ViewSonic VEB620 review

If you want to carry digital books on a device that you can read in any lighting condition, you need a traditional eReader with an E-Ink screen, such as the new Viewsonic VEB620. As you might expect from a company better known for manufacturing displays, the 6in model used here has the highest resolution E Ink screen we’ve ever seen of 800×600. The main benefit this has over other devices we’ve reviewed is that text is that bit sharper with no jagged lines around text and even the smallest font is clear and readable.

In terms of look and feel the VEB620 is very similar to the current crop of eReaders, with a light plastic case (220g) and a leatherette wallet that folds over to protect the screen when you’re not using it.

It’s fitted with 2GB of memory (1.5GB is usable), but there’s an SDHC card slot at the bottom so that you can easily add more storage space. There’s a headphone output, too, although playing music on eReaders is never very easy and you’re better off with a dedicated music player.

A USB slot is used for both synchronising with your computer and for charging. Viewsonic provides a mains USB charger in the box, so you don’t have to resort to finding a computer when you’re running out of juice.

When we first got our review unit it wouldn’t work with Adobe Digital Editions, so there was no way to buy DRM-protected books and read them on the device. Fortunately, we were provided with a Firmware upgrade that fixed this problem. With the upgrade in place the VEB620 supported all of the major eBook formats including PDF (encrypted and standard) and ePUB.

Navigation of the VEB620 isn’t the best and we found that the buttons weren’t always very responsive. It’s also annoying that the list of books is simply organised alphabetically by book title, rather than giving you the option to browse by title or author. Once you’ve got a lot of books on there this could make finding the one you want a lengthy process.

When reading you turn pages using the buttons on either side of the screen. Left-handed people can switch the button actions to make using it a little easier. However, it’s a bit annoying that you have to hold the VEB620 with both hands in order to be able to page backwards and forwards through a book.

You can also turn on the accelerometer to let you flick the device to turn a page. The accelerometer also lets you turn the VEB620 from portrait to landscape mode, which may make reading some titles a little bit easier.

A bookmark button digitally ‘folds’ the top corner of the current page down in the same way as on Sony’s eReaders. You can then use the menu system to skip back to that page at a later date.

Unfortunately, the more we used the eReader, the more irritating things we found about it. For starters, tables of contents in our test book weren’t selectable and clickable. For example, reading Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, we couldn’t select which chapter we wanted from the contents, although this feature worked on our

There also seemed to be some bugs with displaying pages. When we first opened The Mysterious Island, the first half of the first page was missing. However, using the zoom button to cycle through the available font sizes we managed to get it back, whereby every page worked correctly.

The one area we couldn’t fix was with PDF files. Reading Stephen E. Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, we found that the text wouldn’t fit on screen unless we zoomed so far out that the text was too small to read. Instead the VEB620 gave us the option to scroll round each page, which makes reading a book too frustrating. On the Sony PRS-505 the same book simply has the text fitted to the screen with only a couple of minor layout problems at the start of chapters where large drop-caps are used. It’s quite a major problem if you buy a lot of books, as many of them are simply PDF transcripts of the original printing documents, rather than specially-created documents for eReaders.

One final minor problem is that the screen isn’t always completely updated. For example, after coming out of sleep mode you can still clearly see the words, “Slide and release the power button to wake” at the bottom of the display.

With its slightly annoying menu system, inability to use links embedded in documents and poor handling of PDF books it’s hard to recommend the VEB620. Recommending something becomes a little tricky, because the best eBook reader was the Sony PRS-505, which had a metal case. After withdrawing it, Sony replaced it with the plastic-cased Sony Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300. This can be bought for around £149.

If you don’t mind getting locked into Amazon’s store, the Amazon Kindle 2 costs a similar amount and works well.