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While most people think of Amazon's Kindle range and Sony's Readers when considering e-book readers, coming up quietly on the rails is Bookeen, and their products are gaining a reputation for innovation and quality. This French company were first into the market withelectronic book readers some years before the opposition.
Bookeen were founded in 2003 but it was in 2007 that they came out with the Cybook Gen 3 which used the then new e-ink screen technology. The Cybook Opus is their latest reader, introduced in 2009.
This pocket sized reader can be held in one hand and fits perfectly in any purse, briefcase or pocket! It is the lightest on the market! Over 1,000 books can be stored in its large 1 GB of internal storage memory!The Cybook Opus boasts an impressive 200dpi ePaper screen, which provides a paper like high contrast appearance and ultra-low power consumption on the revolutionary EInk technology. With its accelerometer - screen position can switch from portrait to landscape mode automatically.
Click Here to Read Reviews by Bookeen Customers
An impressive battery lifetime
The ePaper screen technology requires no power to maintain an image, as long as the Cybooks display the same image, there is no power consumption. This technology drastically reduces power needs. Thus, the Cybooks offer an impressive battery lifetime of 8,000 screen refreshes with a full charged battery. Look at the following table to see how long you can use your Cybook on a full charge.
(* These figures are theoretical, actual battery life may vary upon usage. Please consult "How does the Cybook battery work?" from the FAQ to understand more precisely battery operation)
An optimized form factor
The Cybooks dimensions are very close to the ones of a paperback. As a paperback, the Cybooks can be easily arranged in a hand bag or a purse. The Cybooks are even much thinner (-70%) than a standard paperback and is thus easily transportable.
Thin and light
Thanks to its 1mm thick screen and its tiny Lithium Polymer battery, the Cybooks offer a wide reading surface within an incredibly thin and light design.
With the Cybook Opus, you can access more than 200,000 digital contemporary books from hundreds of publisher sources like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Harlequin…. These digital books are in AdobeTM secured format (EPUB or PDF), the available catalogue grows very quickly and gain several hundreds titles per month.
The digital book version is most of the time 20 to 50% less expensive than its paper counterpart.
Bookeen Cybook Opus Specifications
Dimensions:
Height 6 inches (151 mm) Length 4.2 inches (108 mm) Width 0.4 inches (10 mm) Weight: 5.3 ounces (150 grams)
Display
- E-Ink screen 5" (3" x 4" - 76mm x 101mm) Resolution 600 x 800 - 200 dpi
- Black & White 4 levels grey-scale
- Daylight readable
- Portrait and landscape mode
Memory
- RAM : 32 MB
- Storage (NAND): 1 GB
- Storage card : Micro SD
Memory interfaces
- Micro SD slot
- Mini USB slave
Power
Rechargeable and replaceable Internal Battery LI-Polymer (1000mAh), 8 000 page flips - 2 weeks battery life
Keys
- On/Off
- Reset
- 5-way navigation
- Menu button
- Back button
- Page forward/page backward
Reviews
Taken from the Amazon Bookeen Review page
It does what I want a reader to do--store and display books--and nothing else. That's what I like about it. The Kindle is designed to make it as easy as possible to buy from Amazon; that's its main reason for existence. Amazon even discourages you from getting your ebooks elsewhere, by making you send them to Amazon to be converted. There's none of that nonsense with the Opus--you just plug it in and add the books you want. (Click here to read full review)
Decent bare-bones reader but hope you don't ever need aftermarket support
Bookeen has been around much longer than the Kindle and for a long time, it was one of the only readers that could be purchased in non-US countries so it has developed a rather loyal following in international circles. (Click here to read full review).
Video about the Opus