Energy Sistem, a Spanish brand for ebook readers, has recently launched some new ereaders.
Energy Sistem is small electronics company that has been selling ebook readers since at least 2010 with the Energy Book 3050 and 4050 Touch.
I haven’t posted about them since last year when the Energy eReader E4 Mini turned up on Amazon. It’s no longer sold from there but Energy Sistem still sells it from their website for 37,03€, including VAT.
They’ve also got three other ereader devices. There’s the Energy eReader Slim, a basic non-touch 6-inch ebook reader, and there’s a version with a frontlight called the Energy eReader Screenlight.
Both devices appear to be exactly the same except for the frontlight. Both have 800 x 600 resolution E Ink Pearl displays, 8GB of internal memory, microSD card slots, and offer up to one month of battery life per charge. They support Adobe DRM and the following ebook formats: TXT, PDF, EPUB, FB2, PDB, RTF, MOBI.
The Energy eReader Screenlight is a new model that officially gets released tomorrow, January 2nd. It sells for 84,90€ including VAT. The model without a frontlight costs 69,90€.
The most interesting ebook reader of the bunch is called the Energy eReader Pro. It costs 119€ and appears to be a rebranded Boeye T62.
It has a 6-inch E Ink Pearl screen, with a resolution of 1024 x 758. There’s a frontlight and capacitive touchscreen. It has 8GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM, a 1.0 GHZ dual-core processor, and microSD card slot.
It supports Adobe DRM and the following ebook formats: TXT, PDF, EPUB, FB2, HTML, RTF, CHM, MOBI. There’s also a headphone jack for audio support.
Like the T62, the Energy eReader Pro runs Android 4.2 and can install Android apps, although it does not come with access to Google Play unless you root the device and install it yourself (here’s the directions on how to do that with other rebranded T62/T61 devices).
A few months ago I reviewed the Icarus Illumina HD, which is a rebranded Boyue T61. The T62 is very similar but it has a slightly different design and comes with some hardware upgrades, including the addition of audio support and more memory. It also has a larger battery, which is good because battery life was pretty bad on the Illumina HD. Energy Sistem advertises up to two months for the Energy eReader Pro, but with Android I doubt that’s anywhere near typical.
Nate,
I find your ereader reviews you do very helpful.
Will you be reviewing the Energy Sistem Ereader Pro? I understand it is essentially equivalent to the Boyue T62.
I am particularly interested in how it compares to the Onyx Boox Afterglow 2. People have pointed out that the Afterglow 2 has little space to install Android apps. When you order an Energy Sistem ereader you have to include a hefty customs tax.
How would you compare the ereading experience for MOBI and PDF with open-Android e-ink readers such as BoyueT62/Icarus Illumina E653 and Onyx Aftergow 2(eg. with Moon+ Reader and Aldiko) vs the Kobo Aura H2O and Kindle Paperwhite 2? Is it unrealistic to expect a decent PDF experience on a six-inch ereader, even with reflow?
Thanks for your help.
The folks at Energy Sistem offered to send the eReader Pro (T62) for review a few weeks ago but it never showed up so I guess I won’t be reviewing it. The T62 can also be ordered directly from China from Banggood.com for $118 with free shipping but it looks like they are out of stock for another month. Also the software between the Onyx and Boyue devices is interchangeable (guide) for those familiar with hacking Android devices.
The Icarus Illumina is a Boyue T61 and is a bit different than the T62. I only had the Icarus Illumina for a couple weeks so I don’t have a ton of experience with it but the way I remember the OS was put together well and was very smooth, better than Onyx’s devices. Less force closes and less issues, but it didn’t have Google Play and battery life seemed noticeably worse than Onyx devices. Third party apps work about the same on either, though it seems page buttons worked more often with the Boyue firmware.
As for PDFS, I don’t think 6-inch ereaders make good PDF readers unless it’s simple basic text being reflowed. Onyx devices have a decent PDF app, better than Kindles or Kobos.
That was helpful, thanks.
A full review on any of the Boyue T62 based devices would be good; I mean a ‘long’ video in which you try all the best alternative android softwares and not just showing the slow, useless, and buggy preloaded apps (also talk a bit about the audio playback quality on it; for example for large audio-book files)!
I think the Energy eReader Pro would be a good one to review because as I saw on a video on YouTube (http://youtu.be/rsfqBeDSWSA) it comes preloaded with Google Play Store. Also I noticed a difference in the specs of the Energy eReader Pro from Boyue T62 and it was the maximum supported MicroSD card size which is 32GB for the T62 but the Energy Sistem website says 64GB for Energy eReader Pro! (Also it would be good if you could gather any information about what is the difference between T62B and C or whatever different models of this device that are out there!)
The site also says it includes 1500 free books and from the video it looks like most of the book thumbnail pictures are being shown without any problem (which as far as I can remember nobody knows how to get them to work/show properly on the T62/T61)! If there was a leather cover in the package it would’ve been much cooler cuz they don’t seem to offer any on their website’s store.
Good news! The Energy eReader Pro arrived yesterday and I’ll be posting a review soon. It doesn’t come with Google Play but I plan on rooting the device to install it (I’ll post directions for that too).
Great! Thanks 🙂
howdy,
before airing the review video, please test the battery performance for a while (especially with using the third party reading apps).
bought boox afterglow 2 recently and after rooting and uninstalling unnecessary apps and greenifiying the remained and making cpu-battery optimisation it still burn the whole battery in a heartbeat (wi-fi off and just using zo reader which pretty simple reading app).
normal reviews on e-ink android devices are insufficient, please consider it. thanks.
I can tell you right now that battery life isn’t much better than a high end Android tablet. It can go through 10% per day just sitting idle with the screen off. Open Android ereaders never seem to have very good battery life for some reason. The M96 is the best I’ve tested. It can go 2-4 weeks regularly. That makes me wonder if the capacitive screens and frontlights are sucking more power than we are led to believe.
speaking for afterglow 2, frontlight has almost nothing to do with battery life, pretty surprising.
but the capacitive screen is such a b****h! just pinch zoom in or out and say goodbye to about %3 of the battery in an instant!
Wow, that bad huh? Something has always seemed a bit off with Onyx’s capacitive touchscreens from my experience with the T68 and AfterGlow 2. Accuracy and responsiveness isn’t nearly as good as the Kindle’s capacitive screens for example. Maybe Onyx should go back to using infrared touchscreens…
Well, that’s weird. I guess it does have Google Play. It doesn’t show up in the app drawer but there’s Gmail and Google Drive and once you sign in with one of those the Play Store is accessible but there still is no icon for it so it’s not easy to get to without using a separate launcher. Installing apps works, at least.
The Energy Sistem website warns about having to pay up to 60% VAT on shipments overseas. Do you know anything about this?