. These books can be bought using the free Mobipocket software, which is similar to the iTunes for ebooks. The books are priced at about the same range as a normal book. For instance, Stephen King's Salem's Lot will cost you about £8.80. However, there are plenty of sources for free books online, including many from big name authors that are out of copyright. The collections are available on the Project Gutenberg site you will find the entire works of Shakespeare, as well as seminal novels like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and Emma by Jane Austen.

Performance:

Reading Experience:

We are quite fascinated by the idea of e-books, but implementations of the concept have so far been dogged with flaws. Our in-depth evaluations of the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle turned up a long list of drawbacks including high price, hard-to-click buttons, slow refresh rates, DRMed content, poor music-playing functionality, and non-interactivity. It is this last one that truly separates an ebook from an actual book. While many readers do not need to scribble notes, underline passages, or dog-ear the pages of the books they read, it is an essential feature of paper book for academics and others. The display includes Wacom Penabled technology, so you can use the stylus that is stored in a slot at the top of the ebook reader to amend documents with handwritten notes or to draw freehand diagrams. Unfortunately, these notes and drawings are stored in a separate file alongside the original documents rather than being added directly into the document. You will have to manually merge the two together once they are transferred to your computer using the iLiad Companion software. It is a rather clunky solution to something that should be transparent to the end users, but then there are plenty of such anomalies with the iLiad. You need a separately available desktop application called MyScript Notes, worth £40 to really make the most of this feature and convert handwritten notes into editable text.

For instance, even though the device has Wi-Fi, it will not update RSS feeds by itself. Instead you have to connect it to a computer via USB and then re-sync it with the Mobipocket software to update it with the latest news. And when you want to sync all the documents on your device with your PC, you have to switch back to the iLiad Companion software again. Although the device can be synced with the Companion software over Wi-Fi, it is rather quite tricky to set up and is not even detailed well in the software's documentation that comes with the device.

Sluggish:

The overall performance is also a little bit sluggish. It takes about 40 seconds to start up, it is quite slow to load documents and while navigating between pages there seems to be a pause as it wipes the screen and redraws the new page. All of these issues contribute to an experience that may not be as polished as it should be, especially when you take into account that you can buy a laptop for the asking price.

Battery Life:

The battery life of the Irex Iliad 8.1" Screen E-Book Reader is surprisingly long. It takes about three hours to charge, but once the iLiad is topped up with juice it will keep running for around 12 hours, which is just enough for a week's usage when we tested it.

Warranty:

The Irex Iliad EBook Reader comes with one year warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The Irex Iliad EBook Reader has some wonderful features, such as the gorgeous display and extremely long battery life, it is a real delight to use for reading books or documents. However, there are a few quibbles too as the Wi-Fi functionality needs some improvement, though, and iRex needs to develop better PC software for managing the device. The price tag is also somewhat on the hefty side when you consider you can pop down to your local Tesco and pick up a full blown laptop for the same kind of money. Although there are a lot of things we liked about the Irex iLiad, unfortunately it still has some way to go before it will have you chucking your books on the bonfire and cancelling your newspaper subscriptions.

If you are tempted to join the E-book revolution, you can pick up the iLiad for around £425.

Irex Iliad eBook Reader - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Irex
Model Name	Irex Iliad EBook Reader
Colour	Black
Dimensions (H x W x D)	217 x 155 x 16 mm
Weight	389 g
Casing	Plastic
Display technology	Electronic Paper Display
Display Resolution	768 x 1024 pixels
Screen size	8.1 inches
Grayscale	Sixteen level grayscale
Navigation type	Touch screen Stylus
Keyboard	No
CPU	Intel 400MHz XScale
Processor Clock	400 MHz
Built in memory	256 MB flash memory   (stores up to 250 books)
Memory slots	USB, MMC, CF
MP3 playback	No
Audio interface	Built-in stereo speakers
Network type	802.11b, 802.11g
Compatible formats	PDF, HTML, TXT, JPG, BMP, PNG, PRC (Mobipocket)
Speakers	No
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	Irex illiad eReader, USB cable, User guide and Quick start guide
Included accessories	Travel hub, power adaptor
Battery type	Rechargeable   Li-ION battery 1600mAh
Battery life	12 hours
Warranty	1 year