Reader

Every e-reader so far has asked you to hold something. The Sol Reader asks you to wear it, and the page goes where your eyes already are.

The Sol Reader is a wearable e-reader with two 1.3-inch E Ink screens mounted in front of the eyes like a pair of glasses, so a page fills the field of view instead of sitting in a phone-sized rectangle held at arm's length. The optics are what make that workable rather than merely novel. Pancake lenses, paired with circular polarizers and transflective films, fold the image so it does not need the long lens-to-screen distance a headset usually demands. Each eye then focuses independently across a diopter range of 0 to minus 5.75, wide enough that most short-sighted readers can leave their own glasses off. Interpupillary distance, the gap between the lenses, adjusts from 58 to 72mm, and a mouldable silicone nose piece takes up whatever fit is left over. The screens are lit from the side by warm 3000K LEDs rather than shone through from behind, which is the difference between reading by a page-coloured glow and staring into a backlit panel.

Page turns happen on a handheld remote running off a replaceable coin cell, so nothing touches the frame once it is settled on your face. Books arrive from the Sol app over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, 100 of them at a time, which is more than most people get through in a year of evenings.