The Neo
The BeBook Neo.
This is a great looking e-reader device. Of particular interest are the BeBook Neo's two marquee features: a Wacom touchscreen and Wi-Fi support.
Before we get to those. Let's look at some of the basics. The BeBook Neo has 512MB of built-in memory and offers support for the following formats: EPUB, PDF, TXT, HTML, RTF, MOBI, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF.
It weighs 298g and is slightly smaller than the iRiver Story reader, measuring 196x121x10.6mm. Like other electronic book readers on the market the BeBook Neo sports a 6in E-INK screen.
At the bottom of the BeBook Neo device is an SD card slot (up to 16GB cards are supported), a 3.5mm mini-jack earphone connection; power supply; mini USB connection and volume controls.
A slider switch on the left of the BeBook Neo enables you to switch Wi-Fi on or off. There are a few oddities. For some reason the BeBook Neo has no recollection of which wireless network you've used, so every time you want to use an online service you have to select the network. It then hangs on the network select screen and you have to press the Back button to access the website.
Still, when you get the BeBook Neo's Wi-Fi to work there's a MyBeBook Service that provides access to several online services depending on your location. We got Foyles, Waterstone's, WHSmith and Blackwell Online. However, we found the process of buying books challenging, mostly due to the slow performance of the device.
You need to be careful with Wi-Fi because it can drain the battery. We often found the BeBook Neo device running low on battery even when we had hardly used the Wi-Fi. We found the device displaying the Shutting Down screen and requiring a recharge more times than we'd have liked.
Music on the BeBook Neo is even more limited than it is on other e-book readers. The BeBook Neo doesn't appear to support any audio formats at the moment. We found no mention of it in the supplied literature, or BeBook Neo website; and we couldn't get any audio files to play. So why does it have earphone sockets and volume controls? We guess support is planned down the line (the website makes note of the open architecture) but it does outline some of the slapdash nature of e-book readers at the moment.
The BeBook Neo's touchscreen is an interesting addition. When we tried the Sony PRS-600 Reader we found its glossy screen rendered it unusable. Such a feature seemed redundant on a device with an E-INK-based display.
Touch isn't handled much better here. The BeBook Neo has a stylus that's used to interact with the screen (it doesn't respond to finger touches). You can swipe left and right to flick through pages, and dragging the scroll bar at the bottom enables swift book navigation.
There is also a Notes feature, using which you can scribble on the screen with the pen. You can create a note from a blank screen, or from a few templates; or you can add annotations to your books.
In practice, we found ourselves using the BeBook Neo device's buttons to navigate - it's far more straightforward. These are laid out in two concentric circles, the inner circle controlling the cursor, the outer circle comprising Menu, Next, Prev and Back controls. In the middle is an 'ok' button. These buttons aren't positioned quite as handily as those on the the iRiver Story or Amazon Kindle, but it's still easy enough to navigate.
We liked the BeBook Neo, but it seemed to be despite most of its features, rather than because of them. It's an attractive looking, easy to use, and functional book reader with a nicely textured rubberised back. It displays books and PDF files quickly and navigation of menus is swift and on-the-whole, the reading experience is pleasant.
Review by PC Advisor - April 2010