BANGALORE – Announced late last month, the Infibeam Pi is an ebook reader released by Infibeam.com. Although primarily an ebook reader, the Infibeam Pi also lets you view images and listen to audio files.

The Infibeam Pi is 7.5-inch long, 4.5-inch wide, and 0.4-inch thick. The device is encased in white plastic and weighs about 180g and easily fits inside any laptop, office or school bag for that matter. The Pi has a 6-inch (600×800 pixels) e-ink matte screen black and white display. It has no backlight and is great for reading text whether you’re indoors or outdoors on the move. The Infibeam Pi’s form factor is similar to a standard paperback book, and its e-ink display isn’t like any other gadget screen–it actually aids in immersive reading and isn’t as taxing on your eyes compared to staring at a glossy laptop screen for extended hours.

The Infibeam Pi supports ebooks in a variety of file formats: .TXT, .DOC, .PDF, .HTML and .EPUB. It has an internal memory of 512MB, which is enough to store a few ebooks. However, the Infibeam Pi also comes with an SD Card slot, wherein you can plug in a memory card of up to 4GB–good enough for a few thousand ebooks. Not only does it support the English alphabet, but Infibeam Pi’s e-ink display has Indian language support. I had no trouble flipping through a few books with the Devanagiri and Kannada script. You can also look up images in a variety of file formats and tune into some music (MP3 files only).

In terms of features and usability, the Infibeam Pi’s simple and minimalistic. It has an easy-to-use set of buttons on the left edge. From top to bottom, here’s what they do: Bookmark, Portrait to Landscape mode reading, Back button, Reader Menu (Options). The Reader menu options even lets you search for a particular string that you want to find in the book you’re reading. On the right edge, there are two buttons, [+] and [-], to adjust font size. The most frequently used button is the four-way navigation pad with a selection button at its center, placed just below the right corner of the Infibeam Pi’s screen. Content is transferred onto the Infibeam Pi by connecting it to a PC via USB–it has a mini-USB port built-in.

Click the ON/OFF button placed on the top-right edge to turn on the Infibeam Pi. The device doesn’t take too long to turn on. Its home page is pretty simple to navigate, with large icons. Library – gives you a list of the ebooks you have; Favorites – your favorite ebooks section; Music – all your music collection goes here; Reading History, Sudoku, etc. From turning it on, the Infibeam Pi takes only two clicks to select an ebook and start reading. Its e-ink screen offers four font sizes to choose from, and even at ‘fit to page’ the content is readable without any trouble. The Infibeam Pi lets you multitask a bit — you can listen to music while you’re reading a book or going through your image gallery. The audio quality is good, nothing great. The Infibeam Pi also comes with a built-in Sudoku game–not a great value add if you’re not into Sudoku.

The Infibeam Pi has a claimed battery life of seven days, but it lasted me just over three days of reading and listening to music, which is pretty good. You can recharge the Pi under six hours by plugging it to a PC via the bundled USB cable or using the wall-socket adapter.

It isn’t all smooth sailing, and the Infibeam Pi has a few gripes. The black and white screen works well for text-only ebooks, but images aren’t displayed all that well on the e-ink display–we feel a color screen would’ve been more desirable. The Infibeam Pi comes with a 3mm audio jack, and not a 3.5mm jack–that means you can’t just use any headphone or earphone to go with it. Flipping through pages while reading, though smooth, isn’t without a hint of lag. It doesn’t come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth support. But at the end of the day, the Infibeam Pi does its primary function of an ebook reader pretty well.

Bottom Line

For Rs. 9,999 (US$216), the Infibeam Pi commands a high premium, and it certainly isn’t a Kindle replacement, but a good option to explore for people interested in a dedicated ebook reader.

PCW RATING: 72/100 (GOOD)