The TrekStore Mini and the Kobo Mini side by side (or the 3):


I bet the first thing you noticed was how tiny it is :-) - and indeed it is. The touch has a 9cm by 11.8cm screen (my measuring tape, not the specs), the mini has a 7.5cm by 10.1cm screen, and the Trekstor has a 6.5cm by 8.8cm screen. That's 3.5' by 4.6', 3' by 4', and 2.6' by 3.5'. Not much.
The system (OS) is very complete. While the navigation in the menu is sometimes a bit awkward, it doesn't really matter because you won't be using it much past the initial setup (date, time, language, etc). Strangely enough, while the system comes in 10 languages, (German, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish and Ukranian), sample books are only provided in German. Once you hook up the reader to a pc, you'll find Windows and Mac program in a directory. The system works as a USB drive on linux but no software is provided. According to the documentation, the PC software not only allows managing your books, but also firmware upgrade. Talking about which, make sure you have at least the 1.1.0 firmware (20140224), since anything below 1.0.6 seems to have battery life problems and occasional reboots. All manuals and firmwares are available from the support page. Manual flashing instructions can be found here (not recommended). It is to note that the battery is only garanteed for 10 cycles (? not much !).
Navigation is done via buttons since the machine is not touch screen (the buttons are the same as the kindle :-)). It doesn't have wi-fi either, or dictionnaries. You can enlarge the font in a book and play with the margins, and change the orientation of the screen.
For the rest, reading is ok. the small size is not really problem.
I would be lying if I didn't admit that I prefer the comfort of my Kobo Touch, but considering the price of €30, the Trekstor Mini is ideal for on the go reading. The small size allows you to carry it anywhere, it is extremely light, and does for decent reading. Plus there is at least one undocumented mobility feature which is really cool and also exists on the Kobo :-)
A couple of problems I noticed after some intensive use:
  1. The reader doesn't like big books. Breaking size is somewhere between 1.5M and 2M. It will load the front page, and then reboot.
  2. The default font for anything else than English is crap and looks like an old typewriter. If you are fluent in CSS, the easy way around it is to open the epub with Sigil and make sure decent fonts are included in the book.


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