Ectaco jetBook Lite: eBook Reader Review

I found the feature set of the jetBook Lite to be quite extensive. Here is the list as found on jetBook.net.

• Support of ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, .txt, .pdf, .fb2, .jpg, .gif, .png, and .bmp file formats
• Support of eReader (PDB) DRM format through Ereader.com and Fictionwise.com
• True pocket-sized portability for thousands of eBooks
• Support for eBook contents in Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian and other European languages, additionally, jetBook supports Arabic, Farsi, Vietnamese and Hebrew.
• Bidirectional dictionaries for certain European languages (incl. German and Spanish) are available
• Multilingual interface options that include German and Spanish
• Pre-loaded CIA World Factbook
• Bookmarks and auto page turn functionality
• Adjustable font type and size
• Screen rotation support for both portrait & landscape modes
• SD card slot
• Batteries 4xAA
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches; weight 9 oz. w/o batteries.

This screen is extremely comfortable to read of off. I have seen and read on many e-ink displays, the fact that this isn't an e-ink display is maybe the best decision Ectaco could have made. E-ink is in general not too sharp, yes I know there are "better" e-ink screens out there but they cost a lot more than I would be willing to pay for an eBook reader. The jetBook Lite makes use of a reflective TFT, as a result you only need some light to be able to read on the jetBook. This eBook reader handles well in even the lowest of lighting situations. Reading with a 40 Watt light bulb works great. Even reading with only the light of my laptop screen in a darkroom is doable, though probably not recommended.

The only fault I found with this screen is because of its reflectiveness as well. When reading in direct sunlight the jetBook Lite I noticed a slight flicker. When I did a little research I only found one other jetBook Lite user that found this disturbing enough to send the device in to Ectaco. However, this is an unwanted feature that comes from the reflective TFT so even sending the eBook reader in would not help. The new eBook reader would just have the same problem. The only way to circumvent this problem is by changing the way the sun reflects off the screen. So turning the screen or maybe even sitting in the shade instead of the full sunlight could help. I haven't found this problem to occur when using indoor lighting, as I said it only occurs in extreme bright light conditions.

There are three options to turn pages on the jetBook. The left side of the device has a rocker that you can move up or down to turn pages. Also on the left but on the front face of the device there are two chrome buttons for page turning. Finally on the front face at the right you find the arrow keys the left and right arrow keys are used for turning pages in this case.

This group of buttons on the right front face of the jetBook are also used for navigation through menus. The number buttons (0-9) on the right side of the device are used to jump from menu item to menu item, even though you could also use the arrow buttons and the OK button for this. When reading a book these numbered buttons give you options like: Dictionary search by selecting a word, jumping to pages or adjusting font size and zoom, depending on what file type you are using (zoom for instance works in some PDF files and DOC files).