I got my new Hanlin V3 today. So far I'm very happy with it. I was looking for:
-Vizplex e-ink
-Long battery life (I didn't care about wifi)
-As non-DRM-oriented as possible
-Preferably with a released SDK (Software Development Kit)
-Decent native pdf support
-SD-card expandable memory (since my existing gadgets already use SD cards and I've got spares kicking around)
-Ability to create my own subfolders to organize a large book collection
What I like about it:
-It has all of the features that I was looking for above.
-Being able to create folders and subfolders is a lifesaver.
-I had no trouble at all reading the one pdf I tried. It resized (small portrait, medium portrait, large landscape) at the touch of a button. Pictures below, so you can judge the readability for yourself.
Graphical front cover
Medium-sized portrait
Large-sized landscape
-The interface is well-designed and powerful, although there were one or two cases where I felt that I had to press too many buttons to get a task done.
-It supports very many fonts, and you can easily add your own fonts/character sets to get support for pretty much any language, including Chinese/Japanese/Korean. I feel a sudden urge to upload something written in ancient runes, just because I can
-There are MANY options for configuring the appearance of your text files, from changing the size and orientation to inverting the text colors (white text on a black background).
What I don't like:
-Two of my text files, which I created myself and saved in Microsoft Notepad, were not recognised by the device. The Project Gutenberg files opened perfectly well, so maybe there's a quirk in the way Notepad saves text files.
-The page-turn speed still isn't great, although that can probably be said for any e-ink reader. It's less of an annoyance if I use the smallest or second-smallest font, so page turns are kept to a minimum.
-The contrast is good, but still not as good as good-quality paper. It looks as though I'm reading a high-quality newspaper. Again, a consequence of still-developing technology
-When the page changes, there's a (very) faint afterimage of the previous page still on the screen. I'm not sure whether that's Hanlin-specific or not. It's not enough to interfere with reading, though.
-The page-turn buttons (the ones on the side as well as the ones on the bottom) are very close to the edge of the reader. If I hold it in one hand and turn pages as I walk, my thumb is forced into a cramped and rather uncomfortable position.
-Availability. I'm in Canada, and the only reasonably-priced retailers I could find were in the Netherlands or China. I bought mine from the Netherlands, and it took nearly a month to arrive.