Asus bringing trio of e-Book readers to the UK

The Gadget Show  Monday 18 January 2010

The Asus DR-570 – another eBook reader for 2010

The UK’s e-Book reader market looks set to get a whole lot more crowded thanks to Asus’ confirmation of a trio of new book players heading our way.

The most interesting of the new faces seems to be the colour-screened 6in DR-570, while there’s also the 9in greyscale DR-950 and a yet-to-be-detailed 5.7in variant later in the year.

Asus’ screen size options largely mimic the example all new e-Readers are trying to follow – that of Amazon’s Kindle. The online retailer’s 6in debut Kindle was followed by the 9.7in Kindle DX the following year.

But Asus’ 6in e-Reader debut will differ from its Amazon counterpart in one key area: its high-brightness OLED display, which comes along with Flash support, 122 hours of battery life and a choice of 3G or Wi-Fi in the DR-570’s compact body.

The larger DR-950 will feature a 16-shade greyscale display with a 768×1024-pixel resolution for more conventional reading exploits.

There are varying reports on when the new slates will land, from sometime in the first half of the year to somewhere closer to Christmas, but they will all be here in 2010, Asus has confirmed.