i2Reader app review: easily add your book collection to your iOS device

Introduction

If you have your own book collection that predates your purchase of an iOS device you may have trouble trying to transfer this collection over. There is no shortage of book reader applications available in the App Store but they are mostly geared towards being able to access and read the books that you’ve already purchased through iTunes. If you purchased your books by another method you will not have much luck viewing them on an iOS device. With i2Reader this process is made a lot easier. This is a free app and it’s compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Expand Your Reading Options

iPhones and iPad’s are great entertainment and productivity devices but they aren’t always the easiest devices to add content to that didn’t originate in the iTunes store. There are plenty of other ways to purchase items such as books other than the iTunes store; it’s just not easy getting them on your device to view. i2Reader was designed to make this process a lot easier and it generally does a pretty good job.

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My main concern with this app is the initial start-up interface as frankly it has a very disorganized look and feel and the font is much too small to be considered comfortable. If I’m going to adopt an app as my main eBook reader, I expect it to be easily readable and user-friendly otherwise I’m likely to look elsewhere. There is a decent help section which takes some of the disappointment away, but its layout is not the most readable either. This app will require 20.2 MB of free space on your iOS device.

How it Works

This app does not view books in your iTunes library. To add a book to the i2Reader app you have to choose from a few different network options. You can download directly from the Internet using the built in web browser, by using shared libraries such as their own i2Speaker service or the popular Calibre, via OPDS libraries, or through an FTP server. All methods seem to work just fine and download times are pretty quick, although I found the OPDS method the most convenient. It’s nice to have a variety of choices though, so that’s a big plus for this app.

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The actual reader actually works very well. It has all the standard features you’ve come to expect in an eReader. You can switch between a few different reading formats including daytime and nighttime viewing, and there’s even a cool vintage look. As you’d expect, you can set bookmarks to return to your place at a later time, and flipping through the pages is nice and smooth. At the bottom of each page you’ll find your page number. It’s actually a decent reader app once you get past the initial disorganization.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Several different options for adding books
• Multiple viewing options for pages including nighttime, daytime, and vintage views
• Smooth page turning

Cons

• Initial interface is disorganized
• Font size is too small on main screen and in the help section

Final Words

i2Reader is a pretty decent book reader. There are quite a few different ways to add books to the library and they generally work pretty well. There’s also a pretty cool vintage page view which is really impressive. Once you get past the initial disorganization it’s actually a pretty decent app.