I’ve had my ECO Reader about 36 hours now, and it’s time for a review.
I bought this reader because I wanted to be able to read Mobipocket and ePub ebooks on the same reader, wanted folders, and wanted a reader with an Australian support desk. The ECO Reader fully meets all these requirements, and I’m very pleased with it.
At the moment I’m using the same SD card as I used in my Cybook Gen3. In the ebooks folder on the card I have a folder for each author (and a couple for SF Anthologies and Mystery Anthologies) and have had no problem in loading ePub books into folders which contain Mobipocket ebooks. For example in the Trollope, Anthony folder I have ‘The way we were.prc’ and ‘Barchester Chronicles.epub.’ When I select the book I want the ECO reader instantly chooses the correct reader and opens the book.
I really like the folder setup on the reader. One can have multiple levels of folders. I have 20+ ebooks by Lois McMaster Bujold in three different series and one stand alone book. The first level folder I set up is Bujold, Lois McMaster. It contains the stand alone book and three subfolders. Each of the subfolders is named Bujoldn, series name, where n is a number given to a series and series name is the name of the series. I have renamed the files to show the positions of the book in the series. So when I open the overall ebooks folder I find the folders in author’s name order. When I select Bujold, Lois McMaster I see Spirit Ring (the stand alone book), and folders for the three series in order the series were written. When I select a series, for example The Sharing Knife, I see the books in that series in the order of the series. The ECO reader sorts by file name (which need not be the book title), and displays the book title taken from the metadata.
The support and information given by the vendor, DA Information Services, is excellent. All my enquiries have been handled very promptly and efficiently, and I am confident that if the reader does need service it will be dealt with just as efficiently and rapidly. As an example, one needs to install a Nokia battery when one receives the ebook reader. The package includes the battery, a screwdriver and spare screws as well as a cable, an Australian style wall plug, standard 3.5mm earphones, and a printed manual.
There are of course opportunies for improvement, as there will be with any device. Although the manual is full and detailed I found some of the explanations hard to follow. There is an option to order books within a folder. The manual states that the ebooks can be ordered by title, but as mentioned they are ordered by file name. Nearly all the many options are selected from a contextual menu revealed by pressing the key on the lower right confusingly labelled the OK key, but bookmarks are managed in a totally different way which I found counter intuitive. And I’d like to see more gradations in font size, especially between the smallest and next smallest in ePub books. These quibbles are minor. My Cybook will be relegated to spare or reserve, and the ECO Reader will be my first choice.
Finally, the manual recommends that one charge the battery for at least 12 hours before use. I strongly suggest that new owners follow this advice since this will prevent some minor glitches that I experienced when I started using the reader almost immediately. One can read ebooks while the reader is charging.
Regards, Alex