This BeBook review is about an ebook reader device called BeBook, which uses an e-paper display and manufactured by Dutch company Endless Ideas BV.
I collected a number of 3rd party, unbiased reviews from other websites. After these you can also read my own review. Last updated: October 6, 2009.
“There are at least a half dozen e-Book readers on the market at the moment, all practically indistinguishable in terms of feature set and, in many cases, appearance. The BeBook scores, though, with its neat, intuitive operating system and smooth rapid page turn that quickly lets you forget you have a high-tech gadget in your hands. A huge library of classic books bundled with the reader sweetens the deal considerably.”
Source: The Times Online, November 14, 2008.
“The device is retailing for £229, but if BeBooks claims that books and other content for the device will be notably cheaper than Sony and Amazon's current Reader and Kindle offerings, then it could well be a wise investment for keen readers that also happen to be frequent travellers or have a long daily commute which they'd like to make a little more palatable by having their personal e-library in their pocket.”
Source: Tech Radar, September 24, 2008.
“I’m still amazed at how many file formats are supported. Being able to load up a Windows .CHM help file is very cool and MOBI support will be a huge plus to many users who have already spent considerable money on eBooks already. The usability and support of PDF is very good, which is especially useful if you, like me, download a lot of those PDF manuals from the internet – Now I can read those TEI Guidelines without having to convert.”
Source: Project Gutenberg News, October 5, 2008.
“Overal the device works great. I bought it on the strength of several reviews which at time of writing pretty much state that the Kindle & Sony's newest devices are far from perfect, limited in formats and overpriced. So, I was really pleased that I took a chance on Bebook even though it's a lesser known brand.Bebook's open source and support for virtually every format makes it perfect.”
Source: Actual user comment on Mybebook.com forum, February 24, 2009.
“Spoiler for my review: for the tens of thousands of freely available ebooks and the ebooks you create yourself (customized PDF is my favorite) the BeBook is a joy to read and it is very addictive (you have been warned). For technical ebooks the conclusion is more mixed: I estimate that some 60-70% of those are readable, varying from barely to good, but not nearly as good as customized PDF, MOBI or EPUB. So if you have lots of technical ebooks (howto, config files, ebooks, emagazines, documentation, courses, manuals, ...) in a variety of formats (PDF, CHM, TXT, RTF) and publishers, chances are that you will be able to read a lot of them on your BeBook. If all your ebooks are from the same publisher, you better ask someone, on this forum for example, to try them out first.”
Source: Actual user comment on Mobileread.com forum, January 29, 2009.
The newest generation ebook readers, like the BeBook, are based on electronic paper, or epaper, on which the text and pictures are displayed by electronic ink - eInk. E-Ink is the leading supplier of electronic paper display technology. This e-Ink technology enables displays which are high contrast, thin, light weight, viewable from all angles and able to operate with dramatically less energy than more traditional LCD / TFT screens.
The coolest thing about epaper is that it does not have background lighting, so that it does not hurt your eyes, just as much as a paper book would! If you have a lot of ebooks which you currently read on your computer's monitor, then BeBook is for you!
There are 5-6 notable ebook reader devices on the market, but all the devices currently use the same technology from the same company: E-Ink. It means that the hardware is basically the same, no matter which device you buy. The main part, the screen is the same at least. The differences are in the design and in the used software (firmware).
The dispaly is really paper-like, there is no flashing, no background lighting, it is totally the same experience if you would read a paper book. The screen resolution is 800x600, it is large enough, you don't recognize pixels. The letters are nice, anti-aliasing is enabled.
The device only support USB 1.1. It is fast enough to transfer ebooks, but if you have mp3 files (audio books), then it takes a while to transfer them onto BeBook, because USB 1.1 is slow. But this is only a little annoyance.
BeBook does not have 3G like Amazon Kindle, so you cannot transfer ebooks onto it with mobile internet. Nor does it supports Wifi or Bluetooth, you have just the plain old USB cable (included with BeBook).
The most important data about BeBook hardware:
| Display | (90 × 120mm) 6 inch 600 × 800 pixels, 4 gray levels, 167 ppi |
| Full-screen Refresh Rate | 0.9s |
| Battery Life | 7 000 pageturns |
| Weight | 200g (7.05oz) |
| Boot Time | 16s |
| Memory | 512MB internal memory, SD expansion slot |
| Other Interfaces | USB 1.1, headphone |
| System Requirements | Windows, Mac or Linux, USB slot |
What are in the box?
Be sure to download and install the latest firmware from mybebook.com, because new versions always contain improvements and bug fixes!
The official BeBook specification claims, that BeBook supports these ebook formats: pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, rar, zip (Mobipocket DRM format is supported). In addition, the device supports these image formats: jpg, png, gif, tif. And you can even listen to mp3 files.
I tested a number of different formats on BeBook, but not all formats are perfect. I found out that BeBook can handle these formats best: PDF, RTF, PRC, HTML. In these formats you can change the font, there are many zoom levels, and the letters are anti-aliased and look great, the letter-spacing is also perfect.
PDF is well supported (you need the latest firmware!). I tested about 10 different PDFs from different websites. You don't have to convert your PDFs at all. Just upload them onto your BeBook, and they will look the same as on your computer. But the display size of BeBook is too small to dispaly complex layouts such as two-column layouts. BeBook was designed to read only texts, and maybe a few images.
CHM files have a little problems. The letters are angled, it seems anti-aliasing does not work in CHM files. So you'd better convert CHM files to HTML, PRC or RTF.
I have to mention that the BeBook firmware is always improving. What doesn't work today, may work tomorrow, when a new firmware is ready. It is free for you to download new firmwares when they come out.
BeBook knows many languages. The menu is fully translated into different languages. BeBook supports UTF-8, so it can display non-English letter and special characters, too. I read a number of different non-English ebooks on my Bebook, and they were perfect.
The hardware of BeBook is cutting-edge technology, E-paper is relatively new, it will improve a lot in the future. The reading experience is great, it is like reading a paper book.
I like the design of BeBook, it has just enough buttons, and the layout of buttons is also suitable.
The firmware has some bugs and missing features, but as I mentioned, the firmware is always improving, and you can download updates for free.
My overall rating: 4/5.
Click here to visit the official website of BeBook!
