You’d think a reader with no wireless connectivity or store integration would have a tough time taking on Sony and Amazon, but iriver’s latest makes a fair stab at it. It does so by offering the world’s first 768 x 1,024 resolution electronic ink screen.

Manufactured by LG, this 6in display compares well to the E Ink Pearl screens seen in most of the other readers this month. Contrast is comparable, as is refresh speed, with pages flicking by at a rate of one per second.

The advantage of the extra pixels isn’t immediately obvious, but is clear with smaller text, such as in PDF files not formatted with ebook screens in mind. Consequently, there’s less need to zoom in than with other models.

The interface feels responsive, and looks elegant too. The keyboard makes taking short notes and searching by keyword simple. There’s a generous 2GB of internal storage, which can be supplemented by adding a standard, full-sized SD card.

The problems arise, however, when you come to read, because the ergonomics of the iriver Story HD aren’t that good. Instead of placing buttons on the edge of the device for turning the page, iriver has decided a long, thin four-way D-pad is the way to go. This clicks loudly, which is annoying enough, but far worse is that its position beneath the screen forces you to hold the reader in the bottom-left or right corners, which feels unnatural and awkward.

File format compatibility is generally fine, with EPUB and PDF formats covered, but there’s no MOB1 or HTML support and the lack of display options is disappointing. Font sizes can lie changed, and there are eight sizes available, but you can’t change the font itself. PDF manipulation is awkward, with zoom operations taking an age, and panning (if you can call it that) using the cursor keys is painfully slow.

Even if this device had wireless and store integration (the next version will have both), its limited display options and questionable ergonomics put paid to its chances. The fact that the price is rather high doesn’t help either.

The BeBook Club S is cheaper than its touchscreen-quipped sibling (the Neo), but in many ways it’s a superior reader. For a start, it has a full 2GB of internal memory – enough to hold a decent library. It can be expanded further thanks to a full-sized SD card slot.

The screen is better, too. A 600 x 800 E Ink Pearl panel gives good clarity and contrast, and redraw rates aren’t bad: the Club S doesn’t refresh quite as quickly as the latest Kindle or even the Sony Reader Wi-Fi, but it doesn’t feel as laggardly as the Neo. Things are helped along by a faster processor ֊ an 800MHz Marvell CPU.

The Club S uses the same software as the Neo, so our gripes about the interface apply here too – more responsive hardware helps, but navigating around the options and settings is tiresome. And since there’s no touchscreen, you’re left using the little directional pad to step around the menus.

On the bright side, most of your time with the Club S will be spent reading, and this is a fairly pleasant experience. This isn’t only down to the screen, but also to the sensibly located page-turn buttons, which fall naturally under your thumbs. You have plenty of choice when it comes to file formats, with support for the same broad range of formats as the Neo – including reflowable PDF, HTML, DOC and RTF, as well as a range of image formats. You can even play MP3 and WAV files through a 3.5mm headphone socket at the bottom.

Battery life is quoted at an impressive 20,000 page turns; but that’s probably helped by the fact that the Club S lacks any sort of networking, which means you must obtain your media via a computer and transfer it manually to the reader. Even the cheaper Kindle and Kobo devices aren’t limited this way. And the omission doesn’t make the device any smaller or lighter: it’s just as bulky as the Neo and, at 278g, almost as heavy. Although the Club S is a perfectly usable reader – much more so than the Neo – these shortcomings set it a rung below the best of the competition.