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I picked one up for $89 at Kmart yesterday. Still playing with it. Light, easy to hold. Screen auto rotates nicely while reading. Graphics are decent. UI is simple. Input with keyboard is decent. I love prev/next/home buttons on each side of the screen. Not crazy about having the earphone jack at the bottom of any device. Page turns are speedy, which is nice. Surprised it has a decent text-to-speech capability. Unless I’m mistaken, there doesn’t seem to be a night reading mode, which would be a bummer. Wi-Fi isn’t bad at all. No issues with connecting but it does need to see an SSID to connect. Not sure what the deal is there. Currently working fine on my WPA-PSK2 secured network. Most of the functions and features are what you’d expect from any reader and I’ve no complaints. Especially for $89. The included leather cover/case is a nice little touch, even if it’s a bit cheesy. The same goes for the note-taking feature. I think the big complaint I have is it’s sluggishness when it comes to web activity. As an iPad user, I didn’t expect this reader to be a tablet or web browsing device. It’s a reader. I get that. But if you’re going to put a web browser in your device and have a feature that allows you to shop for books, make sure the device and your software can bring up those pages at decent speeds (even if that means you have to resort to using a cell phone WAP browser). A browser on a device like this or the Pandigital Novel (which I also have, and it handles the web and Wi-Fi beautifully) is meant to shop for books, quickly look up something, read the news, maybe check email, etc. on-the-fly. Nothing more, realistically. My philosophy regarding readers is that the manufacturers need to get their first generation model mostly right in several key aspects in the first place if they’re going to have any success. Updates for readers are almost nonexistent. Wi-Fi/internet connectivity is a must, nowadays. The age of the readers that get their content solely via USB is gone, thankfully. I think the whole e-ink argument is also dying out with the proliferation of color LCD screens and improving technology that allows for a better user experience with them. For reading ebooks, I think this reader will do just fine. The price point is terrific and it would make a great gift item to get someone started in ebooks, if nothing else. I will test it soon for SD card integration, PDF rendering and battery life.
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