E-Book Reader: Wink XTS

EC Media International’s e-Book reader is an initiative by an Indian company to bring e-reading content to our market. It will offer consumers a one-stop e-store (thewinkstore.com ) with a large number of e-books, from history texts to career guides to DIY manuals.

The Wink is as thin as an everyday cell phone. There’s a keyboard below the 6-inch E Ink screen, and navigation buttons on the top left. The keys are small, so people with large fingers will have issues. Speakers on the rear deliver audio quality surprising for its size. The rubberised back assists grip. Battery life is just about average: Not beyond two days at a stretch.

The interface is self-explanatory. The big negative: It’s sloooow. You’ll have to wait a few seconds for each button-press to register. Direct access the Wink Store winds up testing your patience even further. The Internet connection can only be used to browse the Wink store.

But, thanks to the E Ink screen, actually reading is a joy, with crisp text and pictures and none of the torch-in-the eyes effect you get from backlit monitors. You can resize and reflow text if it’s too small, though that takes time; as does zooming or switching between pages. A bookmark key allows you to mark important pages, and you can jump to a page by typing its number into the ‘Go To’ dialogue.

The Wink is a difficult product to recommend mainly due to its frustrating performance. But it does have one advantage over the Kindle: it can read EPUB files. And it comes with an

SD card slot that supports an additional 16 GB memory over the inbuilt 1.5 GB.

Courtesy Chip

Specifications: Dimensions (WxHxD): 124.6 x 10.9 x 185.2 mm; Processor: 400 MHz ARM9; Screen size / resolution: 6-inches / 800 x 600 pixels; Weight: 260 g; Battery: Li-Polymer 1500 mAh; Memory (Internal + External): 2 GB + 16 GB (SD Card); Text support: TXT, RTF, PDF, DOC, HTML, WOLF, CHM, FB2, DJVU. Wink XTS - Rs. 11,490