Bookeen Cybook Opus e-Reader Released [Pocket Sized e-Reader with 5” 200DPI ePaper Display & Accelerometer]

If you were wondering quite whether Bookeen’s Cybook Opus e-Reader would ever see the light of day then wonder no more as its Cybook Opus e-Reader, which sports a 5” 600 x 800 resolution ePaper display (equating to 200DPI), has just been released.

Setting itself against the likes of Amazon’s mighty Kindle, whilst the Bookeen Cybook Opus e-Reader certainly wins us over in terms of its curvaceous aesthetics we suspect that its lack of WiFi wireless connectivity will understandably be seen as somewhat of a disappointment by many potential purchasers and, frankly, it seems a decidedly curious omission. Still, lack of WiFi aside, its not unimpressive in terms of what it brings to the table.

Measuring in at 4.2” x 6” x 0.4” and weighing just 150g inclusive of battery the Bookeen Cybook Opus e-Reader, which is powered by an unspecified 400MHz processer, comes with 32MB of internal RAM backed up by 1GB of flash based storage capacity which, to put matters into perspective, is billed as being sufficient to store up to 1,000 books in HTML, PDF, EPUB or TXT file formats (which will certainly be sufficient for most).

The Cybook Opus comes sans touchscreen, instead offering up nine buttons for navigational and operational functions, whilst the inclusion of an accelerometer will facilitates the device switching between landscape and portrait orientations automatically however whilst the screen, as initially detailed above, is reasonable in terms of resolution it should be noted that it comes without backlighting or any form of integrated screen lighting meaning if you’re looking to use the Cybook Opus for a little night time reading you’ll need to provide ancillary illumination in order to do so.

It’s a mixed bag, certainly, but in fairness the Cybook Opus is far from unimpressive though we do feel that it’s rather steep in terms of pricing considering what’s on offer here in coming in at around $353 a pop.  Drop the price a little and we’d quite possibly be sold.