The latest e book reader from UK technology company Interead brings a dash of colour to the market place with a slim, lightweight offering in 8 fashionable hues including Blue Sky and Hot Pink.

Cool-er electronic book readers

Clearly aiming for the title of the iPod of e readers, the Cool-er is strong on appearances although a little lacking in substance? The screen is 6” which compares well with the Kindle and Sony Reader although the font style is more reminiscent of a traditional computer display than the new e-ink technology employed by the others. This is no great issue at first, although it can be rather wearing on the eyesight after prolonged use.

Books are loaded via USB cable or via the built-in SD card reader with the Cool-er using PDF as the e-book format. The obvious advantage here is that this reader will support native format PDF files which may appeal to the Pirate Bay generation who are happy to download e-books via file sharing sites.

The battery performance is quite impressive for such a lightweight machine and page loads seem to be impressively fast. The Cool-er also supports MP3 playbacks – although this seems aimed more towards talking books rather than music files it’s a welcome feature nonetheless.

Overall then the Cool-er gets top marks for looks and colour choice but comes a poor third in terms of usability, performance and durability.

Specification:

  • Dimensions: 183mm x 118mm x 11mm
  • Weight: 178 Grams
  • Colours: Ruby Red, Blue Sky, Cool Pink, Hot Pink, Silver Shine, Vivid Violet, Racing Green, Black Jack
  • Screen -Size: 6”;  170 pixels per inch; 8 level grey-scale
  • O/S: Linux
  • Storage: 1GB with 4GB via SD memory expansion card
  • Battery: Li-Polymer, 8000 page views
  • Formats Supported: PDF, EPUB, FB2, RTF, TXT, HTML, PRC, JPG AND MP3
  • Price: £199.95  from firebox.com