Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Product Review: Skytex E-book Reader


Earlier this year I was planning on purchasing a Nook to help us with homeschooling (I've got a huge bookshelf inside my PC). I was looking at the black and white, thinking that I'd save a few bucks and that we really didn't color anyway!
However, Providence intervened and I was given a very unexpected and much appreciated gift last month, a Skytex Primer.

I really love my e-reader by this point. I think that I've read more in the last month than I probably have in the previous 6 months. It just makes it much easier for me to read. No bookmarks to get pulled out by the toddler. No paper pages to be torn by inquisitive little hands, or colored on... I never thought that I would be the one using it so much! But so far, I'm the only one using it! I have had difficulty in finding free downloads of books that I'm interested in though!

The Skytex is color too. Wow, I really like having color! I have loaded a few photos on it and the picture quality is very good. (just remember, I have no point of comparison, so someone who owns another e-reader should share their experiences in the comments section!) The screen size is 7 inches. It is not as thin as the Kindles I have seen.
The e-reader comes with a protective cover, wall charger, head set, auto charger and mini-USB cable. The one drawback is that the instruction manual is lacking. It only gives instructions on how to start it up and plug it in. For this techno-challenged mama, I'd appreciate a bit more! However, there is a youTube tutorial that walks you through the steps of loading e-books onto your reader.
There is no browser with the e-reader, so you have to download your e-books to your PC then load them onto your e-reader. If this isn't a problem for you, if your like me, saving some money is more important that having an browser on your e-reader, then I would highly recommend this e-reader!

Details:
  • 2 GB Internal Memory
  • Micro SD card support (up to 16 GB) *available for separate purchase
  • USB 2.0 to link to your PC (for drag-and-drop loading of media files)
  • Plug & Play design compatible with PC and Mac
  • Supports eBook formats including: PDF, TXT, ePub, HTML and Irc
  • Supports Audio/Video Formats: MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC, AAC MKV, AVI, RM, RMVB, VOB, DAT, MP4, FLV, 3GP
  • System requirements: USB 2.0 Win7 / Vista / WinXP / 2003 / 2000
  • One year limited Warranty on parts and labor

8 comments:

  1. In all my pre-buying ebook reader research, I hadn't read about this one. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. How do PDFs look on it? Often they are too small to be readable on ebook readers and how much are they?

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  2. I honestly don't think that I've loaded a PDF on it yet Melissa, I'll have to give it a try and get back with you.
    I believe the retail price is around $99.

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  3. I hadn't heard about this one either. But it looks like it's pretty good, and you can't beat color for $100. Glad you're enjoying it!

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  4. I've loaded a few different PDF files and it seems that they do well for viewing. I have a PDF book that I'm reading now, and the text is a bit smaller, but still readable. I loaded a couple of other graphic heavy PDFs and they do quite well.

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  5. Thanks for testing that out for me Brandi!

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  6. I found this link for the complete user manual, I only have the quick start guide. This is much more informative!
    http://www.skytex.com/images/stories/media/primer%20user%20manual.pdf

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  7. http://www.sidetrackedsarah.com/2011/10/reasons-we-love-our-kindle-e-reader.html
    Here's a blog post by my friend Sarah where she shares her favorite things about her Kindle.

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