TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
The Cybook Gen3 e-reader close up: A review, with buying tips and other advice
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008Moderator: Here’s a close look at the Cybook Gen3 by Francis Turner, an enthusiastic owner who has helped the NAEB buying club survive. See his bio at the end. Welcome to the ranks of TeleBlog contributors, Francis! - D.R.
I’ve had my NAEB-delivered Bookeen Cybook for more than a week now. Enough I think to write a review that is slightly better than “shiny”.
First comment: If you are European, you’ll save a lot if you buy from the NAEB store rather than direct from Bookeen, because with the current weakness of the US$ you save a lot. Choosing the cheaper USPS shipping rate I paid NAEB US$403.80 for my Cybook—which works out at €256.00 at current exchange rates. Adding the €57.15 duty I had to pay the French customs, we have a total of €313.15.
By comparison, if I attempt to buy a base Cybook (and the NAEB package is closer to the deluxe Cybook) for postal shipment in France, then the price is €358.30 which works out at €45 (or about 15%) more. Because the deluxe pack is €450 (plus shipping) and NAEB doesn’t include the spare battery (€44.95), the actual price of the NAEB package if shipped from Bookeen would be over €400. In other words:
- You can buy the deluxe package (including battery) for the price of the standard (€100 saving)
- You are saving between 15% and 33% depending on how you do the sums on what you get
In fact if you buy now, I would even more strongly recommend that you do so via NAEB, because Bookeen are sold out for new orders right now!
Getting started and set up
Now back to the product itself. The first thing you notice when you pull the Cybook out of its box is that it is thin, and, for a piece of electronics, remarkably light. Breadth and length are between a mass market paperback and a trade paperback, but if it were a book, it would be a slim 100 page book as opposed to the more usual 250+ although the weight is closer to that of the standard paperback. For reference, it is just too big to fit in most of my pockets but I do have some coats and jackets that it fits in. I say for reference because I sincerely doubt I personally would want to put it in a pocket anyway, especially because the NAEB package includes a neat leather carrying case (see photo above and click on it to enlarge) which I’m using all the time.
