Archive for the ‘onyx boox ereader’ tag
Onyx licenses Neonode touchscreen no comments
Neonode announced today that it has licensed its zForce touchscreen technology to Onyx International, which makes the Boox ereaders. Neonode’s IR-based touchscreen is used on the Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch Edition and Sony’s current generation of ereaders.
The zForce is optically clear and very responsive. There is no overlay on top of the screen to produce glare or otherwise interfere with the ereading experience. Neonode’s touchscreen also supports both high resolution pen writing with a stylus and finger use, including gestures and multitouch.
A couple of BeBook’s ereaders are rebranded Onyx ereaders, so it is not unlikely that the next BeBook reader will feature this touchscreen.
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New BeBook eReader no comments
BeBook has announced a new ereader it is calling the Club. While we don’t have official pricing yet, it appears that the Club will be a budget-priced ereader that will, like the BeBook 
Neo, will be based on Onyx BOOX hardware — this time the BOOX X60.
BeBook says that the Club will be “brilliantly affordable,” no doubt in order to better compete with the Kindle 3, which is much lower priced than the current flagship BeBook ereader, the Neo ($249), and is more feature rich, albeit without the touchscreen.
The Club will have a 6-inch e-ink screen with a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels and eight gray levels, but it will be the older Vizplex display rather than the newer and more contrasty Pearl display that is utilized by the latest generation Kindles (both 6-inch and DX) and the new Sony ereaders.
A wide range of file formats will be supported by the Club, as well as MP3s and the usual picture file formats. The bad news is that there is no wireless – you will need to use the USB cable to transfer content.
There is an SD card slot, which will let you expand on the internal memory of the Club. There is only 512MB of internal memory. BeBook’s (or perhaps Onyx’s) approach seems to to be to include less internal memory than other ebook readers (the Neo as well as the BeBook One and Mini all have 512MB) and rely on card slots to provide more memory for those readers who need it.
The relative dearth of internal memory means the added expense of purchasing the SD card, which you will probably need for installing updates, but it does give more flexibility to readers who have a lot of ebooks or documents. Amazon takes a different approach and eschews card slots — the Kindle 3 has around 3GB internal memory available to the user (holds approximately 3,500 ebooks), but has no card slot for expansion.
The battery life of the Club is said to be good for up to 12,000 page turns, which is quite good. Size wise, the club measures 196 x 121 x 10.6mm (7.72 x 4.73 x .42 inches) and weighs 289g (10.19 ounces). So the Club is a little taller, thicker and heavier than the Kindle 3.
The Boox hardware that the BeBook Club is based on is said to use a 532MHZ Freescale processor — same as the BeBook Neo ereader. The Neo is pretty fast, but to me the Kindle 3 seems slightly faster.
My take is that this could work for BeBook if they were to price the Club at a significantly lower price than the Kindle 3. If the Club is more expensive or even only a little lower than the Kindle 3 it just does not make sense. You are getting an older screen technology, no wireless and no Kindle Store.
We should not have to wait long for the Club as BeBook says that it will be available from their online store and other retailers within a couple of weeks.
Update: Charbax from ARMdevices has caught the Boox X60 on video at IFA 2010. It appears that Onyx has made the X60 drop proof to some extent. Hopefully this will make for a few less cracked screens.
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Asus DR-900 Ereader; KeyReader no comments
Here are a couple more new ereaders that have been announced recently.
Asus DR-900
The Asus DR-900 ereader has been on display at CeBit 2010 this week in Germany. This one has a 9-inch touchscreen SiPix display and comes with Wi-Fi and optional 3G. Battery life is said to be 10,000 page turns. Text-to-Speech is planned, though its availability will depend on the publishers allowing its use. The DR-900 will come with 2GB to 4GB internal storage and an SD card. So far details on availability are somewhat sketchy.
Charbax has a video of the DR-900 from CeBit.
KeyReader
The KeyReader is being marketed by iCell, which is a wireless network provider
in Singapore. This appears to be a rebranded Onyx Boox (like the Bebook Neo), and has the same features. One nice twist is that the KeyReader will be able to access over 900,000 free ebooks from the National Library Board. The price is said to be between $399 – $499 (Singapore dollars).
(Via Straits Times)
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Bebook Neo Unboxing no comments
Imagine a tech company that not only gets its new gadget out by the
announced date but even manages to fill the preorders a week early. This is what Bebook has done with the Neo ereader, which I received a couple of days ago.
As you can see in the pic, the Neo comes with a USB cable and quick start guide. No sleeve or cover. In fact Bebook does not yet have covers for the Neo. I suspect that nook covers might fit the Neo as the two ereaders are almost the same size, but I have not been able to try that out yet.
I like the Neo, but I have had a couple of problems. First of all, I have not yet been able to make my wireless network available to it so I have so far been
unable to use the Wi-Fi. This is disappointing as one of the interesting features of the Neo is the ebook store portal. I also have a problem with Adobe Digital Editions and have not yet been able to read a book with ADE DRM. More on that later.
Some things I like so far:
- The ereader itself seems to be well built and feels very solid; comes with a 24 month guarantee.
- When you zoom in on PDF documents your zoom is maintained when you turn pages – you don’t have to zoom in again for each page as you do with some other ereaders. There is a panning function as well.
- The Wacom – based display gives you some of the benefits of a touchscreen without sacrificing display quality.
- Both Onyx – which manufacturers the hardware – and Bebook are working to add features. The latest firmware from Onyx has been successfully installed on the Neo, and presumably the Neo firmware from Bebook will also work on the Onyx Boox 60 when it is available for download. If you prefer one firmware over another you should be able to choose.
Everything on the Neo ereader does not work perfectly yet. Unlike the nook, which when released by Barnes & Noble felt barely functional to me, the Neo is quite usable and just feels like most of the foundations of the features are in place but some of them need to be fleshed out more or further refined. Some of the problem areas I’ve found so far:
- The dictionary function needs lots of work.
- Annotation feature is not yet fully implemented. You can highlight, and on PDF documents you can do freehand drawing and notes. There is also a notepad feature where you can draw and write.
There are also a couple of features that may not appeal to some:
- No page turning buttons on the sides of the ereader. The control ring at the bottom is used instead. It works fine for me, even when reading in bed while holding the Neo with one hand, but side buttons would add convenience if you want to change position. You can also use the stylus to do a page turning swipe.
- Some do not like using a stylus. For me the stylus is much better than the screen glare associated with other types of touchscreens.
Overall I like the Neo ereader so far and think that it will be a keeper for me. My biggest problem right now is getting Adobe Digital Editions to work.
When I connected the Neo to my computer ADE asked if I wanted to activate it. I clicked yes and the program seemed to do the activation. There were certainly no error messages telling me that the activation process had been unsuccessful. However, when I tried to open a book with DRM by ADE the Neo was unable to open it. So I reconnected and Adobe asked me again if I wanted to activate the ereader. I went through this process several times, tried deleting the book and reinstalling it with the same result. Then Adobe spit out the “too many activations” error. So I had to submit a service ticket to Adobe and am waiting for them to reset my counter so that I can try again.
When looking at Adobe’s DE forums I find a number of people there with the same problem with various brands of ereaders or with their computers. Many are irate because they are waiting a long time for Adobe to fix their problem by resetting their account and cannot access books they have paid for in the meantime. This is DRM hell of the worst possible kind. Adobe really needs to get this straightened out. One poster even asks if Adobe works for Amazon and gets rewarded for converting people into Kindle buyers.
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BeBook Neo Shipping Early no comments
BeBook has just announced that they have received the first shipment of their new Neo ereaders ahead of schedule. Preorders should be filled sooner than the original February 25 shipping date.
The Neo is a rebranded Onyx Boox 60, and looks quite promising.
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A New eReader From BeBook no comments
Endless Ideas, which is the company behind the BeBook ereaders, has announced a new ereader – the Neo. Is this finally The One?
The Neo does have some interesting features. For example, WiFi and a webkit based browser. A Wacom technology touchscreen which gives you glare-free annotating, freehand drawing, etc.
BeBook also claims that the Neo is the fastest ereader currently available, with speeds of up to 2.5 times faster than the competition.
The Neo supports over 15 different file formats including ADE for your DRM ereading pleasure.
I’m not sure about this, but the Neo appears to be a rebranded Boox.
The Neo will be available on February 25, but you can preorder now for $299 plus shipping. This is the lowest price that I have seen yet for an ereader with a touchscreen based on Wacom technology.
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Onyx Boox eReader on eBay 1 comment
Someone is selling the Onyx Boox ereader on for $349.
At CES I got to spend a few minutes checking out the Boox ereader. The first thing that I noticed when I picked one up at the Onyx booth was that it seemed to be very well and solidly built. This was apparently more than just a figment of my overactive imagination. Onyx chairman Kim was at the Onyx booth, and when she saw me pick up one of her company’s ereaders the first thing she proudly asked me is if I had noticed the quality of the build. Interesting.
And curiously refreshing.
Chairman Kim went on to tell me that the Boox is just the first of a planned line
of ereaders that Onyx has in the works. They are working on a larger format ereader, and have plans for a color ereader as well. I also learned that Onyx is not exactly new in the ereader arena. Chairman Kim told me that many of the top ebook readers (yes, she mentioned that one) have bits of Onyx built code running inside them.
If you have your own ideas about which features would make the perfect ereader, Chairman Kim also told me that her company can help you to design, build and bring it to market.
In a recent post I did about the Boox, I speculated that it would be a good ereader for working with PDF files. Unfortunately, the ereader demos at CES don’t come loaded with PDF’s full of graphs, charts and formulae for me to test, but I didn’t see anything that would contradict my theory.
All in all I came away with a favorable impression of the Boox ereader and of the people behind it. If you are in the market for an ADE compatible ereader you could do worse.
