Just thought I'd share my experience so far and see what others are experiencing.

I made it 15 days until I had to charge it tonight.

I had set the auto power off for 1 hour because I didn't find the default 5 minute practical. There must be a formula for how much power it takes to run through the 30 second boot process vs just leaving a static page for x amount of time. I hope it's longer then 5 min. I powered it off when I knew I wasn't going to read for longer then 1 hour.

I'm not a heavy reader compared to others on this forum. I typically average 50 paperback pages a day and when I checked the books I read during this time it was roughly 800 paper page equivalent. Assuming two ebook pages per paper page that's about 1,600 page turns. I typically read in three separate sessions in a day and powered the unit off in between.

I had the SD card installed the whole time and I did more font changes, font size changes, dictionary and thesaurus lookups then I typically would because of demos for people and stuff so that probably chewed more battery.

This is longer then I need because if I'm gone for a week I have to take my iPod charger anyway. In the future I'll probably just leave it powered on and charge it every 4 days but I was curious how long it would last.

Nice to know. Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the info. On their website it says:


Casual reader Average reader Heavy reader
80 refreshes/day 160 refreshes/day 320 refreshes/day
100 days 50 days 25 days
3 months 1 to 2 months 3 weeks

Any ideas how they get to three months of battery life? :blink:

If the Gen3 spends most of its time switched off, I can imagine that one could very well get 3 months of battery life from it.

If the Gen3 spends most of its time switched off, I can imagine that one could very well get 3 months of battery life from it.

I'm not sure about that. Mine was shut for 70% of any given day (conservative estimate). I might try it without the SD card installed to see if that makes any difference.

I'm very curious to that although I don't think it will make a big difference.

@ Harry,

What's your experience with the battery life and do you switch it off?

Thanks for the info. On their website it says:


Casual reader Average reader Heavy reader
80 refreshes/day 160 refreshes/day 320 refreshes/day
100 days 50 days 25 days
3 months 1 to 2 months 3 weeks

Any ideas how they get to three months of battery life? :blink:

I love how they presume a 'heavy' reader would run around 320 page refreshes per day. I've clocked as many as 1,600 in a day! And FYI, anything over 800/day is going to *SERIOUSLY* drain the battery in just a few days. The upside to that is I'm so frequently hooking the Cybook up to my computer to get rid of the old books and add new ones in that I'm constantly re-charging during those peak-reading-speed days! :)

Derek

Take into consideration the fact that when they say turning the pages, they probably really mean screen refreshes. Every time anything on the screen changes, it's a screen refresh. Every time you bring up a menu, library, move selection in the menu or library up or down, move the outline around a word when selecting a word to look up, it's a screen refresh. It's a page turn.

So if you read 300 pages, you might actually have many more screen refreshes done.

I'm very curious to that although I don't think it will make a big difference.

@ Harry,

What's your experience with the battery life and do you switch it off?

I switch mine off at the end of every reading session, and find that the few minutes every day or so it's connected to my PC via USB are sufficient to keep the battery meter at 100%.

Thanks Harry.

I think that they are way too optimistic then with their numbers. Or let's say it in another way; it seems that they just used the 8000 screen refreshes as a formula to calculate based on how many pages you turn a day. But the number 8000 is probably based on flipping all the pages in one go. Also the unit will maybe drain power even if it's off. It should be easy to measure since it has a removable battery.

I'm still thinking of buying one although I lean more to the Hanlin V3, but it would cost a whole lot more to get it here to The Netherlands.

I'm still thinking of buying one although I lean more to the Hanlin V3, but it would cost a whole lot more to get it here to The Netherlands.

We will probably be selling the V3s some time end of January in Germany.
I have not had a chance to compare the devices yet though.

We will probably be selling the V3s some time end of January in Germany.
I have not had a chance to compare the devices yet though.


Good to now! Any chance you will also sell the V9(c)(t)?

Good to now! Any chance you will also sell the V9(c)(t)?
If we can get our hands on it for a reasonable price and with a useful software for the european market, sure.

Well after couple of weeks mine is still stuck at 100%. I just haven't managed to move below full?!?! Now I am certainly in the casual category. Also I am loading a bunch of short docs for work (reading at home in the evening) so I keep recharging while copying files.

So apart from you super heavy duty readers I don't think that most users would even notice battery life as we are bound to plug in every few weeks. For me its battery life is amazing and exactly what I expected - one less thing to worry about (unlike for laptops and PDAs).

Well, I don't have hard and fast numbers... But I charged my Cybook fully upon receipt, and the first book I downloaded was Lawhead's "Taliesen", which is approx. 500 pages. I read the book in a week, and recharged it once during my reading, and the battery was probably ~50% when I recharged it. I probably could have gone the whole book without recharging.

For me, I find that to be highly acceptable battery life.

Just an update. I ran two further tests.

1) I changed the settings to leave it on constantly. After 4 full days the battery was still showing 20% so this is consistent with what others are reporting. I charged at this point.

2) I repeated the original test (start of thread) without the SD card so I powered off after every reading session. I had more time to read the last couple of weeks and the battery died after 12 full days. I read two books during this period which was a total of 850 paper pages. (estimate 1,600 Cybook pages. Based on this the SD card didn't reduce the battery life.

I'm happy with the battery life for my own use but if you're planning on taking it with you on a two week camping trip, well then you're pushing it.

I don't know where the companies are getting the 7,500 to 8,000 page turns for the Vizplex devices. I can only speculate that these numbers came from E-Ink based on the screen only and all the vendors are just repeating it.

I don't know where the companies are getting the 7,500 to 8,000 page turns for the Vizplex devices. I can only speculate that these numbers came from E-Ink based on the screen only and all the vendors are just repeating it.

It's the figure you'll get if you charge the machine, and simply repeatedly press the "Next Page" button as fast as it'll go until the battery runs down. It bears no relationship whatsoever to practical use for reading.