MPH e-Reader Fair

An e-Reader Fair is being held at MPH Mid Valley from 27 August to 19 September 2010. This fair is located at the main entrance of the bookstore, with three glass case displays showing four different e-Readers available for sale; five if you include the Hanlin v5 which was only available for online purchase.

The four e-Readers were iRiver Story, BenQ K60 nReader, Hanlin v60 and Oaxis BK6001. While the fair does include the Oaxis BK5001 TFT and was labeled as an eReader, it was technically a PDA with LCD display, instead of the e-paper technology used in actual e-Readers. So I won’t review it here.

Some mistakes with the names if you look carefully

You can go online to look for detailed specifications and reviews of these products, so I’ll just going to tell you my personal experience while testing these e-Readers.

The first e-Reader the promoter showed me was the BenQ K60 nReader, the latest edition to MPH’s e-Reader selection. Priced RM 1,199, it was the most expensive and also the thickest e-Reader among the four. It was the only one with touchscreen capability, so to “turn” a page, aside from using the two buttons located on the right-side of the unit, you can slide your finger across the screen from right to left to read the next page or left to right for the previous page, which was kind of cool. You can also use the touchscreen to perform functions such as writing a memo using the onscreen keyboard. It was also the only e-Reader with WiFi capability, so you can download books directly from the Internet.

BenQ K60 nReader

Everything sounded nice, but it didn’t attract me as a potential buy. First, it was the most expensive e-Reader at RM 1,199, as I said earlier on. I was looking for cheaper e-Readers and there were two alternatives selling for less than RM 1,000. Second, the response time of the e-Reader can be frustrating. At one point, I have to wait for several seconds before a new page was displayed or when changing its font size. The same thing happened when the promoter brought in a second nReader. It could be an isolated case, because when I went back to the bookstore to take a second look at the e-Readers, the nReader seemed to work properly and loading a page took only a second.

The second e-Reader the promoter showed me was the iRiver Story. It was sold for RM 1,099. What I like about this e-Reader was that it was a lot slimmer than the nReader, it has the page-turning buttons on both sides of the unit so it was suitable whether you’re left- or right-handed, and I was comfortable with the response time. Its catalogue boasted that the iRiver Story has the “Widest Range of File Format Support Among eBook Readers”, which was a definite plus.

iRiver Story

Sadly, the iRiver Story has its minuses too. It was over RM 1,099, so price-wise it was not a preferable option for me. The e-Reader did not have a smooth polished surface, so it could get dirty easily and might not be removed as easily. What really surprised me though was that I have to actually buy a separate charger for the e-Reader! All the others included their own chargers, how come this one needs a separate charger?! That was just unbelievable!

The last two e-Readers were the Hanlin v60 and Oaxis BK6001, priced RM 899 and RM 699 respectively. I was looking more closely at these two devices, mainly because they were the cheapest. Unfortunately, there were no eBooks loaded into the e-Readers, so I couldn’t check its quality and functionality properly.

On the surface, both eReaders were smaller than the BenQ nReader and iRiver Story, with Oaxis BK6001 (I think MPH may have mistaken Oaxis as Oasis) being the slimmest among the four. It comes with black or white in colour. It looked like a larger version of PDAs with a directional button on the lower centre. Its page-turning button was on the right side and it was the smallest among the four e-Readers. With just around 4mm in width and 2cm in length, turning pages might become an unpleasant experience.

Oaxis BK6001

 The Hanlin v60 has a QWERTY keyboard like iRiver Story and its page-turning buttons were on the left side. The keyboard buttons were smaller compared to iRiver Story therefore it may not be easy to use for those with large hands. What I really don’t like about Hanlin v60 was its memory card port. It was located at the back of the e-Reader and to insert or remove the memory card, you have to remove a small plastic cover first to expose the port. It immediately reminded me of those cheap toys from pasar malam where you need to remove the plastic cover to put the batteries in. A huge minus!!

So which e-Reader I bought, you might ask? Well… none! I didn’t buy any of them. I never had the intention of purchasing one when I visited the fair that day. I was there simply to survey. While Hanlin v60 and Oaxis BK6001 were the cheapest and within my budget (if I ever decide to buy one), I wasn’t able to test them properly to see if they were user-friendly. If they were a real headache to use, I would rather spend more and buy the iRiver Story instead.

I’m not sure if I'll actually buy one. I’ll have to do some research first before I can make a decision. Will I switch sides from reading tangible books to electronic books only? Most likely not. There’s something about reading actual books and having a large collection at home, looking at them with great satisfaction. Having an e-Reader and reading e-books would no doubt be a nice plus but definitely won’t be a replacement for actual books.