Velocity Micro’s Cruz Android eReader Gets Hands-On Treatment
August 30th, 2010 by Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director 
The folks at GadgetNutz have gotten some exclusive alone time with a new 7-inch Android eReader, the Cruz from Velocity Micro. Priced at $199, the Cruz features a resistive touchscreen with a unique 800×600 color display that has more vertical screen real estate than we’ve seen on other Android devices. It also comes with 256MB of RAM, both microSD and full SD card slots, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and Android 2.0.
Considering that the device has a Web browser, color screen, and Wi-Fi, we’re wondering why the Cruz is called an eReader, not a tablet. It does support major eBook formats like eInk, PDF, TXT, and PDB, but can also play back MP3 audio and MP4 video. Perhaps the reason for the eReader label is that Velocity Micro also makes a Cruz Tablet that is $299 and has a capacitive touch screen.
We’re curious to see if we can get our hands on the Cruz Reader, but until then watch GadgetNutz’s hands-on video and check out their hands-on post as well.
via Lillilputing and GadgetNutz
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From Other Sites
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August 30th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
My guess is that its called an e-book, people will have lesser expections of it…
December 24th, 2010 at 8:07 am
I’ve had my Cruz since October 2010 and it is now fried. It locked up on me 2 days ago, can’t get it going, was on the phone for 1 hour with the company and nothing has worked. It is now worse that it doesn’t turn on at all. I can only hope that I get my money back so that I can go buy another reader that doesn’t have any fancy gadgets and one that I can just read books. I especially want one that I can read, change font size and bookmark PDFs in.
January 15th, 2011 at 12:53 am
I’ve had the Cruz e-reader for a couple of weeks now. Since I bought it to fulfill a very specific function (hold my address book and slideshow pictures like an e-frame), I am thrilled about everything else it offers. Wireless works like a charm, browsing the web is good – I even managed to find an alternative browser that plays flash movies such as on YouTube. Apps are a little harder to find, since it doesn’t access the Android market, but with some effort I managed to find and download many apps, including a great chess game. In all, I’m very, very happy with it. Oh, did I mention I can read books on it too
? Borders has hundreds of free books to download, I’m currently reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – for free.. And the Cruz was only 99 bucks at Best Buy. Great value!