CES Hands-On: Samsung eBook readers

At the Samsung press event yesterday, Samsung announced it’s line of eBook readers. There’s a total of four readers in a variety of sizes. Samsung had each of them on display, allowing anyone to get a feel for the devices.

Spending most of my time with the largest of the devices, I can say that as of now there seems to be no reason to buy one of the Samsung devices over a Kindle or Nook. The touch screen is nice, though having to use the stylus slowed it down a bit. Slowing down the experience on the largest one is terrible, as almost any action aside from turning a page meant staring at an hourglass for a few seconds for the content to load.

The smaller devices did load faster, and had crisper-looking screens. The controls on the smallest device, however made it hard to know if you were actually selecting anything by clicking in the middle button as it didn’t really click very much. Out of all the devices, the one with the slide out controls seemed the most interesting and responsive. Having only the page back/next buttons on the front made it look very nice, but also work very well.

A special thanks goes out to Energizer for supplying the Gadgetell crew with Energi To Go battery packs, which allowed us to keep our gadgets charged on the run and focus more on finding good stuff at CES and not having to worry about sitting next to a power outlet. For more information on the Energi To Go battery packs you can visit EnergiToGo.com or visit them on Twitter at @energitogo.