The Cybook Ocean is the first eight inch e-reader that Bookeen has ever released. It is expected to be available in Europe and North America sometime this month. In order to legitimately be sold in Canada and the US it has to have official FCC certification. Today the Ocean has passed the testing process and is much closer to becoming available.
The Cybook Ocean features an 8 inch touchscreen 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 4GB 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. There is also physical page turn buttons, which should appeal to people who dig the tactile approach.
When it hits the market sometime in the next month it will cost around 179 euros. This is more expensive than most other mainstream readers such as Kindle or Kobo. The competitive advantage of this device is that you are not locked into a specific ecosystem, making it viable for schools and libraries.
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.