Astak EZ Reader Review (Device Review)

Now I've actually owned the Astak EZ Reader for about 6 weeks... long enough for a thorough review. Overall I would give this device 4 out of 5 stars. There are just one thing that prevents me from giving it a full 5/5 rating.

Speed of the unit. It does take a little time to load books, navigate folders and turn pages. I can understand there might be some load-time for opening up larger documents (over 5mb). But even going into a folder to see what files are there take about 2-3 seconds. Opening up larger files can take between 6-9 seconds. Not a lot, but this day and age I would expect it to be faster. The most annoying is when you are turning a page in a book. I would have hoped that it would be just as fast as turning a page in a normal, paper book. Well, unfortunately, the paper still holds this over my e-book reader. The page turns in about 5 seconds. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you've got the book open with large text, you are turning the pages quite often and the 5 seconds adds up.

Well, enogh of the bad stuff, lets get to the good points. From what I hear, this is one of the few readers around that actually maintains your file and folder structure. I hear that some of the other readers aggregate all the books together and then use their own sorting system to display the books. I have over 300 books on my e-book reader and they are in about 8 different folders. So it is really nice to go into my "business" folder, or my "traveling" folder.

The screen continues to impress as well. High contrast, easy on the eyes (see previous post about e-ink screen technology) and doesn't use power once the page has been loaded. I continue to leave my e-book reader on almost all the time and I've only lost about 3/4 bars -- in 6 weeks!!! Amazing!

The device comes in actually a pretty nice little case that holds the unit in well. It also comes with an AC adapter and MiniUSB to go to the computer. It comes with a wrist strap (haven't used that yet) and the 2 gigabyte SD memory card*. I really enjoy being able to take out the SD card, throw it into my laptop, drap and drop a file onto the card, and then pop it right back in the reader ready to read. Takes about 40 seconds all-in-all to get the books on there. A lot of people really like the Kindle because it uses wireless technology to download books, but how often are you really downloading new books? Maybe once a week if you are a fast reader. The Kindle is nice if you wanted to download daily newspapers or blogs, but for reading books, I think it is superfluous.

This unit also has the ability to play music through the headphone jack. I apologize for not having tried this function yet. But from everything I can surmise, don't think that this will serve as an MP3 player because it is not that advanced.

This device also shines in that it can handle every type of file that I've thrown at it. Go ahead and try this little gem out, you won't be disappointed.

Update
After reading some comments and other posts, it has come to my attention that:
The memory card is not always 2 gigabytes. I have heard reports that it is only 256mb or 1 gigabyte. The model I bought was from Fry's Electronics in San Diego, CA and it did come with the 2 gigabyte stick. Don't worry too much about the storage capacity as many books are between 30-100k in size and you can purchase a larger card for very cheap.