iRex iLiad review

To most of us, the idea of reading a book on a computer screen is about as appealing as root canal treatment, however that attitude may change when you clap eyes on the iRex iLiad's display. It uses a technology called E Ink, which doesn't flicker and doesn't use a backlight, so you're presented with a rock-steady image that's very easy on the eye.

This ebook reader is also more advanced than rivals like the Sony Reader (only available in the US and Japan), as it has built-in Wi-Fi, comes with a stylus you can use for making notes onscreen and uses software that lets you download RSS newsfeeds.

Those tempted to join the ebook revolution can pick up the iLiad for £433 from Libresco.

Design
The single most impressive thing on this product is the screen. We'd go so far as to say that it's as easy on your eyes as an actual printed page. The first time we saw it, we thought it was covered with a printed protective sticker until we made the text change.

Rather than relying on the LCD technology used on most laptops and PDAs, it employs a display technology called E Ink. This creates a high contrast monochrome image that is completely free from flicker and doesn't require a backlight. It's even readable in direct sunlight, and because it has a high resolution of 768x1,024 pixels, text looks very smooth and clean.

The iLiad certainly doesn't look much like a normal book. Although the front of the reader is around the same size as the average hardback, the device is actually very slim, and at 390g feels fairly light to hold. The design is functional rather than flashy, but the rear of the unit has odd rectangles cut out of it for no apparent reason -- these give it the look and feel of a prototype rather than a polished product targeted at the mass market.

The front of the device is mostly taken up by the large screen, but there are also a number of buttons to help you navigate the user interface. The most prominent of these is what iRex calls the Flipbar. This is really a very long rocker switch mounted on the left-hand side that you flick back and forth to move through the pages of a book or document. It's very intuitive to use and makes the device feel just that little bit more like a normal book.

At the bottom of the screen, iRex has also added four buttons marked News, Books, Docs and Notes, which act as shortcut keys to the relevant folders held in the ebook reader's memory. They provide a fairly effective way of keeping your documents in some kind of sensible order.

Features
The iLiad has 256MB of internal flash memory. This is shared with the operating system so you're left with around 128MB of space for storing ebooks and documents. That may not sound like much, but when you take into account that the average ebook weighs in at less than a megabyte, it's not actually too stingy. Anyway, if you need more space you can slap a memory card into the Compact flash or MMC/SD slot at the top, or use the host USB socket to attach a memory key.

When you want to transfer new files to the iLiad you have to connect the travel adaptor to the expansion port at the base of the device. This includes not just a USB port that can actually be used for connecting the device to a PC (the one built-in to the reader is only for connecting up external storage), but also has an Ethernet port to connect the device to a home network. Transfers over USB were quite slow, but then the file sizes of ebooks are so small it wasn't exactly a deal breaker.