I happened across a new inexpensive ereader this morning on Amazon called the Gemei GM2000, a cross between an ebook reader and portable media player.
The Gemei GM2000 isn’t new exactly; there are a few articles about it from last summer, but it’s relatively new to the US market, having been available in Asia mostly by the looks of things.
The Gemei GM2000 features a 7″ TFT color touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480. It comes with 4GB on internal memory and supports microSD memory cards up to 32GB. It can output 1080p video and has an HDMI port, along with a built-in speaker, microphone, and FM radio. It has text-to-speech as well.
For ebook formats it doesn’t say anything about DRM support so that’s probably not going to happen, but it does support the following text formats: TXT, PDF, CHM, PDB, HTM/HTML, UMD, EPUB. Additional formats are listed on the description page on Gemei’s website, but not at Amazon, so it’s unclear if these formats will work or not: jar, cbz, mobi, fb2.
Other formats supported include: AVI (H.264, DIVX, DIVX, XVID), rm, rmvb, MKV (H.264, DIVX, DIVX, XVID), WMV, MOV, MP4 (. H.264, MPEG, DIVX, XVID), DAT (VCD format), VOB (DVD format), PMP, MPEG, MPG, FLV (H.263, H.264), ASF, TS, TP, 3GP.
As for battery life, it is rated at 4-5 hours for video and 6-8 for audio, probably about the same or slightly more for reading.
At $109 on Amazon, I’m tempted to order one for review but don’t think I will. It’s already been out for nearly a year and I doubt it will be marketed very heavily here in the States before it ends up in the great gadget pile of oblivion.
I have used one of these bought from a chinese wholesaler.
It arrived with a screen problem (lines)that could only be fixed with a twist of the chasis, so my opinion is a bit clouded. It is touch screen, but is a bit sluggish. Comes standard with a few skins, one of which will make apple uses feel at home. Video replay is great, and the sound is quite resonable & will play tons of video formats.
NO DRM (epub or PDF) and support for it will not eventuate, it even has problems with certain unlicenced ePUBS
The problem i see with the GM200 is that its not an e-reader, and its not a tablet. So yes will end up on the gadget scrap heap very quickly
Thanks for letting us know the details. Too bad they didn’t put more focus on the e-reading aspect. I also found a 4.3″ version of the Gemei listed on Amazon. I’ve never seen an ereader with that screen size before.
I wouldn’t recommend this reader until the factory works all of the bugs out. I’ve had mine for approximately 2 months (purchased from 3rd party at Amazon) I’ve worked extensively with the distributor (A Chinese company), have downloaded the firmware updates (it helps if you can read Chinese as the English download errors out)and now I can’t get the battery to charge. The concept is really nice (multimedia and all) however if it won’t turn on what’s the point. There are still bugs which have not been addressed by the factory…so as always “buyer beware”
Please stay away from this reader, it’s horrible with battery problem. Sometimes it charges quickly within a few hours and sometimes it takes 3 days straight and doesn’t even charge. The movie player has a bug that mute the sound after playing video for a while (tested with firmware 5.0, 6.1, 7.0, 7.2). It’s a bad experience for me.