[jasio]

Hi everyone,

I couldn't wait for the V5 to become available in the UK so I ordered it from China. A week later it was in my hands (Customs kept it for a few days but didn't charge me).

The reader comes already in its leather cover. It makes a nice impression but it is actually a bad idea. It moved during shipping and the plastic support of the cover cut the side of the device a bit so now it is a bit loose. Nothing bad though. The protection film on the screen was much too sticky and difficult to remove. It left some slight marks on the top part of the screen which I haven't managed to get rid of yet. Annoying.

My V5 came with a 2GB SD card and a card reader. A gift from the seller that I didn't expect. I loaded the card with a few ebooks that I had already prepared in a few formats.

ePub: this is the format I expected to use the most. I won't. It is not useable in the current firmware. The choice of font size is way too small or way too big or so large that only a few words fit on the screen.
FB2: that one works fine. I have noticed that chapter titles are often run-in with the previous line. That might be badly formatted documents (some were converted with Calibre).
PRC/MOBI: this formats looks good too.
PDF: documents with a simple layout are easy to read once zoomed in. Documents containing scanned pages are useless as there is no zooming facility.

I also tried a few pictures and I was impressed at how well they were rendered. So I also tried reading comic books. The black and white of an old Japanese manga (Samurai Executioner) looked good on screen but the text was too small to read. I cropped the margins but it only improved slightly. I think if there were an option to remove the rather large status bar it would be just about good enough.

I haven't tried to play MP3's. All my music files are in Ogg.

The screen is readable in most lighting condition, even in direct sunlight. There is glare if a light source is shining directly on the screen. Tilting the reader a little gets rid of that.
I like that there are three ways to turn pages: the large buttons on the left, the 9 and 0 keys at the botton and the wheel/rocker switch on the right side.
The page change is disapointingly slow. Nothing happens for almost two seconds and then there is a brief black flash before the next page is displayed. The only other reader I can compare with is the Sony on display at Waterstones. The Sony takes about the same time to change page but changing pages in quick successing is possible. Not so on the V5.

Overall I'm very pleased with my new book reader. It's not perfect but it works well. I'll be able to take a good selection of book on holidays and only carry the small weight of the V5.

Something that annoys me:
There is a "Restore_PC" directory created both on the internal storage and the SD card that contains information about all documents I have opened. Why is this directory showing up in the bookshelf?
Anyone knows how to hide it?

I didn't plan on writing such a long post. I'll add more thoughts on the V5 later.

Jasio