Alex eBook Dual Screen starts at $ 399

The first electronic reading lamp from American Spring Design had marked the spirits during his presentation at CES in Las Vegas last January. Claiming to want to combine the best of both worlds yet distant, he actually proposed to discover "Alex", a hybrid features - such as Barnes & Noble Nook - two screens: an e-ink slab similar to the one we found on the Amazon Kindle and dedicated to the display of electronic books, in which we find another slab, LCD this time to interact with Android, the mobile operating system from Google.

The bet all-in-one will he pay? On the upper part of this unit to gauge uncommon, we thus find a slab of a 6 inch diagonal on which we can view works in formats EPUB, PDF, HTML and TXT files, stored on a MicroSD card (2GB provided ). At the bottom, a 3.5-inch touch screen from which we can exploit the features of Android and connect to the Internet through WLAN controllers and GSM / 3G, subject of course to have a SIM card.

Really necessary, these two screens? Spring Design is hard to remember that it is possible to annotate the work being played or to manage your library from e-ink slab, we can totally listen to music, launch video or surf the Internet using the Android embedded. It thus enjoys the comfort of reading on a stone dedicated, without sacrificing the side "connected applications" that is now the happy hours of products like the iPhone. It remains to be seen to what extent the use of these features web / multimedia impacts the battery life, since the use of an electronic ink is at this level one of the highlights.

Supplied with a pair of headphones, a USB cable, a protective case and a 2GB MicroSD card, the player Alex is finally available for purchase from $ 399, or about 300 euros, two colors. A reasonable fee under the hybrid nature of the device, but still higher than that of devices dedicated exclusively to the consultation of electronic books. Spring Design could also suffer because his camera is so far backed any content distribution service. It will remain in all cases an original idea, which could well be emulated.