ViewSonic VEB620 & VEB625 Ebook Readers Unveiled

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As a fan of the dedicated ebook reader, I am always interested in seeing more competition in the market. Though, I should point out that I am a little biased to readers that come with a nice ebook store attached such as the Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble nook. That said, a few of the latest ebook readers to join the market are coming courtesy of ViewSonic. In fact, ViewSonic recently unveiled not one, but two readers. They are going by the model numbers of VEB620 and VEB625 and look to be (at least initially) only available in Europe.

Feature wise both models are similar in that they have a 6-inch 800 x 600 Eink display, an accelerometer, 3.5mm headphone jack, 2GB of internal storage and an SD card slot for anything additional that may be needed. As for differences, the VEB625 comes with Wi-Fi. As for file support, both models will be able to read ePub, RTF, PDF and plain text files as well as play MP3 audio files. Other features include that the display is touchscreen and they both come with a battery that is said to be able to offer up to 8,000 page turns.

Overall, both models are roughly the same size however the VEB625 is a tad thicker. The VEB620 measures 7.4 x 4.96 x 0.38 inches and the VEB625 is 0.42 inches thick as opposed to 0.38 inches. Just to offer a quick comparison, the Amazon Kindle measures in at 8 x 5.3 x 0.36 and still has the same size (6 inch) display.

Price wise, the VEB620 is selling for £175 (around $270 US) and the Wi-Fi equipped VEB625 is coming in a little higher at £205 (around $315 US). In other words, neither of these are going to win for being the lowest priced. But with that, they are missing the secondary display and full keyboard which some feel are unneeded on the nook and Kindle.