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The Korean company iRiver is known more for making MP3s, so its entry eReader device came as quite a pleasant surprise. Appropriately named Story, the eReader is a nicely packed with all the capabilities of a basic eReader to you get into the heart of any narrative you are reading.

The iRiver ebook reader has clearly taken its design inspiration from the Kindle. You get the Kindle’s feel and appearance – the 8 x 5x 0.4-inch frame, the smooth matte finish, and the integrated keyboard below the 800 x 600 6-inch eInk screen, the page turn buttons flanking both sides of the screen. Yet without wireless 3G services and built-in eReader, can the iRiver Story eBook Reader hold up its own candle against its more advanced counterparts?
Features – Hardware and Software
 

What the iRiver Story eBook Reader doesn’t have is the richness of Kindle’s grey levels.
Nevertheless, text and images are still clear and comfortable to read on the Story’s 8 grayscale screen.

Getting content to your Story is a simple drag and drop affair from a PC or Mac. There’s a 2GB hard drive that can hold up to 1500 ebooks – that more than a year or two of reading, even for a voracious reader. If you want to expand your library, there’s an SD card slot located at the base of the device; it can handle up to 32GB cards.

Also found at the bottom of the eReader are: a mini-USB port, power/lock switch, and a headphone jack. A glance at the back of the iRiver ebook reader reveals the integrated speaker, which is useful for listening to audiobooks, recorded memos and lectures (the Story has a microphone, too), and music.

The Story can handle up to 9000 pages or 24 hours of audio per charge. Unlike the Kindle, the device easily gets along with other devices in the market as it supports both Adobe DRM and non-DRM. The wide ebook format support (ePub, DOC, XLS, PPT, etc) is great news for any reader. The Story can also display graphs and images in documents as well as comics and graphic novels in JPG, BMP, and GIF formats. Pages can be set into portrait or landscape mode. 

There are also handy extra features that students and professionals will love: the Story lets you create notes, edit texts, and runs searches.     

The Bottom Line

With its huge storage space, long battery life, and note-taking and other handy supplementary features, the Story is for any reader who wants good return for their money.

Pros

The device’s keyboard is nicely constructed: the keys are well spaced and feels nice to the touch. Like the Kindle, there are page turn buttons on both sides of the screen, allowing one-handed use. The device also offers some PDA capabilities. Keeping up with your schedules is easy with the built-in calendar and written memo application. There’s also a diary for taking down notes. Now, if Story could create a way to put these in the cloud, they can become accessible from other services like Google and Microsoft Outlook, the iRiver Story Book Reader has the potential of becoming a more compelling device.

Cons

Unfortunately, the device is still faced with a number of issues. Firstly, the zoom control doesn’t work on Excel and Powerpoint files, rendering some documents (particularly those with extra small fonts) virtually unreadable. Zooming in on PDF files is very slow, and scrolling up and down a page is not possible so you miss some sentences, even a paragraph or more. Speed needs to be improved as turning of pages sometimes take 20 to 30 seconds. Operating speed is also sluggish. Loading books and pictures is at snail pace, while high resolution JPEG pics from digital cameras don’t load at all. While it looks nice, the build quality is not par to the Kindle. It doesn’t feel solid and when flexed, the device creaks a bit. The biggest issue with the iRiver Story Book Reader, though, is price. The device costs around $240 - $300 – quite high for a device with no 3G or WiFi and only basic capability. And at that price, you don’t get any carrying case.

What’s in the box:

• iRiver Story eBook Reader
• USB cable
• User manual

Main Features

• 6-inch eInk screen with 600x 800 pixel resolution
• Dimesion: 27x203.5x9.4mm
• 2GB internal memory; supports up to 32GB SDHC
• Stores 1500 ebooks
• Strong battery life: one charge is equal to 9000 page turns, 24hrs music and 5hrs voice recording.
• Weighs 284g

Key Features

• Matte white finish
• Case made of plastic
• Add/delete bookmark

Bonus Features

• Calendar
• Memo
• Voice recording
• Schedule planner
• MP3 player