Feed: BestTabletReview.com - AggScore: 84.2

A sleuthy poster over at MobileRead.com found a preliminary product page on JCPenney.com for a 5-inch color backlit LCD eReader on sale for $129.99.

The Simplicit.E.Reader (easily snagging “worst eReader title of 2009″ from the EnTourage eDGe) has 1GB of memory with an expandable SD card slot and USB port. It supports ePub and PDF formats and can play music and videos. It also comes with a 50% off code for your first 10 eBooks at BooksOnBoard.com (wee!).

JCPenney has it listed “out of stock” and the MSRP at $219.99. That’s about all the information available on the Simplicit.E.Reader for right now. Don’t expect a very easy-to-read device with the backlit LCD attached. It looks more like a PMP geared for eBooks at this point.

Update: According to new information today, the rendering isn’t a new type of eReader, instead it’s Conde Nast’s attempt at an iTablet or Apple Tablet mockup.

It looks like Wired had something up their virtual sleeve for tonight’s Wired Store opening. Just minutes ago Wired showed off what looks to be a new color eReader that focuses on magazine reading.

It looks to have a color touch screen with a magazine sized display – 9″x12″ – that will show single pages at full size and double pages when turned horizontally. Unfortunately we don’t have much to go on other than this minute long video and the @Wired twitter account’s brief tweet:

@wired e-reader preview #wiredstore http://yfrog.us/41sb1z

You may recall our post about Time Inc. seeking to create and distribute their own eReader in September. It looks like Conde Nast, publisher of Wired and many other magazines, may have had the same idea. We’ll be interested to see what this means for electronic magazine readers.

Well, well, well… looks like we have a pretty decent tablet PC offering from Camangi. Maybe even the perfect rebound for all those broken-hearted Archos 9 fans still pining about the A9’s hideously botched release.

The Camangi WebStation is a 7 inch glass screened (like the iPhone) touch screen tablet featuring the Android 1.5 OS. It has Wifi b/g, a GPS module, 2MP camera, .3MP webcam, MicroSD card reader and a battery that lasts 3-4 hours. We’d like to see a larger resolution than 800×480 on a 7″ screen device, but at this point we’ll really take what we can get. The Camangi WebStation website only has a “coming soon” teaser for now with the ability to sign up for an “early bird” price for the first 100 people. Considering it debuts next month (finger’s crossed) for $399 it might be a good idea to sign up if you’re interested.

We are also hoping the webcam is forward facing to allow some Skype usage with the integrated Wifi. The pictures show no embedded cam on the front, but the video demo clearly has a camera in the top center. We’re hoping that prototype makes it to market. See the video and get some more Camangi news after the break.

Also, it looks like Camangi is planning their own Android apps sharing market place for 5-9 inch Android devices. Does that mean a 5″ and 9″ WebStation is on the way, or does Camangi want to get Archos 5 users to start partaking in their Camangi Market? The teaser email only asks us to “please wait expectantly” for that news “in the coming soon future.”

Wacom’s second generation of Bamboo tablets have really taken off. And why shouldn’t they? They offer quality pen tablets with great levels of sensitivity and size for $200 and under. We were very impressed with their sub-$100 offering, the Bamboo Pen & Touch when we reviewed it in September.

Wacom has also had success with packaging a quality tablet with a software bundle honed to a particular subset of graphic art. For instance, their Bamboo Craft is a differently painted version of the Pen & Touch with added photo manipulation software to aid the scrapbooking enthusiast. Now Wacom is releasing another graphics tablet — the Bamboo Comic Pen & Touch — for those who are into anime and manga art.

The Wacom Bamboo Comic is a Pen & Touch with a very detailed software package. It comes with Pixia Edition. Illust Studio Mini, Comic Studio Mini, Corel Painter Essentials 4 and Pencil LITE. All great programs to help the aspiring or accomplished comic artist. The only downside is that the new version is being released in Japan on December 2nd. We’re still waiting on word back to see if we’ll see a stateside release and, if so, for how much.

Source: Akihabara News

The Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro is another (rare) entry into the sub-$200 eReader category.

Joining the JetBook Lite, BeBook Mini and Sony Pocket Edition (PRS-300) Reader — see our eReader Holiday Gift Guide to see them compared — the Libre may look a little familiar to some. It uses a monochromatic LCD screen as the JetBook Lite and, at five inches, is the same size. It features a plastic casting with numbered page buttons down the right side, a directional menu selector on the bottom right and a left/right click on the left side — also the same as the JetBook Lite. It also has a deeper battery housing on the back to make room for its use of traditional batteries… hey, wait a minute. This IS the JetBook Lite!

It’s not uncommon for foreign manufacturers to sell an eReader model to a company who brands it with their name and loads their own software on it (for instance, the Astak Mentor is the same model as the Foxit eSlick). In this case the Aluratek crew have put content search, auto page turn function and sleep mode into theirs. They’ve also included a 2GB SD card that you can plug into the Libre’s memory card slot loaded with 100 free eBooks (not all are literary free classics either).

You can get the Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro for $169 on Amazon, but you may want to look at the JetBook Lite which currently goes for $150 if it appeals to you.

BenQ announced their upcoming nReader series of eReaders starting with the K60. The K60 will feature a 6 inch SiPix touch screen ePaper display with an 800×600 resolution, 167 dpi and 16 levels of grayscale.

In addition to the Kindle-esque specs, the K60 will have 2GB of internal memory with a MicroSD card slot that allows upgrading to 16GB. It has a USB 2.0 slot and 3.5mm audio jack as well. It measures 6.9″ x 4.8″, is a slim .43″ thick and only weighs 7.75 oz. It has integrated Wifi b/g and an optional 3G dongle that can connect to the device through the top USB port.

This probably means that the K60 will have a lower, non-3G dongle price with an option to buy the dongle along with contract for 3G connection. BenQ will unveil the nReader K60 in China and Taiwan soon and is currently in talks with European partners to launch there. No word on possible cost or 3G upgrade options at this time.

Let’s define “full HD” quickly: the ability to stream HD video content from a device with a screen resolution too low to support HD video and internal storage too small to hold more than two HD quality movies.

Here’s MSI’s latest PMP offering — the MT-V887 — a “full HD” 4.3 inch screened, 480×272 resolution tablet with 4GB or 8GB storage options. Depending on file format, 720p movies are between 2-8GB in size with the average running around 4GB. So the MSI MT-V887 allows you to watch 1 HD movie on it for the 4GB basic model and up to 3 HD movie on the larger 8GB model; all at a resolution nearly three times worse than 720p. Lè sigh.

The MT-V887 PMP does come with H.264 and can run MKV, AVI, MP4, FLV, MPG, MOV, 3GP, DAT, VOB and RMV8 codecs. It also plays MP3, WMA, APE, FLAC, WAV, AAC and OOG audio files among others. It also comes with an FM radio tuner, a TXT reader, voice recorder, USB 2.0, TF card slot and picture browsing. The case looks very nice and shiny with the screen filling the tablet nearly to its borders.

There’s no information about price or availability at this time, but that seems to be the least of the MSI MT-V887’s worries.

We’re always on the lookout for new and quality graphics tablets at Best Tablet Review (in fact, check in later this week for a 3-way graphics tablet comparison). That’s why the Princeton PTB-S1 Sirius graphics tablet caught our eye.

Princeton features an entire line of PTB graphics tablets (ten if you want to count) but the S1 caught our eye due to the smooth look, multiple shortcut keys and it’s closeness to graphic artist workhorse tablet Intuos 4 by Wacom. To start with, the PTB-S1 features a large pen area of 10 x 6 inches. It has 1024 levels of sensitivity (the same as the Bamboo Pen & Touch), a +/- 45 degree pen angle, and a light pen with no battery to unbalance it.

The S1 is chalk full with shortcut keys, wheel interface and menu buttons — all to keep your hands off the keyboard and more on the tablet. It has 10 small pen selectable buttons above the art board area (kind of like F keys) and each side has a scroll wheel with five menu buttons below it to accommodate right or left handed artists without having to turn the tablet. There also another set of icon buttons at the top center of the tablet for things like zoom, move and drag. Although we haven’t gotten to test this tablet in person, it looks to be the most versatile graphics tablet we’ve seen so far when it comes to shortcut and macro keys.

That said all of those buttons makes for a large desk footprint of 15.35″ x 10.4″. That could take up too much desk space for some, but there’s no denying the PTB-S1 is one heck of a graphics tablet. It comes out the first part of December for 16,800 yen ($190 U.S.).

Every once in a while we talk about a tablet that makes us shake our heads in awe. Unfortunately in this case it’s followed by a quick “what are they thinking?”

DigitalRise’s PC-729 tablet PC starts with the basic Windows XP configuration. Unfortunately if you’d like to upgrade to Windows 7 you’re probably out of luck. The 7 inch touch screen tablet has an Arm9 processor and Bluetooth connection. Aaaaaaaaand that’s where the positives end.

Among the negatives: a pitifully low 480 x 272 resolution (remember, this is on a 7″ screen, not a 3.5″ or 4″), 128MB of RAM (surprisingly they still make those), a battery “up to 4 hours” (which means 2 hours if you’re actually doing anything normal), has 4GB of internal storage and it costs $355.

There’s a lot of other specs if you’d like to check them out on the store page. One interesting bit: it comes pre-installed with an NES emulator.

MP4Nation.net has the scoop on one heck of a beautiful PMP tablet from Ainol. The V9000 HDX, also called the copyright infringing “Megatron,” is a 4.8 inch capacitive touch screen PMP encased in a brushed aluminum shell.

Aside from looking good there’s not too much information about the PMP right now. It appears to play 720p HD from all those torrent download in the screenshots (we hope that’s native 720p and not 720p output only). There’s also two MicroSD card slots which is refreshing to see on personal media players. Normally there’s not even enough storage for two HD movies. It uses the SoChip SC9800 chip and also has a HDMI output.

Another impressive element is the simple and sleek looking UI the V9000 HDX sports. The UI has dedicated screens for clock, video and movie playing as well as a file manager screen for your internal and MicroSD cards. Ainol is working on a whole line of HDX PMPs and based on how impressed we are with the V9000 we can’t wait to see the rest! See more pictures at MP4Nation.