



We fully expect the amount of E Ink-based ereaders to dwindle in the coming years now that the iPad has been introduced, bringing full-color reading and 10+ hours of battery life to reality. But we're not quite there yet, and the ultra-cheap ereader market is still thriving. With Amazon's Kindle setting the bar at around $259, other companies with less marketing dollars are having to approach things differently, mostly by hacking prices and trying not to hack too many features in the process. ViewSonic is a name not normally associated with the ereader market, but that very company has just introduced a new pair of them to compete the barebones reader space. The VEB620 and VEB625 both have 6" 800x600 E Ink displays, 2GB of storage space, an SD expansion slot, native support for PDF/ePUB/RTF/TXT files, and the latter even has Wi-Fi built-in. Both are available now in Europe, but there's no clear word on when they will ship to America. As for pricing? The 620 is £175, while the 625 is listed at £205.We must say, both are styled fairly nicely for ereaders, and while they won't check your e-mail, they'll definitely let you get a lot of reading done; ViewSonic says that the Li-ion battery will last for 6500 page turns, or enough to read around 20 books straight.