Developer: Bookeen

Release Date: July 2009

Introduction

Bookeen has many years experience in making eBook readers and with the Cybook OPUS they pack in an array of features that far surpass their previous efforts. As one of the first 5 inch E-Ink screens, the Opus comes with great features and is possibly the cutest eReaders on the market, which certainly stands out from the crowd.

External Design Aesthetics and Features

This is a design that has a cool ergonomic shape with nicely rounded edges and contours that blend into the lovely 5 inch screen. The casing has a very smooth, Pearl coloured finish and although made from plastic, it by no means feels flimsy. The back side i smade with one half in a metallic grey that acts as a battery compartment cover — the Opus certainly has looks like nothing else on the market.

Buttons has been kept to a minimum, with just two large page turn buttons, a home, menu and on/off button. There is also a 5-way pad, used for navigating menus, turning pages and selecting items — there is no touch screen.

Bookeen have managed to make a particularly bright, crisp and clear 200dpi (600x800) screen that really shows how good E-Ink can look. As with all E-Ink readers, it is not possible to have a backlight but you do get that paper-like reading experience.

The Opus is the first dedicated reader to come with a G-sensor accelerometer, used for motion detection; giving automatic screen orientation betweenPortrait and Landscape modes (in the same fashion as an iPhone/iPod Touch). Although I initially thought this was a cool feature, I must admit that after the first week of use I turned it off as it was a little too annoying for my liking.

Bookeen includes a nice chunky leather-like slip case with the reader fitting nice and snug, giving solid protection yet without adding any extra weight to the reader itself.

Core Features

Other than having a slightly smaller screen, the hardware is rather typical of a dedicated reader, the most noticeable difference is the lack of an MP3 player; though in my eyes this should not be considered a negative omission. Here are some highlights;

• Very light and small reader; 150g / 108 x 151 x 10 mm (4.2" x 6" x 0.4").
• 5 inch greyscale (4-levels) screen.
• 1GB of internal memory; able to hold well over a thousand books. Micro SD card slot allowing several thousand titles to be stored.
• Officially 8,000 page turns — in real life I would say 2-3 weeks of usage.
• Replaceable Battery

User Interface and Features

Running on the Boo Reader software there are two basic interface modes, list-all and folder mode, both of which are very straightforward to use. There's no actual homepage like on the Sony Touch, but if all your books have a front cover then the visual is very pleasant.

Unlike the Sony Touch or Amazon Kindle it not possible to make annotations or dictionary lookups, but then without a touch screen or keyboard these features become very cumbersome to use.

Text and Page Zooming

There are plenty of zoom options available and even a couple of features I've not seen on other devices.

The 12 Levels of font size give an amazing amount of control allowing the user to find that perfect size. On TXT and HTML documents you can also justify the text and make the font bold, which really gives a lot of extra clarity. You can also select from three different fonts; Courier New, Georgia and Verdana. For some reason though (perhaps a limitation of the Adobe software) the font style on ePub documents can not be changed.

PDF support has a couple of features which make reading much easier. In the advanced menu you can enable "Crop Margins" — most PDF documents have quite large margins — getting rid of as much white space as possible (this includes page numbers). There are also zoom settings that are similar to what you'd expect from a desktop PDF reader; Fit Page, Fit Width, Fit Height and 50% - 100% (in ten-percent increments). Using these options in conjunction with a 90 degree page rotation gives enough viewing control to make many more PDF documents readable than you could have on most 6 inch dedicated readers.

Page Turning and Start-up

Start-up time is a little slower than with some other eReaders; taking around 15 seconds. This is because the Opus doesn't go into sleep-mode when you switch it off but completely turns off. As a result battery life is extended, giving almost three weeks of charge.

One unique feature is that you can turn off the full page Flashing Refresh and select the 'non flashing' screen. Once done the text just changes rather than doing a virtual page turn, although it does leave a small amount of ghosting on the screen. I was quite surprised to find there wasn't really any noticable increase in page turn speed with this setting enabled.

Battery Life

The battery life on any E-Ink based eBook reader is very good but somehow Bookeen have managed to extend this even more with the Opus. Officially you can make 8,000 page turns, in real-life terms you will have from two to three weeks of use between charges. If you connect your reader to a USB port for 15 or so minutes each week, it may last even longer — certainly one of the most efficient readers available.

The battery is fully replaceable and can be swapped out in just a couple of minutes.

Content — Reader eBook Library

Content is added via a USB cable using your computers file manager or with Adobe's Digital Editions (DE). If you wish to read DRM eBooks then you'll need to use Adobe DE, which is available on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac computers.

Note: in order to read commercial (DRM) eBooks you will need to activate your reader with Adobe; most commercial ePub books are using the Adobe DRM.

Free and Commercial Content

Any eBook reader supporting ePub/PDF should have access to the same content. So just like with the Sony Readers, you'll have access to the content from most eBook websites — eBooks.com, Borders, etc. The number of sites offering ePub has increased considerably during the last 12 months and although mostly in the United Kingdom and United States, other countries around the world are following suit.

Check out the Buy eBooks page for a listing of the more popular free and commercial titles, or take a look at my own classics here on epubBooks.com, which are free to download.

Borrowing from your Library

We're now starting to see a rise in the number of libraries offering eBooks available for borrowing. Most of these are currently in the U.S. but the number of libraries in the U.K. is growing and it's very likely that other countries won't be far behind.

Pros and Cons of the Bookeen Cybook OPUS

Pros

• Great looking, ergonomic design and with a 5 inch screen, this makes a very light and comfortable device to read on.
• One of the best E-Inks screens around; very bright with crisp and clear text.
• 12 font sizes and several full-page zoom functions (crop margins, fit width, fit height, etc.) that are especially useful with PDF documents.
• Comes with a great hard slip-case, giving protection to the reader while keeping the device lightweight during reading.
• Reads HTML and offers more font/layout choices for this format and Text files.
• Massive battery life, much more than other dedicated readers.

Cons

• Sometimes having only the 5 inch screen leaves you wishing for more screen real estate.
• Painfully slow start-up time — probably due to the lack of a sleep mode.
• Page turns not as snappy as other readers.
• Expensive; the cost is similar to many 6 inch sized eBook readers.

Conclusion

It was difficult to add many 'Cons' for the Cybook Opus, the only one which is an out-and-out negative is the price, which places the Opus on a similar level as many 6 inch readers. Okay, so perhaps the Opus is a touch expensive, but Bookeen have really packed this with a ton of great features and if nothing else, it is the cutest reader in town - I can't see how Bookeen could have designed a better reader...it's really that nice!

The form and weight of the Opus gives maximum portability while still providing a large enough screen to have an enjoyable reading experience with. The 5 inch E-Ink screen is one of the best I've seen when it comes to brightness and legibility, it is the closest thing yet to paper in my eyes!

Bookeen have added some features which are very unique for a dedicated reader. The G-sensor accelerometer, although not something I'd have enabled myself, is a great feature that many people will certainly appreciate. The font size/zoom options are without comparison and battery life is astonishing, even in comparison to other E-Ink readers.

Yes there are a few niggling points, but on the whole there's not a lot you can say against it.

If you're considering buying an E-Ink reader, and you're happy to go for the smaller screen, then you won't regret getting a Cybook Opus.