Skytex Primer 7" E-Book Reader

[beruli]

For what I paid for this device ($85), there is not much wrong with it.

It is a Linux Build based on 2.6, according to Skytex anyways.

The battery needs to be drained a couple of times to get full potential. The first time I tried it out it lasted about 2 hours. From what I can gather, the blue light at the top is also the battery indicator, plugged into a wall socket, when it’s charging the blue light blinks, but from what I can tell, it's fully charged when the light stays blue.

Other than DRM protected books, it has read everything I have thrown at it. I even have done some conversions with Calibre and all but a few have turned out to be good reading. For some reason, maybe Calibre did this, I will have to go back and look, but when reading it cuts words off at the end of the word, nothing in the middle of the word. ODD indeed.

I was also in contact with Skytex and they confirmed that they are releasing a firmware that will add protected DRM's to the Skytex, which should make this a viable ereader.

The video is what I expected, I have tried avi files of every size and quality that I could find and it has played them all. But then I tried MP4...uugh...It would not play any MP4 video that I had, so I broke out GSPOT codec information and while it plays MP4 video's, these are generic MPEG-4 video and nothing high quality will play.

Audio is quite good through headphones but the speaker on the back is less than spectacular, very bad quality here, even on the highest setting it’s very hard to make out.

Has a standard microphone which I tried and tested, seems to work as expected.

The radio is good as well, I auto scanned all the stations and on the most part come in clear.

Picture are well....pictures, the quality is up to the user taking the picture, I put on some really HQ pics, they show up nicely.

It has an expansion slot for a micro sd card up to 16Gb, whats nice about this is that it does not matter how you put the files on the card, the device itself will sort them for you. If you only want books that is all it looks for, if you only want pics, that is all it looks for.

Other than that, it’s good; I knew coming into this it did not have wifi, so it did not bother not to have it. It’s a cheap E-book reader that reads books and as soon as it gets to read DRM protected books it will be better, what else could you want?

[beruli]

After a week of use I can say the device is getting used. After draining the batteries a couple of times I started seeing the full battery life come through. I'm up to about 8.5 hours of ebook reading, I also played 4 different movies on 1 charge which lasted about 6 hours. A Couple of more full battery drains and I think it will improve even more.

[beruli]

After a few more days of use I thought I was using a great device until it starting to get buggy. It kept on turning itself off and started to get warm on different occasions. I kept notice until one day after I was recharging it was to so hot it was almost untouchable, so I unplugged it and that is the end of the skytex primer in my book.

[sodipodium]

Hey bro I noticed nobody else seemed to respond on this thread; I, too, have a skytex primer and I love it!

The DRM-update for me took out a lot of the original functionality I saw in the primer (support for various picture file formats was gone), but everything else works just fine.

As far as it getting too hot - have you tried disassembling it and removing the battery for awhile? Mine does not get too hot - I've tried to mimic your results without luck.

Anyway, it's a great device and I would recommend not letting it become a great paperweight. Try opening it up and disassembling it first.

[andy1m]

I found one look exactly the same as this one. Not sure if they come from the same manufacturer. It come with one year guarantee and only cost about US$ 63. Hope it will have a decent battery life.

[andy1m]

Just got the reader. Not that bad actually. Very good for reading PDF, the zooming just right. Very good also for playing video, radio works fine.

The first charge lasted about 4.5 hours. Not that bad for such a cheap device!!

[andy1m]

Second charge lasted about 5 hours. I don't think it will last up to 8 hours eventually.

And I upgraded the firmware downloaded from Skytex. The theme is different. But what I wanted was the ability to change font and background color but don't know why it's not there. Other things are still the same.

[sodipodium]

I haven't figured out yet how to change the fonts and themes for it, but it has something to do with the Rockchip custom firmware. I opened the device and it is a Rockchip-based device, so theoretically you can. There's a couple of threads that explain how to change the fonts and other stuff for other brands and types, maybe there's a way to do this on a Primer.

[andy1m]

Sorry for my English...

I did not mean to change the font, but to change the color of the font. And to change the background color of the book I'm reading.

I saw there was option to change that on some of the screen shots. But after upgraded to Skytex's firmware I did not see the option.

I think the screen is a bit too bright even when I have set the brightness to lowest level, so if we can change the background to black and font to white. That will be great!!!

[West Virginia]

Has anyone had the battery outright fail? It is not how long a charge will last that one needs to be concerned with but rather how long will the battery last. Who here has owned the device for longer than 6 months?

Joe

[andy1m]

I think the battery should be able to last for 2-3 years. I have few devices using Nokia's compatible size battery (FM radio, MP4 player, portable tv, cell phone), those batteries are unbranded and very cheap also. They last more than 1 year.

Is there anyone know if we can replace the battery in Primer with mobile phone's battery if it fail eventually? Or may be change it to bigger capacity?

[sodipodium]

The battery so far lasts a good 8 hours initially and can last between 6 and 8 hours each charge - I've had the device since December and there has been no decrease in longevity; therefore, I expect the battery to last approximately 5 years, but given the nature of today's growing Reader devices, I don't think I'll be using this device as a reader for much longer - the media playing capabilities are insanely awesome, but I recently purchased a Sharper Image Literati from Ross for less than $50 and am amazed by the quality of the read from that device (it doesn't have media-playing capabilities, though - a huge reason for keeping my Skytex)

Whew. All in all, the battery life should be good; most of the settings on the device cannot be altered (no custom firmware or font colors as of May); and the device is really awesome as a media player - I'd recommend you use it to play movies and music before using it as a reader - the display does tend to be a little unfriendly on the eyes (though I love the ability to enable color-swapping when reading, AKA "night mode"), makes it much easier to read when it's white-on-black and not the traditional black-on-white.

[andy1m]

sodipodium how do you enable the "night mode"? I want to swap the color but it's not on the menu. I'm using Primer's firmware.

[andy1m]

I tried to swap color in PDF and ePub, but the option was not on the menu. And I tried again using MOBI, and the option is on the menu.

So I guess I have to convert my ebook to MOBI format.

So far very satisfy with Primer!!!

[artistnatural]

I don't like the txt reader on the Primer. Anyone know how to import a better reader?

Also where can aps be found that work on the PRIMER?