Sovos SVEBK5B 5 inch E-Reader+ (Black)

I bought the Sovos mainly because of the price - I really wanted to start using ebooks but felt the readers (and books) were way too expensive. The Sovos is much cheaper than any of it's competitors, yet has features that few of them can boast.
First, the downsides. As an ebook reader it is competent, rather than outstanding. It has a colour LCD display which is not quite as easy on the eye as the e-ink based competition and uses more power. It does support most ebook formats however and has a faster page turn than any thing else I've seen. It is also noticeable that epub format books look much better than any other format - almost as good as e-ink - so I suggest downloading something like Calibre which not only allows you to manage books, but also convert them for free.
As well as being a reader, the device supports more advanced features not available in most other ereaders, including sound recording, a very simple calender, music playback (numerous formats) and photo and… more »

I bought the Sovos mainly because of the price - I really wanted to start using ebooks but felt the readers (and books) were way too expensive. The Sovos is much cheaper than any of it's competitors, yet has features that few of them can boast.
First, the downsides. As an ebook reader it is competent, rather than outstanding. It has a colour LCD display which is not quite as easy on the eye as the e-ink based competition and uses more power. It does support most ebook formats however and has a faster page turn than any thing else I've seen. It is also noticeable that epub format books look much better than any other format - almost as good as e-ink - so I suggest downloading something like Calibre which not only allows you to manage books, but also convert them for free.
As well as being a reader, the device supports more advanced features not available in most other ereaders, including sound recording, a very simple calender, music playback (numerous formats) and photo and video playback, thanks to that colour display. I'll skip the calendar and recording as I haven't found a need for them. Music playback is superb and without earphones the speaker output is surprisingly good.
Photo display seemed to be quite sluggish, but I was trying to display images 8x bigger than the display which probably slowed things down. It is however an excellent feature for showing off those holiday snaps that are normally consigned to a PC.
Video playback is very impressive - I had some problems with mpeg 4 playback (probably my fault), but avi, divx etc worked brilliantly. Forget an in-car DVD player for the kids - this will do nicely.
The reader itself is thin and light but feels substantial, definitely not cheap. It's about the same size as the Sony PRS-300 and can therefore use some of the same covers. It has 1Gb of internal memory which is enough for around 350 ebooks. You don't need SD cards to store your books, but it supports SDHC cards up to 8Gb should you wish to expand - these are very cheap now, so sticking a bunch of movies on cards to take on holiday is dead easy.
When connected to a PC you will see 2 drives (no silly software installs required) - one for the internal memory and one for the SD card if present, so file transfer is nice and simple.
The package includes a mains charger, a USB cable (which also charges) and a set of basic earphones.
Overall an excellent product, with very minor niggles that are massively outweighed by price and quality.