Bookeen, a French ebook reader company that has been making ereaders since 2003, announced a new lineup of devices for 2014 last week, with pre-orders starting in early November and shipments proceeding in mid-to-late November.
The new devices include a 6-inch Cybook Muse, available with and without a frontlight, and the better-late-than-never Cybook Ocean, an 8-inch ebook reader that has been delayed for over a year now.
The new devices sport an updated design with flush edge-to-edge screens, thin profiles, and they have an unusual notched lower left corner.
The interface has been updated as well with a new look and added features, and includes a new PDF mode and “ultra-optimized” Caecilia font.
Take a look…
Cybook Muse Specs
- 6-inch E Ink Pearl Display
- 1024 x 758 resolution (212 ppi)
- Capacitive multi-touchscreen
- 4 GB internal memory
- MicroSD card
- Physical buttons
- Wi-Fi
- 1 month battery life
- 20 brightness levels (Frontlight model)
- Dimensions: 116 x 155 x 8 mm
- Weight: 190 grams
Cybook Ocean Specs
- 8-inch ePaper Display (not E Ink, made by a different company, like the Pyrus Mini I reviewed early last year)
- 1024 x 768 resolution (160 ppi)
- Capacitive multi-touchscreen
- 4 GB internal memory
- MicroSD card
- 800 MHz CPU, 128 RAM
- Physical page buttons
- Wi-Fi
- 1 month battery life (2100 mAh)
- 20 brightness levels
- Custom OS based on Linux 2.6.31
- Book Formats: ePub, PDF Adobe DRM, HTML, Txt, FB2, DJVU
- Dimensions: 150 X 196 X 7mm
- Weight: 300 grams
The Cybook Muse with Frontlight has a suggested retail price of 99 euros including VAT, and the Cybook Muse Essential (the one without a frontlight) is 79 euros including VAT.
For some reason Bookeen shows prices of 129 and 99 USD respectively, which is strange because Cybook ereaders aren’t available in the US. Perhaps they’re planning to sell in the US market for a change; the press release does mention FCC approval.
The suggested retail price of the Cybook Ocean is 179 euros including VAT ($229). Pre-orders start on November 5th, with deliveries expected to start on November 20th.
This is a very small review. I have not seen many capabilities of the device: is there any hyphenation in the text, how to work with footnotes, whether they are visible on the same page or not, whether can upload my own fonts and dictionaries.
I’m in the USA and I would like to buy a Cybook Muse.
It’s not sold anywhere in the US, not even on eBay (and that’s really saying something). Might I ask why you’d choose the Cybook Muse over something else like a Kindle or Kobo?
April 6’17
The Bookeen Cybook Muse is an attractive piece of hardware. However, the operating system is poorly designed and this makes the device unreliable. (Mine has just gone back for repair).
Bookeen tech support tend to be unresponsive and does not appear open to suggestions on how the OS could be improved.