Asus has jumped into the market with their own e-book reader, according to company reports. It’s thin, supports many formats, and will beat the Kindle in terms of price, if rumors are to be believed.

Asus UK has announced the launch a series of photos of the company’s DR-950 e-book reader device with a 9-inch e-Ink display built-in. Measuring a wire-thin 0.35-inch thick (one of the thinnest we’ve seen), the Asus DR-950 includes a 1024 x 768 pixel display and supports ePub, HTML, and PDF formats, so you can read pretty much anything on here.

In a nice bit of feature inclusion, it will have text-to-speech functionality and an SD card slot so you can store plenty of material to read anywhere.

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket and has built in PDF support as well. It’s super light too,weighing at just 5.3-ounces.T

The Cybook Opus from Bookeen provides a great resolution of 200dpi with a 6-inch display, and 1GB memory to store PDF, text documents and more. Access is given to a catalog of 150,000 books as well, so it’ll keep you busy quite awhile.

Ship dates and price wasn’t disclosed at this point, but a lower price point and higher portability might make this pretty hot when its released.

Battery life was another big complaint about the last Kindle, and that’s been upgraded too, about 25% or so. Memory has gotten a big boost as well; 2GB vs. 256MB of the last version. That was pretty much a necessity these days. 

It does have a text-to-speech function included as well. The voice is a little on the robotic side, so it might not be for long-term reading. Another new feature, Whispersync, enables automatic synchronization with other Kindles, so sharing favorite material with friends and family is a cinch.

We’ll see if the changes are enough to swing the pendulum towards digital publishing with this device.

 According to sources, the device will be available for purchase on February 24th. Price isn’t cheap at $359, but we’re sure they’ll be a nice line waiting for this potentially groundbreaking device.

Sony E-Reader 6″ LCD Portable Dark Blue E-Book, PRS505LC

If you’re an avid reader who is always on the go, then you might appreciate an E-Book Reader so you can keep up with your reading in the digital age. The E-Reader is perfect for storing your books, so you can read them when ever you get the chance. With enough battery power for you to go through more than 7000 page turns, the Sony E-Reader will get you through that pile of reading, and can be charged from your computer through the USB connection or from you home electrical outlet. This 6″ portable e-book reader has a screen size comparable to most paperback books that is small enough to carry with you; it also plays MP3 audio files and works with Windows-based computers. When you buy the Sony E-Reader 6″ LCD Portable E-Book Reader you’ll always be able to take your reading with you.