Literati E-Reader Review / Giveaway

If you know me, you know I don’t read.  It’s not that I don’t like to read.  I really do love to read books.  I buy books all the time, that never end up getting read.  The problem is time.  I know that if I start a book, I know that I probably will not put it down until it’s finished.  I’ll stay up late reading and I won’t get anything done during the day.  I just didn’t have the time to devote to it.  I was working during the day all day, and it was difficult to concentrate on anything else besides work and my kids.  When I did have some time to myself to spare in the evenings I’d watch some TV or a Movie (definitely one of my favorite activities.)  Now since I am a tech geek, and E-Readers are a gadget, I have been wanting an E-Reader for a little while.  Even though I’m not a super duper book person, it’s still pretty cool that you can carry around a ton of books on one device.

So when The Sharper Image contacted me to review the Literati E-Reader, I definitely jumped at the chance.  What appealed to me right from the get-go, was the fact that it had a color screen.  I was excited to get started!  The first thing I wanted to try out was some books for my kids.  With the advantage of a full color screen I wanted to see how it was going to turn out as a book for my kids to read.  The possibilities for the full color screen are great, as you can add cookbooks, children’s books, magazines, etc.  Here’s video of Maddie reading from the Literati.

So you can see from the video, that some pages span both pages.  On those, it shows both pages on the screen, but it’s really small, and there is no way to adjust it.  I don’t know how you would fix this, since you would want to view both pages if it spans across them, but it’s so small that she couldn’t read the words.  The pages that do come up full screen though, are great.  With the children’s books though, you can also see from the video that it takes a few seconds to load the next page.  Again, definitely a flaw, that could maybe be fixed with a firmware update.  When reading regular books, there is not that lag between pages, but it does have it between chapters.

The display is nice and big, and there are several viewing options.  You can make the text very large, or very small.  I prefer the smallest font setting, but my mom I’m sure would prefer one of the larger settings.  This definitely makes e-readers in general a great choice for everyone since you can adjust the font size (as opposed to regular books).  There is a night reading option that turns the screen black and the words white.  My favorite though, is the Sepia toned one.  It looks more like a real page.  The screen is nice to look at, even in the sunshine.

It comes with a nice looking case, but there are a couple complaints I have about the case.  The strap on the top covers the power button, and the fabric that holds it at the bottom is too close to the directional pad that makes pressing “down” very difficult.  It’s very nice to carry it around in though, just during reading I typically take it out of the case.

One thing I really liked about it was the magazine subscriptions.  I subscribed to PC Magazine, and was able to view the articles from the December issue without any of those annoying ads that make magazines 3 times as thick as they would be without them.  The subscription was just a couple bucks a month too.

You can access the store from the web at http://www.kobobooks.com/ or you can access it from the device itself (where wifi is available).  It was super easy to purchase books… finding them on the other hand was a bit more difficult.  If you know exactly what you are looking for, it will be easy.  If you don’t quite know what you want, it’s a little more difficult.  For example, I was looking for Children’s Books that had great pictures that my daughter would enjoy reading.  So I clicked on the “Children’s Books” section on the Kobo website, and it pulled up all sorts of books that I would not consider “Children’s”.  They were more like young adult books.  There are some great categories, such as the New York Times Bestsellers lists and New Releases.  They even have a Free section which has a TON of literary classics to add to your library for free.

So all in all, I’m very happy with the device.  There are definitely some problems, but for a color screen at that price, it’s definitely worth it.  I have even gotten into reading again.  It’s fun to read when you have such a cool device to read it on.  🙂   The Literati is available at Macy’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond for a great price from now until Christmas

There is an SD card slot on the device to give it an additional 8 GB of storage space (which equals to a whole heck of a lot of books)

To enter to win the Literati simply leave a comment on this post!  One entry per person.  Good Luck!

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