14 DAY TRIAL // Trying to carve a slice of the e-reader market for itself, Medion decided to attend this year's IFA trade show and officially announce a pair of such gadgets, both featuring e-paper.
Though the tablet segment is the fast-growing segment making the news most often recently, it wasn't too long ago that e-readers saw the same level of attention.
This is because they are fairly cheap devices that are also easy to carry, have high visibility even under sunlight and, of course, fulfill all reading needs.
The fact that e-paper has a strong resemblance to genuine paper definitely helps as well.
With the 2011 edition of the IFA trade show now underway, Medion put on display a pair of such units.
Bearing the names of Life E6111 and Life P6213, they have screen size of 6 inches each and black color themes.
Additionally, each has more or less standard navigational buttons at the base, though the layout is different.
WLAN (wireless networking) is supported, as is audio support, so that MP3 and audiobook files may be handled in addition to regular e-books.
Unfortunately, the company did not provide us with any pricing details, and it might just be that the items won't have much of a chance at putting up a good fight against Amazon's Kindle or the B&N Nook.
According to our colleagues that got close enough to test the two devices, the performance turned out to be somewhat underwhelming.
Page turn times are described as sluggish, and even the special asset of the P6213 proved to be less than stellar in execution.
More specifically, the item comes with touch support, but our colleagues judged it to be somewhat less responsive than they would have liked.
This, along with plastic frames that also failed to impress, might mean that low price points are the only chance these things have on today's market. Time will tell just what will become of them.
Note: Fellow editors Cosmin Vasile and Sorin Nita are on the floor at the 2011 IFA Show and are keeping us posted with pictures and live reports on the latest product previews and launches.
