Review: Gajah BK6001 e-reader

[Nate the great]

This morning I posted a review of this e-reader on my blog. Here are the highlights:

I’ve been waiting for one of these for a while now (you don’t want to hear me whine, beg, and plead; it’s not pretty). But I finally got one about 2 weeks ago. I was busy at the time so I didn’t post my first impressions (they were generally good). I’ve posted about Gajah before; they’re a tech company based in Singapore. I’ve called them the most widely distributed e-reader company you’ve never heard of, which I believe is true. This model is fairly new. Gajah had a dummy at CES 2010, and from what I can tell it only came on the market a couple months ago.

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* Reading experience

The 6001 can’t do much with an ebook. You have 4 font sizes, bookmarks, and you can jump to a page. The list of basic abilities the 6001 doesn’t have is much longer, and it starts with pictures, cover images, dictionary lookup, highlighting, annotation, and support for Epub table of contents.

Because of the lack of features, uncomfortable hand position and missing sleep mode, I would describe the reading experience as barely adequate. Part of the reason I’m disappointed is that I’m pretty sure there are software features that Gajah did not implement. I infer from the format support that the 6001 uses FBReader, and I know that FBReader has quite a few margin, line spacing, justification, and font size options (it also supports images). I think it would improve the reading experience if Gajah adds these features in later firmware.

Opinion

It’s an okay e-reader, and I’m sure someone will be happy with it. But there are cheaper e-readers on the market that are significantly more capable and have more options. I would not recommend this e-reader to anyone unless it is cheaper than the Kobo e-reader, or it gets a new firmware.

Check it out.

[Lastblade]

Thanks for the review.