Bookeen-Cybook Opus Review

First impressions-It is very light weight which is great for travelling with. It however is quite plastic in style but that said it does seem to be well constructed and not flimsy.  I cannot see the fashionistas rushing for this one when you can see some of the colours and design coming through on other readers but it is a clear winner on weight. It is small but may be a downside for a chap with chunky fingers. I have my doubts how comfortable this would be to read a large book on but for newspapers I do like the format.

Turning on-It is actually a bit slow for my liking as every time you turn it on you have to go past the advertising screen. If I have gone out and bought a device I would know what I bought so why do I need to be bothered by advertising every time I switch it on? If I am reading a book or a newspaper I want to get straight back to the point I was at. This device however tortures me with the advertising and then the name of the book and I have to click on the book to actually get back to the page of the book I am reading. So this is a bit of the operating system that needs some work.

Loading up and charging-This is all quite convenient as it uses a USB to mini USB cable and can be charged on a simple USB charger or through a computer. This is unlike some other devices that demand a connection to a pc to charge or the purchase of a separate lead that is not supplied as standard! Loading up is quite a simple operation. I used some free software called Calibre to do this and this enabled me to download papers and books by converting the book to the ‘epub’  format. The newspaper was very simple and I could set how often I wanted the paper to download.

Navigating-Searching through the list of books or papers requires a slight change in logic as instead of going up and down you have to get used to going side to side. The display does clearly show you that there are more pages on the index though it is a bit illogical in the way items are described. It would be helpful if things like the news were not hidden under e-books. You have a digital version of the paper but a search under digital editions does not show the paper but various language options so this could be enhanced in an upgrade to the operating system. The selection system is different at various levels at the top level you get “a row of dots” next to the item you are on and a click on the centre of the navigation button will select that item for you. Once into a paper then the selection is an up down process to pick the item you want to read and this is marked by “inward arrows” on both sides of the screen. The selection is the same with a simple click of the centre of the navigation button. The back button is to the left and is obvious. The button to the right is a kind of settings button where in a book you can select items such as the font size and when on the menu you can decide how many items should be displayed. I cannot see why there is a need for a Cybook level in the library and I think it would be better to remove this as it is an unnecessary layer. I did a quick search to see if on the device I could see the memory in use and the memory free and I did not find this on the device. You can however add a mini SD card to increase the capacity of the device. Digital Edition in itself was blank but if you changed language you could get to for example sample books in French and the instruction manual for the device. The device is clearly intended to be sold all over the world from the large number of languages in which the operation of the device can be set.

The reading experience-The book can be read either portrait or landscape. There are ways to change the page on both the bottom of the device and the right hand side. A newspaper will include things like the photographs (black and white) in the article but in most cases the size of the picture does mean that it will be on a separate page. There are quite large font options but that said with the screen size being smaller than some others it could mean that you are changing pages very frequently. You do get a black and white version of the book cover which is a nice touch.  It does seem to have some confusion over which way up it is and can take a while to persuade it to change. For example I put the book down and then picked it back up and it remained in landscape mode for quite a while and it could have had no doubt I was trying to read in the portrait mode.

Battery life and storage-The device does have limited internal storage but the addition of a mini SD card can increase this substantially. Battery life now this is good as unlike the Sony device you don’t have to go to a special setting to get a complete shutdown. The Sony if put down and unused for a week approximately the battery will be totally flat.  This one does not seem to have this problem but that said the turn on operation is slow and could be speeded up. The device did have an automatic off control if it was inactive for a period of time.