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Overview

iriver’s follow-up electronic reader to the Story (which was first to be presented on the US market), the Story HD, offers a reader a redesigned piece of hardware. However, you might not recognize a 2011 product from the first glance. In fact, the device’s design is retro in some ways – little goldish brown pill-shaped keys like it has always been, and a matching goldish brown rubberized back cover.

Meanwhile, the iriver Story HD’s software is really simple and stark, so you will not be surfing the Internet on this one. Nevertheless, the market for readers is rapidly expanding and there’s enough room for all shapes that you may like.

Hardware

This ereader’s physical presence is a little startling for the current year. Although its design is not entirely outdated, iriver Story HD still obviously fails to move the hardware forward in any considerable way.

The front of iriver Story HD features a 6-inch E Ink screen, as well as a full keyboard having 38 tiny keys, and a metal hardware rocker used for navigation. The device also has dedicated home, back, enter and option keys on front. Meanwhile, the back of iriver is made of a golden brown plastic, featuring the power button on the bottom left hand corner coupled with a SD slot right above it. The device itself is very light – it only weighs 7.3 oz, which is at least less than Nook or Kindle. Although at a first glance its keyboard doesn’t look like great for typing, it appears surprisingly accurate and comfortable. The dedicated buttons work just great, you will be able to easily find them by feel after the first use of device, all of them having a good tactile response. iriver Story HD is able to hold up to 32GB with an SD card, aside from 2GB on board. As for the battery life, it is the same as with most E Ink readers – just excellent. The manufacturer claims that the device gets up to 6 weeks on standby, and this is most likely true.

However, the situation is not the same with the metal, 4-way rocker in the center of the ereader, which is usually used to navigate menu and turn pages. Despite the fact that the button itself is placed quite accurately, it still feels a little mushy and from time to time misses a press, leading to momentary confusion in the ereader’s ability to update on cue. In addition, there’s another significant gripe from the hardware perspective: the device is boxed with 2 nice branded covers, and the ereader fits nicely into them, but to wake it from sleep mode you will have to slide the power button on the back of it, which requires you to physically remove the unit from the case. Of course, this isn’t ideal either from design or use perspective. Moreover, one can find it very annoying.

Still, the best part of iriver Story HD is undoubtedly its high resolution of the screen, so its main purpose – reading – is quite enjoyable on the device. You will notice that the text is rather crisper than the Nook or Kindle, as they both offer a lower resolution. Meanwhile, page refresh is on par with the latest Kindle edition, but a bit slower than the Wi-Fi Nook. As for the rest, though the hardware is all about basic and not pretending to be high end by any means, the entire design of the device is undoubtedly functional, intuitive, and offering a nice feel in the hand. iriver Story HD didn’t reinvent design of ereader, but its thin and light slab with screen and keyboard looks like the right thing to start with. Overall, the build quality of this ereader is high, despite the fact that pushing on its corners does produce some creaking.

Software

The software of the device is one of the reader only. In other words, you won’t find web browser, games, or any other special options. You won’t be able to take notes, or highlight the lines you liked (though it offers a bookmark feature). The device supports PDF files and offers a built-in edition of the Collins dictionary. In addition, iriver has cooperated with Google in order to bring its ebookstore to this ereader. Actually, not many readers do a lot of Internet browsing on their electronic books. Except for that, the software is very sparse, but intuitive in use. As for the speed of the unit, it is the same as that of its current competitors. Although the Wi-Fi may seem a little slow to connect, it still remains very stable after getting connected.

Ebookstore interface provided by Google offers a very basic search function, but there’re 2,000,000 free books that you can load up on the ereader, along with tons of others you are offered to purchase. The problem is that Google’s book proposals can’t compete with offerings of Amazon or Barnes and Noble, so the iriver Story HD can be considered at some disadvantage to those companies’ ereaders. Indeed, the books that Google offers for free are mostly OCR scanned, since they’re free of copyright, and therefore often leave something to be desired. As for Google’s paid selection, it still seems to be a lot smaller than other companies’ offerings.

Wrap-up

As we can see, iriver Story HD is not a bad product, though you can find a better one at this price. Nevertheless, taking into account the very simple interface of this ereader and the sometimes disappointing Google’s ebookstore, the device in question shows a fairly satisfactory overall experience. While we have to admit that it isn’t able to compete in all perspectives with the Nook or Kindle, it still doesn’t lose against those rivals, either. Indeed, as a utilitarian product, iriver Story HD does not fare too badly, considering that the performance of the unit is solid, without any sluggishness and delays. For many customers, the real sticking point while choosing will be in the ereader’s price point. Priced at $139, this device cost the same as the Wi-Fi-only Nook and Kindle, while both of these devices outshine iriver’s offering in a number of key points. If, say, iriver Story HD were a $99 device, the users could much easier overlook most of the very minor drawbacks to the electronic reader.