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Mar 16

Too Late? $400 Alex E-Reader Now for Pre-Order

Posted in: e-books, e-readers, Media Players, Today's Chili

Alex, the Frankenstein’s Monster of e-readers which sews the head of the Kindle onto the tiny, mismatched body of an Android mini-tablet, is available for pre-order. The Alex Store, about to go live any second now, will take your $400 and deliver this monster to you “no later than mid-April.”

The long, tall Alex, whose dual-acreen design is similar to that of the Barnes and Noble Nook, uses the top screen for battery-friendly reading of books, and the bottom touch-screen is for watching videos, and browsing your books catalog and the web. This already expensive $400 version is Wi-Fi-only, with a 3G version in the works.

We have trouble seeing any kind of market for this. The plain e-reader will continue to succeed, a simple one-purpose device with almost complete independence of battery-life worries. It will eventually be cheap enough to pick up in the local drug store on impulse. The other, multimedia high-end is catered to by the iPad and other upcoming tablets. Who will buy this mongrel, the poor Alex with its lack of functionality, its short battery life (just six hours with the color screen in use) and its almost-iPad price-tag?

It is even an outsider in the Android world, the lack of a cellphone spec excluding it from the Android Marketplace, although I’m sure it’ll get hacked soon enough. On the plus side, it comes with headphones and a case in the box, it does have a cute name, and you can pretend you are reading in class when you’re actually watching YouTube.

Alex product page [Spring Design]

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.Com