Bookeen Cybook Opus – eBook reader 400 MHz – RAM: 32 MB 1 GB – monochrome 5″ E Ink
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- 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
Product Description
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 landsc… More >>
Bookeen Cybook Opus – eBook reader 400 MHz – RAM: 32 MB 1 GB – monochrome 5″ E Ink
Popularity: 26% [?]
Filed under: Ebooks Marketing
I was never a fan of the book readers that have keyboards like the kindel or too many buttons like the sony 300. It is very sleek and lightweight. One word of advice, don’t use an SD card in the unit until they release the firmware upgrade, it freezes when using the SD card. Being a left hander I really like the accelerometer that I can flip it around and use the buttons on the other side. Best price too!
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
However, Bookeen has squandered a great deal of their customer loyalty by introducing buggy software and promising firmware fixes that, if delivered, are often more than a YEAR later than announced. Sony and Kindle, by contrast, have both made significant upgrades via Firmware within the first year of ownership (I have owned all three — at this point, the Kindle DX is my reader of choice with the Sony being a close second).
Things I like about the Cybook:
1. Supports ePub which means you have a very large number of bookstores and public libraries from which to acquire your reading material (though Amazon Kindle titles will not work.
2. SD slot — provides a mechanism for organizing books by keeping fiction on one sd card and non fiction on another or any other “filing system” you can imagine.
3. Screen — because Cybook has not given into the touchscreen fad (like Sony), their display is crisp and very easy to read.
4. User interface is easy to use and look of the device is stylistically “pure”. I guess with the whole iphone thing, buttons are declasse and this reader has minimal buttons but that doesn’t compromise ease of use.
Things I don’t like about the Cybook:
1. Firmware tends to be buggy and Bookeen is not great about fixing those bugs… if you email technical support and IF you get a response, it will most likely inform you that a workaround is available and there will be a firmware update “soon”. However, if you read any of the mobile read forums, you will realize that these firmware updates are vaporware.
2. Price of 5-inch Opus not competitive — however that can be blamed on the exchange rate and not really Bookeen’s fault.
3. Screen size — this is just my personal preference but I really prefer the additional real estate that a larger screen (even 6 inches makes a significant difference) provides… If you are middle aged like myself, you are probably starting to find that it is just a bit easier to read if you can enlarge the font size. I know many will disagree with me on this — they like to have something that is smaller and more “portable” so again, this is very much a personal preference thing…
4. ePub — the older Cybook readers supported Mobi (precursor to Amazons’ AZW format) which is a far superior format in terms of format and readability. I personally am not wild about the ePub format but unfortunately, the best format doesn’t always win the standards battle (just as Sony — they are painfully aware of this!)
5. post-sales support is ABYSMAL. Again, just do a search on Cybook firmware upgrade and you will read of endless frustration with customers basically dumping their ereaders out of sheer frustration because Bookeen has so little regard for current customers and only seems interested in acquiring new ones.
If you want a smaller reader, I believe there are better choices out there — like the Astak Inc Astak 5-inch Pocket Pro (Blue) EZ Reader or even the Sony Digital Reader Pocket Edition – Silver (PRS300SC) and they have a proven track record for supporting their products.
There are so many choices of readers at this point and what is important to you will be different from what is important to me. However, I think everyone should be able to agree that if you are spending several hundred dollars on a device, the manufacturer that sells it should support it — Bookeen fails miserably on this and for that reason alone, I would encourage others to consider any of the many other readers that are available on the market today.
Rating: 2 / 5
It is small but sufficiently sized and makes a good portable. It came with a protective pocket like case.
I loaded it with a lot of files to test it out, and after second session of uploading files to the device, some files became unreadable. Then it just got worse and it would not display any files (no upload this time, I am guessign the device corrupted the fs even more by writing its own files to the flash).
After both uploads I did safely remove hardware on a vista 64 pc, so why did I get file system corruption?
Then it got even more fun. I backed up what I could and reformatted the device. First format took around an hour, reported a lot of bad blocks, and failed. So I tried quick format and that made the flash on device accessible, but windows was still reporting a problem with the fs.
Next, I used an usb cable that I know is good, instead of the one that comes with the opus, and also pulls power from 2 usb slots instead of one (not that I should have needed that, because I charged the device up before using it). Not sure if that had a bearing on things, but after that I formatted it once more, using fat32 this time, and there were no bad blocks. So maybe the cable that came with the opus was shaky, or maybe opus switches to usb power when connected and one usb port just was not giving it enough power.
Sadly, I do not know if the internal memory is fully functional now, because I took an 2 gig msd card I had collecting dust, and so far nothing got corrupted again. All I have in internal flash for now are a bunch of fonts. (it supports different fonts, they just need to be be placed into the fonts folder).
If you get this : back up the contents of the device before you do anything else. The device will however restore what it needs onto it should it get wiped, you will just lose the free books it comes with.
Other than that the device is nice, it supports quite a few formats (which is the reason why I selected it), works well with a 2 gig msd card. (I will load up the built in flash when I feel lucky and bored).
Only improvement I would make is to add an wrist strap of some sort, because I am afraid that I will drop it.
Overall a good compact device, hopefully my fs corruption event was just either a bad usb cable that came with the device or just a fluke.
Rating: 4 / 5
My first thought was Kindle, then Sony b/c more places to buy ebooks, then I saw this. One key concept I was annoyed at with the others was serious lack of style as this was gift for my wife. Was hoping Apple would enter the arena. Opus solved that problem, they’re french so its expected! No big bells and whistles, touchscreen would be nice (who cares about wireless!) – I read somewhere my battery life is cut down with touchscreen. This is a cool looking, very very light, sleek device. She said she gets alot of questions about it on the train to work. Great screen detail, large internal storage, stylish amd drops in her purse without being large clunky and annoying. When the boss is happy – I’m happy. I would recommend.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
It’s a nice little machine (the ads don’t really give you an idea how little it is–it’s slightly larger than a frozen waffle). The display is quite readable, and the interface, though a little odd at first, is quite easy to work with. I give it four stars because it does have a tendency to freeze at inconvenient moments; for another alternative to the Kindle hegemony, I’d suggest a BeBook, which is also very simple and reasonably priced, or a Sony reader (but only if you have a PC).
Rating: 4 / 5