A few weeks ago Bookeen announced its latest e-reader, the Cybook Odyssey HD! This new device takes advantage of front lite e-ink technology that allows you to read ebooks in complete darkness. The company today disclosed to Good e-Reader exactly how the screen technology works and exact specifications of its new device.
The light is guided to the surface of the display through a thin light layer. It illuminates the text and enhances the contrast. The FrontLight solution turns the ebook screen into a spectacular white page. The light is not emitted from the back or from above. It is a completely innovative technology which creates a layer of light. Therefore, FrontLight evenly illuminates the screen and makes reading much easier. Michaël Dahan, Bookeen CEO: “With the Cybook Odyssey HD FrontLight we have designed a device for readers who want to enjoy their favorite books at any time of day wherever they are.” There is also a dedicated hardware button that activates the glowing function and physical buttons to turn the pages.
The Cybook Odyssey HD features a six inch e-Ink Pearl V220 display with a resolution of 1024×758 pixels. You will enjoy the same vibrant screen that the Kobo Glo employs. Underneath the hood is a respectable Texas Instruments Cortex A8 800 MHZ Processor, which is on par with the Kindle Paperwhite, but pales in comparison to the 1 GHZ variant that the Kobo Glo uses. The Odyssey HD also utilizes 128 MB of RAM and will have 2 GB of internal storage. If you carry an entire library in your pocket and space is an issue, you can expand the memory up to 32 GB via the Micro SD.
One of the things Bookeen has pioneered is HSIS technology, which gives you the the best web-browsing experience you will find anywhere on an e-ink based reader. It also delivers a very excellent experience for PDF Re-Flow to give you the ability to optimize image heavy documents. Of course, you can also takes notes, make highlights, and tweak your reading experience using 20 different font sizes.
When this new reader comes out, we will give you a full hands-on review of it to give you a sense of how it stacks up against the competition.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.