iRex iRiad Review

Monday, May 07, 2007
iRex iLiad Reader Review
So I picked up the iRex Iliad reader, and so far I am way more impressed than I thought I'd be. What does that mean? Well lets break this down. I read an entire book on the device, one sized by Manybooks.net specifically for the Iliad, and so I have a good feed for what it means to read on it now.

First, the screen: A nice roomy 8 inch electrophoretic screen. This is the E-Ink that has been talked about for a few years now. The screen on the Iliad is has 16 shades of gray and is functionally a 768x1024x160dpi screen. The contrast is really quite remarkable. Not as good as an actual book, but this technology is really getting close.

The real issue of sorts for these devices is the ghosting and the interpage reset flashing of the screen. It seems if you are going to be updating a significant portion of the screen it will cycle the screen. I don't like it but I also don't think that it is a huge deal. The ghosting has the effect of degrading the experience as well, but it isn't a major big deal.

Page turn speed could be faster, too, but it isn't a big enough problem to break the flow of reading for me (and I am a fast reader). It is significant when the pdf is heavily graphic (like a graphic novel) but acceptable for more pdfs, for me. Screen size being what it is, your PDFs should be sized for an A4 paper to give a good experience on the device.

The pen based input is fun, but unless the software is improved, I can think of only a few tasks that would excite me to use this feature, and that is editing a document. By editing I mean "editing", as in, reading a manuscript and noting where it needs to be edited. The delay inherent in the system right now is annoying and frustrating if you try to sketch something.

The Iliad companion software so far is pretty disappointing. They were going for syncing functionality for the machine, but the implementation is horribly weak. Luckily the device is functionally a usb hard drive. Also, the 'news, books, docs, notes' buttons only apply to the limited internal memory, not on the externally changable cf or sd cards.

SD cards work, by the way, even though only mmc is noted to be supported. I haven't plugged in a CF card yet.

Settings are easy enough to , ah, set, and I had the Iliad on the network, updated and runing quite quickly. The presence of wireless, like the pen enabled input, was neat but in the end nothing all that exciting due to the lack of fun things to do with the pen or on the internet from the device.

The software that is running on the Linux based Iliad is, well, serviceable. I've certainly used worse software on a ce device, but they could make the device quite a bit more usable. The mobipocket reader which recently pushed to the reader is pretty great, but I think that the main reader app should be revved to be just as good. The Sony software is, well, better than the Iliad software, but it is my hope that Iliad continues to improve.

Also, power management needs a fair amount of work, as does the aforementioned ui. As I found out, if you lose your pen, then you can't set a variety of settings. Also, I want to smash the ethernet/usb/power dongle. It angers me. The device should have USB built in and charge from it. To add insult to injury, it wants a B style USB connector to connect to the dongle, while every other device I own wants a usb-mini.

The form factor is just about perfect. Great texturization of the chassis and the page flip bar is brilliant. Good, big screen with decent enough contrast. Books are better for contrast, but reading the Iliad is like reading a very thin-papered paperback book.

But...is it worth the price? If it were cheaper, then I'd say yes, right now, it's pretty expensive, if useful. I'll post again in a few months, if I'm still using it and after a few trips to London....





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iRex iLiad Review
Reviewed by: Patrick Wignall

Reviewed on: 8 August 2007

To most of us, the idea of reading a book on a computer screen is about as appealing as root canal treatment, however that attitude may change when you clap eyes on the iRex iLiad's display. It uses a technology called E Ink, which doesn't flicker and doesn't use a backlight, so you're presented with a rock-steady image that's very easy on the eye.

This ebook reader is also more advanced than rivals like the Sony Reader (only available in the US and Japan), as it has built-in Wi-Fi, comes with a stylus you can use for making notes onscreen and uses software that lets you download RSS newsfeeds.

Those tempted to join the ebook revolution can pick up the iLiad for £433 from Libresco.

Design
The single most impressive thing on this product is the screen. We'd go so far as to say that it's as easy on your eyes as an actual printed page. The first time we saw it, we thought it was covered with a printed protective sticker until we made the text change.

Rather than relying on the LCD technology used on most laptops and PDAs, it employs a display technology called E Ink. This creates a high contrast monochrome image that is completely free from flicker and doesn't require a backlight. It's even readable in direct sunlight, and because it has a high resolution of 768x1,024 pixels, text looks very smooth and clean.

The iLiad certainly doesn't look much like a normal book. Although the front of the reader is around the same size as the average hardback, the device is actually very slim, and at 390g feels fairly light to hold. The design is functional rather than flashy, but the rear of the unit has odd rectangles cut out of it for no apparent reason -- these give it the look and feel of a prototype rather than a polished product targeted at the mass market.

The front of the device is mostly taken up by the large screen, but there are also a number of buttons to help you navigate the user interface. The most prominent of these is what iRex calls the Flipbar. This is really a very long rocker switch mounted on the left-hand side that you flick back and forth to move through the pages of a book or document. It's very intuitive to use and makes the device feel just that little bit more like a normal book.

At the bottom of the screen, iRex has also added four buttons marked News, Books, Docs and Notes, which act as shortcut keys to the relevant folders held in the ebook reader's memory. They provide a fairly effective way of keeping your documents in some kind of sensible order.

Features
The iLiad has 256MB of internal flash memory. This is shared with the operating system so you're left with around 128MB of space for storing ebooks and documents. That may not sound like much, but when you take into account that the average ebook weighs in at less than a megabyte, it's not actually too stingy. Anyway, if you need more space you can slap a memory card into the Compact flash or MMC/SD slot at the top, or use the host USB socket to attach a memory key.

When you want to transfer new files to the iLiad you have to connect the travel adaptor to the expansion port at the base of the device. This includes not just a USB port that can actually be used for connecting the device to a PC (the one built-in to the reader is only for connecting up external storage), but also has an Ethernet port to connect the device to a home network. Transfers over USB were quite slow, but then the file sizes of ebooks are so small it wasn't exactly a deal breaker.