I just stumbled across a new color ereader and media player at Sears, the Slick 50. At $49 it is one of the least expensive 7″ color ereaders available. It doesn’t have any bells or whistles and looks about as cheap as the price would suggest, but the two reviews are positive, if they are real.
The best thing going for the Slick 50 is that it ties in with Kobo for ebooks, which means it supports Adobe DRM’d ebooks and library ebooks, not just DRM-free ebooks as is often the case with cheap ereaders.
Unfortunately the listing at Sears doesn’t reveal very much information about the Slick 50 ereader, nor does anywhere else it shows up on using Google search. Here’s what we’ve got:
- The Slick 50 has a 7″ display—no touchscreen—and there’s no mention of the screen resolution. It looks like it is probably 800 x 480.
- It supports ePub, PDF, and TXT ebook formats.
- It has a microSD card slot
- The Slick 50 has an audio player, picture viewer, and video player (no formats are given).
- Rechargeable Li-Ion battery.
If you manage to get your hands on the Slick 50 let us know what you think. It has some potential at $50, as long as it works.
I found the instruction manual for this here:
http://slickusa.com/support/downloads/ER701.pdf
Nice find on the manual. It look like the Slick 50 is very much like the Libre Color from a software standpoint. Even the menus are the same.
I’ve seen it before. For some reason it was sent through the FCC.
And here’s my post on the FCC news:
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/08/09/new-slick-701-e-reader-clears-the-fcc/
That FCC picture is weird. It looks like it was too close to the heater or something.
Yep. Both devices were designed by gajah. They use the same basic firmware in all their e-readers.
Video format support includes .avi and .mov, if the manual can be trusted.
Audio is .mp3
Photo is jpg
If video performance is adequate this could be a fine reader for tweens or slightly younger kids.
Supported fi le formats: (From page: 29/41 of manual)
Book formats: EPUB, PDF, TXT, FB2, PDB, HTML
Audio formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, OGG
Video formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4(Xvid), Divx, H.263, H.264, RM/ RMVB,
MKV, MOV, VOB, FLV, WMV 7 (v1), WMV 9(v3), WMV 9AP(vc-1)
Image formats: JPG, BMP, GIF
color e-ink?
It has LCD. An color E Ink ereader would cost like $300.
Looks like Sears raised the price to $66.49.
You can pick one up at Dollar General for $55.00, My wife works there and confirmed.
Am I the only one stunned that “Slick 50” is the name of an ebook reader – any bets on how long before the other Slick 50 (car engine oil enhancer) will complain?
Do U have to register to Kobo ebooks before U could use the ereader? I don’t want to purchase books. I want to download from the library and Gutenberg. All the other ereaders require 1st registering and that is to include your cred card number and email. I don’t want to do this.
I haven’t used it so I can’t say for certain but you can probably just use Adobe Digital Editions and not have worry about using Kobo. The manual link above likely has info on it.
Getting cheaper – Slick ereader for $40: http://dealnews.com/m/deal.html/529556.html
i have registered with Kobo and it does not req a credit card and they have thousands of free books to download
I purchased one of these from Sears, cost me 55.50 usd, shipping included. The deal Sara lists, when added to shopping cart at Dollar General, costs 45.00 including shipping! A good deal, methinks.
This is my first ereader so I’ve got nothing to compare it to, but here’s a few observations:
I had to use conversion software to convert my movies to an acceptable format, my native .flv’s and .avi’s did not work. But after conversion, no problem. However viewing movies on this thing drained the battery dry in about 30 minutes (after reading books for a couple hours). That’s not a scientific battery review; I won’t be using this to view movies on much, however.
The buttons are a little hard to get used to, especially the ‘select’ button which is in the middle of a four-way rocker directional type key cluster. But I’m getting used to it, just wish it were raised a little more. Menu nav took me about an hour to master, now I like it.
You can set a brightness level which will hold after power off, and individual books will retain font size and font color when resumed, but I really wish I could control default font/background colors and text size. Since this is LCD, I find the best reading comes when background is set to black and font to white, with extra large font size. Unfortunately I have to do this after loading each book, which sucks, but the settings are retained at least. I can deal with this.
I read in bed and at night and in darkened places so I must say I like the fact that this has and LCD screen as with eink I would have to use a book light or a lamp.
All in all, I like the unit, I expect these will keep dropping in price until they’re gone.
OH, and Calibre works great for ebook management.
oki just got my slick 50 and wht is a good websie to get my books?????
It works with Kobo so that’s a good place to start.
Got my slick 50 yesterday. First impressions:
Long battery life, played .flv and mp4 video for over 6 hours on full charge.
Loaded ebooks from computer and they read ok.
Very much like Alurtek color (had one and returned it because wouldn’t play videos)
Feels cheaply made and buttons could be bigger (and of contrasting color), would prefer if had regular sdcard slot
instead of mini.
Still well worth $40 (plus tax) I paid at Dollar General.
Should add that it uses same cord and charger as nook 1st edition, kindle dx and many newer cellphones. Form included has ad for wall charger and mini sd card,max offered 16gb, don’t know if 16 is max will use or just max they have for sale. Only comes with a hand full of free ebooks but there are many sites you can get more.