Whilst Tablets are winning the competition to become the ebook reading device of choice for most people, there are  still several ways in which the humble dedicated ereader is still the best device there is for reading for the elderly or people with eye problems.

All such ereaders – The Kobos, Sonys, Kindles and so on – are great for reading text with, and for those of us whose eye-sight is not all that it might be, they have several great advantages over their backlit and rather glaring competition, the Tablet.

Currently, the latest ereader from Kobo, the Kobo Aura HD seems to me to be the best ereader so far for all with eye problems.  It offers an amazing range of possibilities in this area, having 10 different font styles, a grand total of 24 font sizes – this means the size of the letters on the screen – and it can also adjust the sharpness of the letters on the page, and how bold (dark) the letters are.  Further it has the highest resolution of all such hand-held reading devices (an amazing 1440 x 1080 pixels with a resolution of 265 dots per inch, which is slightly better than the much vaunted retina display of the current iPad), so reading with this ereader is almost as good as reading an expensively published paper book.. beautifully sharp letters (see photo).

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So, here we have an ereader with an even higher resolution than the iPad Retina display (265 ppi against 264) on a smaller screen.  Having had a good snuffle around this newest ereader on the market, it would seem that what Kobo have produced here is an ereader that in most respects is somewhat better than most other ereaders up till now.

As you will see from the promo video that Kobo have made to accompany the launch of this new ereader, in most respects it is pretty much the same as all the other dedicated ereaders out there, simply slightly better in all respects, and as such it represents the top of the range of the current crop of dedicated ereaders I suppose.

However, it is and remains, simply a dedicated ereader, that in spite of the addition of a “web-browser” (which like all such web-browsers on ereaders is effectively unusable),  needs to be judged in that light.   It is monochrome, mute (no built in speakers or jack socket), no 3G connectivity and is obviously no use for showing videos.

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Small is beautiful we are told, well this Trekstor has taken that to heart and have produced the smallest dedicated ereader in the world, the Pyrus Mini, which with its 4.3 inch screen has to be the smallest device for ebook reading there is.

With the proportions of a Smart Phone, this little baby is actually a fully functional ereader in every way except it has no wifi or 3G connectivity, but you cant have everything, and to balance that lack  it is a remarkably cheap gadget as well, costing as little as 49 Euros (depending on where you buy it).

Available in three colours (Black, blue and what they call pink) this ereader has every function one could wish for, 6 different font sizes, easy navigation around your ebook collection, a large enough internal memory for a huge number of ebooks, and of course it supports all the normal ebook formats, including those with Adobe DRM protection.

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I have now written a couple of posts about this super-cheap ereader (all of $13), but like the rest of the world, I couldn’t really see how they could make it so cheap.  Well now I know how.

Apparently the idea is that they (Textr) hope to close deals with various mobile phone operators in which the mobile phone operators will each have their own ebook shop (designed for them by Txtr) and customers of the operators will then be able to shop via their Smart Phones for ebooks.  Using an App that you will get from your operator of course.   These ebooks will then be converted from PDF or e-Pub to Bitmaps in the Smart Phone and then uploaded using your phones Bluetooth function and an App on your Smart phone to the actual ereader (the Beagle).

By the way this explains why you can only get a few ebooks onto the Beagle, whilst it has several GB of storage .  E-Pub ebooks are typically only a couple of hundred Kb in size, but when each page is converted to a bitmap, then the file is waaaaayyy bigger of course.

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Whilst in many ways the newest Kindle, the Paper White with its beautiful front light and amazingly clear screen is to date probably the best ereader there is, it has one lack which I feel is a very serious misser – It does not have a voice.

Apparently the guys who designed the Paper White were told to produce an ereader as cheaply as possible, so they cut costs by leaving out the capacity to speak.  By which I mean this ereader is not capable of playing back any sounds.

Most ereaders can play music if desired, which is a relatively unimportant ability to be honest, but what having built in speakers or earphone sockets is really useful for the famous Text to Speech function.  This is the ability to “read” your ebook to you if for whatever reason you do not feel like reading the ebook, or can’t, and this is the rub.   In the USA it has been declared illegal for Libraries to lend ereaders that do not support Text to Speech to their customers as this is seen as discriminatory towards blind readers.

Obviously you can’t have braille ereaders, but the Text to Speech function makes ebooks accessible to blind readers, and as such is seen as a requirement by law for libraries.

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The German electronics company Txtr has just announced that they will be launching what has to be the smallest and cheapest dedicated ereader in the world. Believe it or not, they claim it will cost about $13. Well about 10 euros in fact as it will be launched in Europe first.

They have gone in a completely different direction to most ereader makers in that this one needs a Smartphone to obtain ebooks, rather than using WiFi or the ubiquitous USB connection to your computer to buy and transfer ebooks to the ereader. The idea is that you install their ebook App on your Smartphone and then find your ebooks using that, and then transfer them to your Txtr ereader by means of the Bluetooth in your Smartphone.

In other ways it is different to the current wave of ereaders as well, it has no WiFi, touch screen or many other functions we consider normal these days in an ereader, but it does do the main thing, enable you to read your ebooks in comfort.

With its 5 inch screen it is one of the smallest ereaders as well, and obviously it is very light as well, coming in at about 4.5 ounces. But as this is only 1 inch smaller than the Kindle this shouldn’t be a problem really I feel. By the way, this screen is an e-Ink screen, so it works fine in bright sunlight, though as it has no built in front light, you will need a clip on reading light to use it in the dark – Which must be a relief for the makers of such lights as they watch their market disappearing with the current move to built in front lights on all ereaders.

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