Bookeen has borrowed a page out of Kobo’s playbook by offering a new e-reader whose screen is flush with the bezel. The new Cybook Ocean is likely the most sexiest device the French company has ever released.
The Cybook Ocean features an 8 inch screen and has a resolution of 1024×758. This model adheres to the current trend of packing a front-lit display on the e-reader and I was told that it is on par with the Kindle Paperwhite 2, in terms of overall screen clarity. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal memory. If this is not enough to store the books you have purchased from the on-board bookstore, you can simply insert an SD Card.
Tactile purists will enjoy the physical page turn buttons on the bottom of the device. It can also be interacted with solely via the touchscreen if that is your thing.
Most e-reader companies exclusively rely on the firmware on their devices by whatever factory they purchase the e-readers from. Pocketbook and Icarus are most notorious for this, which is why their interface and features are so different from device to device. Bookeen has a dedicated R&D department that actually designs their own Linux based system. You get such notable features such as inertia scrolling and a very solid web-browser with tons of settings.
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.