AIRBOOK City LED, HD 6" E Ink Pearl Display FrontLight Ebook Reader with Audio (MP3, WAV), 4GB (up to 32GB microSD), Soft-touch, White

I have downgraded my rating of this device because of recent issues with updates. I DO NOT recommend buying this device anymore. See my update at the end of the review for the newest reason.This is a tough one. First off, let me say that I'm an avid ebook reader, and I like to buy various different ereaders. I own almost every Kindle which ever came out, most Kobos, several Nooks, Sonys and various other lesser known brands (Ectaco, Tolino, etc). I would have to say that Kindle, Kobo, and the Nook have been consistently good readers, with the Kindle generally being my favorite in terms of quality, however, it comes at a price. So I try new things. At $75, the Airbook looked like a steal -- a modern reader, with a backlight, at the price of most other entry level readers.My overall impression is OK. It is a mixed bag. A REALLY mixed bag... first, clearly, this reader was not originally intended for an English speaking market, the company is Ukranian. The majority of the documentation that came with the reader is in Russian, with very limited, and grammatically incorrect English instructions. There is no 'troubleshooting' included. I bought two of these, one of them came in Russian, one came in English (the interface language), but I was able to quickly switch it back to English (that's because I know limited Russian). The easiest things would be just to give you the pros and cons:PROS:-Has an eink Pearl display, so relatively new technology for the price.-Very light to hold, comfortable.-Has a backlight at an entry level price. The backlight is actually very good, with very even lighting, however it has other issues (see below)-Supports many different ebook formats, including .mobi, .epub, .txt, .pdf, .fb2 and many more. That's a big plus-Has a hardware key to turn the light on or off (although it's NOT intuitive as to which key that is). A great feature in my opinion.-Has a hardware screen refresh key to prevent ghosting and to refresh the screen at will. First time I see this, very nice.-Can add books easily and in bulk-Supports Adobe Digital Editions-Has white on black option for fonts, but it does not work well.-Can rotate screen-Can add bookmarks, favorites, etc.CONS (brace yourselves)- Instruction manual is extremely poor in English support. For more, you can go to airon.ua, and switch the website to english.- The backlight is NOT on by default, it took me a long time to figure out it is the "refresh" key held down for a few seconds to turn on/off. This is indicated in the manual, granted, but poorly, and is definitely not intuitive. I have found out this to be because they have apparently released this backlight model in the exact same housing as their base, non backlight model, the Airbook City Base, except with a white bezel. The extra button would have forced them to redesign the bezel, requiring more money to be put into the product. This was simply an internal change, adapted to the old case :(. Very disappointing.- Horrendous ghosting issue. Granted, by default, they set the reader to refresh EVERY page. That solves the issue. Why would you set it higher, you ask? Because it uses way more battery power to refresh every page. Most other ereader brands refresh every 5 pages or so. Also, the ghosting is worst in .EPUB books. It is so bad, that you can actually read the current page, AND the ghosted page at the same time on top of each other. The explanation for this .epub ghosting issue is because they seem to use raster fonts for .epub (you cannot change the font style for example, in epub, just the size).- On the same subject, the backlight is buggy. It randomly and consistently slowly increases in brightness the more you use the reader. I have never seen this before. After about 10 minutes of use, it is actually at the highest level! Extremely annoying. No, this is not caused by any key combination or accidental pressing. The light gets brighter whenever the reader is 'busy', as in when you change pages, go in and out of books, etc. It is quite random, and without any rhyme or reason. The light level indicator menu does not reflect this change, however, when you go into it and reselect it on the lowest, for example, it CLEARLY goes down several levels! Furthermore, the lowest level is still brighter than most other ereader brands on medium or higher!- The buttons are of low quality. One of the two I purchased had a home 4-way button that habitually gets stuck on the down position, and also dials down/right at the same time, when only down is pressed. Very annoying. The other one does not have this problem, so clearly they have a quality control problem.-There is a folder to add own fonts on the device, however, putting fonts in this folder does not add them to the device. Have tried various popular font formats to no avail. .otf and .ttf should have worked, but they don't. I doubt this is actually a feature, and this folder "Addfonts" is misleading.-Various interface glitches, the media player is strange to use, volume control is not intuitive.-Settings you set for the font size, type, spacing, etc. are NOT consistent. It seems that the reader applies settings to each format, so you have to set it all over again when you switch between formats. Also, the settings themselves are NOT consistent. Margins cannot be set in some formats, and can be set in others. EPUB, perhaps the most popular ebook format, does not have an option to change font style! Unacceptable. The font sizes are also different for each format, medium on .fb2 is tiny on .epub. There are no justification options, although most formats seem to justify the text (thank goodness). .TXT does NOT justify text, even for un wrapped text files. I have yet to figure out if this is because of non-properly flowing text files to begin with, or is just not supported by the reader, but it seems like it's the reader's issue.-The ereader frequently freezes, and the screen light remains on 'forever'. Thankfully, there is a reset button which you can push with a toothpick or paperclip, and which does not erase the contents of the reader.-Speaking of contents, there is NO 'return to factory settings' option! There is only 'format reader' or 'reset settings' which, used together, I suppose, constitute a factory reset. However, after that, the folders for "books, music, addfonts" never come back! I suppose you can create them on your own. In any event, this is strange.-The book list in your library is terrible. Does not always list books in last read order, even though there is a setting for this. Also, it does not indicate how far along in each book you are, or whether you've read it at all or not.-No wifi, but this is not necessary, and is stated clearly before buying.-(possibly outdated firmware info as of 2/28/17. They changed the update package, and it no longer works for me in any way). Finally, upgrading the firmware. What a nightmare that is. If you happen to find the firmware update on their website, you realize quickly that it is ALL in Russian. There are nowhere to be found any English instructions. I used Google Translate to translate the file (as my Russian is limited). The translation was good, however, the instructions themselves are very confusing and wrong. First of all -- and I couldn't believe this at first -- you really do need to be on a 32 bit computer to do the update! I thought this was a joke, or something to be ignored, but indeed, it is the case. I had a very hard time to find a 32 bit system in my house. Also, the drivers provided only work up to windows 7, they do not work even on a 32 bit version of 8 or 10. Not for me at least. Apparently the company has subcontracted the manufacture of the software and the device to a nameless Chinese manufacturing company, and the whole thing is basically a Chinese Frankenstein of bad parts and bad software. The program used to 'flash' the firmware turned on in Chinese for me, but I was able to, blindly, somehow, set it to English. The device needs to be put in 'recovery mode' (achieved by pressing RESET and BACK (<--) together.) Once in recovery mode, you need to install the provided driver because the device then shows up in Windows Device Manager as an unknown device. You need to manually unzip the driver, and install it through device manager manually. The instructions, erroneously, tell you to install the driver before the reset, which does not work. It is an altogether different device in regular vs. recovery mode. So the correct flow of events should have been put this way: Connect the device to a 32 bit windows system. Open the Firmware Flash Utility provided with the firmware file. Point the utility to the firmware image file in the same folder. Reset the device, while still connected, using the key combo above. Find the unknown device in Device Manager (it will NOT be 'unknown' if it is still in regular mode), and manually install the recovery mode driver. Once that is complete, the Flash Utility will recognize the device. Press upgrade, and wait for it to update the firmware.Overall, nice try to the folks at Airon. The device has great potential. The size and features are excellent, the price is good. However, this device should be sold as a 'beta' version device. It is full of bugs, and clearly not ready for sale, especially not to an English speaking market. I think they just randomly decided to put it up on Amazon, as is, and see what happens, a fun social experiment if you will. IF everything worked as advertised, and the English instructions were well written and comprehensive, and if it was not as buggy, it would be a 5/5. As it currently is, I do not recommend bying this device. Spend the extra money and get a Kindle or some other brand. For a few bucks off, you get a device which is so buggy you can barely use it.UPDATE, 2/28/17The finally fixed the light getting randomly brighter in the previous firmware. It still doesn't remember whether it was on or off after you restart, though. It's always off.Removed another star, because I now cannot update the firmware at all. The new firmware issued this February fails to load on my device. They have included a new batch loader along with the old firmware utility. I have 1.1.11, but unsure if it's version 1 or 2. It would have been nice if the device tells you that in the "about device" in settings, but it does not. It claims to work with 64 bit systems, but still no windows 10 support. XP, 7, and 8. Vista is not mentioned, and did NOT work. I tried to update on a Vista PC, on a Windows 10 PC, and an old XP pc. The 'driver' installed fine on 10 and XP, but failed to install altogether on Vista. Complained that it could not find the driver install file, which makes sense since there's no Vista folder. Putting the device in recovery mode no longer works. Neither of the 3 pcs will detect it once it's in recovery mode, so the step where you erase the blocks in the flash utility cannot be done. Everything fails with "because no device". Tried putting it into recovery mode in every possible combination. With cable in, with cable out, from 'on' state, from 'off' state, different key combos, different usb ports, different pcs... nothing works. The Batch Loader detects the device, but then fails, without any description or explanation. Probably because the device is a). not being recognized in the boot loader state because of some issue with the driver, b). because I already have this firmware but it fails to notify me and just fails with a nondescript error, or c). because something is broken in the system. At this point I have no clue what's wrong with it, I've spent hours on this, and I'm just giving up.Do not buy this device. The product is barely usable. It's like in alpha state of development. Because of the inconsistency and buggyness between file formats and display, as well as the host of other minor issues, this thing is barely usable. I own a 2007 original model Kindle, and it does a WAY better job than this garbage, with the exception of the backlight. I'm not sure how they can sell this to a US market. Perhaps this is acceptable overseas where you have little other choice for comparison, but modern e-reader and tablet users are used to a certain level of consistency, user friendliness and UI design that this product simply fails to meet. Most other e-readers will update automatically, simply over wifi, 3g, or by placing a single update file in a folder. Opening archaic looking, chinese boot loader facilities? Installing drivers through device manager? 2 different facilities required to do a simple update operation? This is stuff we had to do back in the 90s. I'm a tech savvy guy, and this annoys even me, not to mention your average user ...UPDATE 8/1/2017They have dropped english support from their website. There was Russian/Ukranian and English sections, now it's just Russian and Ukrainian. They clearly have no intention of supporting existing devices in English. I guess this was just a guinnea pig test of the American market, with no afterthought for support or product improvement.