Making a last ditch pitch for a spot in your Christmas stocking is this new ebook reader – the Amazon Kindle 2. Ah, sorry, it's the iRiver Story.
You'll forgive our mistake, as the 6in Story is something of a Kindle doppelganger with its flashy white livery and QWERTY keyboard.
Like its media players, iRiver has come over all Apple with the packaging, with the earth-friendly box declaring 'now books become digital'. Nothing like a bit of self-confidence in your gadgets.
The Story is well crafted, with a fairly standard 800x600 E-Ink screen. It was quick around the menus, which split your files into 'books' (ePub, PDF and TXT files) and 'Comics' (JPEG, BMP and GIF).
It also supports Word, Powerpoint and Excel files and, unlike the Sony Reader Touch, Ogg and WMA music files, which can be played through the speaker round the back (though you're in no danger of getting tinnitus from its 0.6W output).
The Story has 2GB internal storage (which is enough for over 1000 eBooks), but there's also an SD card slot in the base, which allows you to add another 32GB. Next to that is a mini USB slot for connecting it to your computer, and a 3.5mm headphone port.
As you can see above, the Story offers the same incredible viewing angles as rivals like the Amazon Kindle, but despite the speed of its menus there's still the annoying 'flash' when you turn pages.
Talking of turning pages, iRiver has handily put the 'page forward' and 'page back' buttons on both sides, so lefties can also use it one-handed too.
But how do you get books onto the Story? Very easily, actually. There's no 'book management' software to worry about, so it's just a case of drag-and-dropping files onto it – this works whether you're Windows, Mac or Linux.
The only real downside is the lack of Wi-Fi or a card slot for an HSDPA SIM, which the Amazon Kindle has for wirelessly downloading books. However, a Wi-Fi option will apparently be available soon.
The iRiver Story is available from a few different retailers – WHSmith is selling it for £200, while Waterstones has it available for £230. Look out for a full review soon, and our verdict on the battle between the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader Touch in the Stuff January issue (on shelves 10th December).
