It’s been a while since we last discussed the txtr beagle eReader from Germany. As you may recall, we mentioned the little device back in October of 2012 when it first surfaced with a price of €10, working out to about $13 here in the US.
If the thought of a $13 digital reader excites you, the good news is that the device is now available to pre-order in the United States. The bad news?
The device is somewhat more expensive than originally anticipated, with a cool $69 price tag. The price difference can be attributed to the fact that wireless carriers offer subsidies for the txtr beagle.
One of the reasons this beagle tablet (originally) seemed so appealing was the incredibly low price. Without the $13 price tag, it’s frankly somewhat lacking in features, at least compared to other devices on the market. For example, the Beagle doesn’t support Wi-Fi or USB connectivity. The only way buyers can get books on the device is to load them via Bluetooth from their smartphone.
Nevertheless, if you still like the idea this little device, you can pre-order it for $69. It features a five-inch E-Ink display and draws power from a pair of AAA batteries. The reader is also very small and light, weighing only 128 g and measuring 140 x 105 x 4.8 mm. Plus, the five-inch screen supports eight-levels of gray with a resolution of 800×600.
The phone that shoots books over to the beagle via Bluetooth has to be running Android 4.0 or higher and the txtr app. As I noted above, the beagle is going to be very difficult to sell at a $69 price point because it isn’t all that far off from the cost of a fully functional digital reader such as the Nook Simple Touch.
