Hanvon HandyBOOK N516 Reviews

It’s very inexpensive and very expandable. I had to convert my ANSI text to Unicode but that’s the only issue I’ve had (I also converted my doc and rtf files to txt but I knew that before I bought it so that wasn’t an issue). I’m really happy with this reader!

I recently purchased an n516 but I was very unhappy with the battery life and decided to sell it. It would last only a few days when fully charged, and as it comes without an AC charger you have to power up a PC or laptop to charge it.

I have the N516 for over 2 weeks now, and am very happy with it. It has no features like touchscreen, wifi or bluetooth. But neither have any of the analogue books I read, so why should I want that now. I has an option to play (and record) MP3 files, but I find this an option I could have done without.
The N516 has a very simple userinterface, good contrast and decent batterylife. I’m through 3 books now, and only down one little segment in the battery-icon.
The N516 has two refresh-modes: full and partial. When full is chosen, every page-turn will flash the screen black before redrawing it. In partial-mode the black is skipped. This makes pageturning faster and friendlier to the eye. However, in full sunlight this leaves traces of previous pages, especially after a few pageturns. A simple click on the OK button refreshes the screen fully.
The N516 comes with a 2GB SDcard and a nice leather-like case, which is an absolute must for every e-reader. This case in particluar is handy as it is very easy to place and remove the reader which is attached with 4 little magnets. The device itself has the same rugged leatherlike cover, which makes it easy to hold.
There a some dislikes: From time to time the devices freezes, in which case you have to reset it. It doesn’t happen that often, but it can be annoying as it takes about 30 seconds to reboot. I would also like a visual progressbar that shows be where I am in the book. It does show on which page you are. Not a big miss, but nice to have.
The device is really small, just a little bigger than the 5″ screen and fits easily in your pocket. The downside of this is that there is little space to grip it. I always wondered why a device like the Kindle had those insane large edges. Now I now, although I prefer the compactness of the N516 of the bulkiness of the Kindle. There is still place to hold it.
I hope these last two issues will be fixed in an upgrade from Hanvon.

And last, but not least is the manual. It is completely in engrish, which makes it a nice read. It’s a good thing the userinterface is so simple (and the english is not as bad as the manual) you don’t need it at all.

All in all I really recommend the N516. Great value for money.

I fancied an E-reader and didn’t want to be tied into the Amazon/Kindle system and in particular I wanted support for DRM-protected Epubs so I could borrow library books.

It’s all plastic but solidly made and feels comfortable in the hand. The back and bulk of the front has a leather-like finish. The buttons have a positive action - navigation is via 9 numbered index buttons and a 4-way pad and menu, back and OK buttons.

Purchased Epub/PDFs are supported with Digital Rights Management (DRM) via Adobe Digital Editions which can also be used to borrow E-books from UK libraries. (See http://search.overdrive.com)

Html, txt, PDF, and doc are also supported and can work well although it depends very much on the individual document - plain documents without much formatting work best.

You can zoom the font/document to suit, however there are only three levels of zoom. Zooming works well for Epub, txt, plain html and text based PDFs but for word and image-heavy docs you often can’t zoom far enough.

I like that you can simply copy E-books across (Using Adobe Digital Editions for DRM-protected files) as you would to any USB device and organise them how you like - Crime, Humour, Sci-Fi, Reference, Thriller etc. The supplied 2GB card came preloaded with 2,000+ free eBooks (est. capacity 5,000+).

A nice feature is very simple MP3 player which is adequate for background music.

It displays images well enough for a scanned hand-written note e.g. a recipe.

Because it can be slow to switch on/off, the lock function is useful as it can be left this way for sometime (the power-saver eventually turns it off).

The supplied clever leather folding cover attaches via recessed magnets and would cost £10+ to buy.

It’s a little slow; it’s a bit slow to boot, page turning takes about 2 seconds and it can take a while to react to key presses; you soon learn to press “next page” just before you reach the end and don’t really notice the delay.

It does lock up from time to time; usually if you’ve been careless and tried to be too quick pressing buttons (reset works!).

It doesn’t automatically resume where you left off when you switch back on; it starts at the main menu. However it does keep where you were in each book and if you reopen a book via the recently read option or directly it will open at the page you were on.

It doesn’t necessarily take you back to the exact spot you were on as the small size of the screen means each page may be displayed as 3 or more screenfuls.

It only displays the 1st 26 characters of each book’s name so “J.K.Rowling-Harry Potter a” is all you’d see if you don’t name your books sensibly.

The N516 is better than I expected and as good as I hoped. The screen is excellent and the quirks are slight irritants which you get used to rather than show stoppers.