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I picked up the Augen today and will be returning it tomorrow. It had some good features, but for me the bad outweighed the good.
My observations:
The unit is very heavy. I can't be positive but it feels much heavier than the PRS-900. With the included cover it is downright unwieldy to hold. I took the cover off and that improved things somewhat, but it is really hard to hold in one hand. I read while nursing my son and was unable to work it with The Book.
Speaking of the cover, it is a very nice cover. It's real leather according to the box and protects the reader well. it trifolds over the reader and closes with magnets. I would feel comfortable chucking this into my diaper bag and not worrying about the reader getting damaged.
Calibre recognized the reader instantly and as "The Book." I transferred a selection of my books without problem. The Book recognizes hierarchical folders without a problem, so all my series and tagged books sorted perfectly.
The screen is crisp and clear. The color was a nice bonus, although I could do without it. The page turns were perfect, flipping you easily from one page to the next without any irritating "page turn" graphics or scrolling. The page turn buttons however are very loud—much louder than those on my Pocketbook 360. I could see them disturbing someone else in bed with you.
There is a choice of 5 fonts and each font has a choice of 6 step-sizes to choose from. I found that the smallest size for all of them was unreadable, the next 2 sizes are what most people would use and the largest 3 are really unusable except for the legally blind who don't mind having only 10 words/page. I think they need more steps in font size in the "typical" reading range. I didn't explore enough, but I think you probably can install your own fonts.
One issue that I had with fonts is that there is no global font setting. You have to set the font/size combo you like for each book you open. It only takes 30 seconds one time for the book, but that should be a global option. I had a problem with some books displaying entirely in bold font. I don't know why, but it was irritating to read.
The page display options are easy to use and work wonderfully. You can set the right/left/top/bottom margins, the justification and the line-spacing from within the book. However, this also has to be set for each book individually and is not remembered globally.
As others have mentioned the accelerometer is way too sensitive. The only saving grace is that you can manually set the rotate via the menu while reading a book. This works as long as you are keeping the reader relatively steady. If you move the reader after setting the rotate, it will re-activate the accelerometer and flip your book again. This needs a rotation lock.
The accelerometer isn't a true 100% flip when you turn the unit 180º. I liked it better in this position because the next page button was in a better place for me. The text flips but the bar at the bottom with the book title and pagination doesn't, so it stays upside down. This is true for the 90º and 270º flips as well—you get the bar on the side of the page. The controls also don't flip. When at 0º moving the joystick up brings you to the previous page and moving it down to the next page. This is what I'd consider intuitive. However at 180º moving the joystick up now brings you to the next page, instead of the previous, which was counter-intuitive for me.
One thing I really missed while reading was a clock. The unit has a clock that displays on the home screen, but you don't get it while you're reading.
Probably the biggest drawback for this reader for me is that it is hard to read in the dark, the main reason I wanted it. The controls don't light up and are a bit complicated so it's hard to turn pages and use the menus. A touchscreen would really have improved this. The joystick is easier to use by feel but is way down at the bottom right of this unwieldy device, making one-handed reading in the dark nigh impossible.
Another drawback is the reader doesn't use the table of contents. To jump around in a book you need to use a GoTo selection and enter the page number. And this is also impossible in the dark, because you can't see the number keys.
The wifi worked fine and recognized/connected to my home network instantly. The browser is slow but usable. It is much better than the browse on the Kindle 1.
Where The Book shines is reading pdfs. Even ones with simple tables were clear and easy to read. Purely textual pdfs were a joy. If you really want to read pdfs and want something a bit more portable than a netbook, this device might be for you.
Battery life sucks. I went from 4 bars (full) to 2 in less than an hour of reading much of it at the lowest brightness. And the reader only charges when plugged into a wall socket; it doesn't USB charge.
In summary, this reader has some really great features and some not-so-great features. In a couple of generations I think it could be the perfect LCD reader. It needs some firmware improvements and hardware improvements but is a decent start for a first generation device.
-Marcy
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