I just called iRex's U.S. Product Support line and asked for a price estimate. Today they were quite willing to give me very clear 650 euros (~785 USD), with discounts for volume purchases, of course. Ouch. All that fancy networking capability, I expect.
On all these e-ink readers, I've been thinking not backlight, but
front-lighting for night time reading. Like a
Lightwedge approach. They could even build it directly into the unit by thickening the screen's front plastic and running LED light into it at the edges -- that should light it quite nicely, and be fairly easy on the battery power. Even if they won't build it in, the price of a separate Lightwedge starts getting more reasonable given a set page size for (most) all of my books.