Customer Reviews

Mantano Reader

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

*7 days free trial version is available on Android Market.

Background: I have great amount of custom EPUB files. Some of which goes up to 500MB. These contain fancy tables with text and images. Also multilevel Table of contents etc. I also have great amount of PDFs with some of which goes up to 80MB. I really wanted to be able to read these in fact this was one of reason I got my Tablet. Tried pretty much all readers on the market including Aldiko, Cool Reader, FBReader, StarBook, MoonReader, Mylib etc. My current Android Tablet is Samsung Galaxy 10.1.

Among the all I tried, this beats everything else by far and $5 is worth it. Here are reasons with some comparison to other epub readers.

1) Rendering of EPUB
This uses ADE (Adobe Digital Edition) Engine. For those of you have used it on Desktop knows that it flies. When many other EPUB reader took even up over minutes to open 500MB epub file, ADE opens in 2 seconds. This indeed applies to Mantano Reaer as well. The other reader I know uses ADE is Aldiko. So rendering are essentially identical on both. Starbook and Mylib may be just uncompressing files and open simply as straight HTML format so their rendering was great as well. But others could not render my files.

2) Stability
This is one biggest feature sets Mantano apart from Aldiko, which I had to say probably had the best potential and thought I had to wait until Aldiko matures for tablet until I see Mantano. But Aldiko actually force closed 100% on Xoom. For some reason, it was better on Samsung Galaxy but still had occasional force close. Mantano I have not encountered any.

3) UI
Undoubtly professionally built UI quality. Table of content has collapsable tree. Very clean and intuitive.

4) Speed
This is yet another factor that placed Mantano over the Aldiko. Page to page flipping on large EPUB file is very smooth on Mantano; whereas, on Aldiko essentially every page flip I had to wait at least 2-5 seconds.

When it comes to PDF. This flies. 80MB PDF opened in no time.

5) Annotation, Highlight
Aldiko did not have this feature. Perhaps other readers might have had these features but due to lack of ideal rendering for my files, I could not even get that far on others.

6) Custom Support
Major factor. This is what makes I belive one reader probably the best over the other at least until Mantano came by. Again as I believe Mantano is already by far the best. But all the others had its own pros and cons. When I addressed issue with each reader to developer in a hope, one of them eventually become my ideal reader, unfortunately none did quite their job at least in timely manner. Mantano developers are very responsible.

Known issues:

1) Table of Content: Large table of content takes forever to load. In fact, this was only time I saw Force close option popped up. If I click wait, eventually it resolves and worked fine. But for 500MB file it took close to minute to load the TOC.

2) Couple UI subwindows are not tablet optimized.

Above two I have just sent email to developer today as they have just rolled out Tablet optimized version today. They have already responded and told me these will be fixed in next version.

If you have never tried this, just give a shot on trial version. That's what I did and on my 6th day. I knew this is what I wanted. So I purchased one.

I tried several PDF/epub readers for Android, and this is the best one I could find. The UI is very clean yet it has so many features. Too bad that it won't work for the newly released Amazon Fire and now I am in need of finding an alternative which I doubt that could be as good as this one.

I've been using this app on my CM7 Nook Color for about a month, having previously read my epubs in Aldiko and mostly given up on PDFs. Epubs remain superior, but Mantano gave me back the PDFs in my library, with smarter, more consistent display options and faster navigation than ezPDF. The devs actively solicit and listen to feedback, and it shows in the updates. For that reason, I would suggest getting Mantano from that other market, where the updates arrive in a more timely fashion ;)

I also find the library more informative and easily navigable than other readers, with minimal setup.

I agree with the other reviewers here that this reader is worth every cent. Its integrated PDF support and professional UI, text to speech, and other features are simply incredible. I had this installed on my rooted Nook Color and found it indispensable. But I've since upgraded to a 10 inch tablet and find the extra screen real estate to be a bother. It is more comfortable to hold most tablets in landscape, but in the reader the layout has one little page in the middle of the screen, with no option for a two page spread. I tried reading like this, but it was a deal-breaker. I instead - quite ironically - installed the Nook for android app and sideloaded my epub files into its folder. It has a two page spread and is truly a pleasure to read and most like a real book with page flip animation. If you have a 7 inch or smaller screen, you will adore this reader. If you have a larger screen, you will still love this reader but might find it more comfortable to read in another reader. There is a free version of this reader (ad supported) that you can try before purchasing (it's in the "other" market, not here yet). If they added a similar 2 page spread to this reader - as in the Nook app - it would easily deserve 5+ stars!

UPDATE 12/5/2011

A helpful commenter to my post pointed out that if you bring the font size down small enough, Mantano will actually automatically switch to a two page spread. This is great, and would add a half of star to my review, but it still is far from ideal. Particularly, you HAVE to bring the font down to something quite small - which would require me to read with my glasses (which I'd rather not do). Although it is quite legible with a sans-serif font, it becomes much harder to read with a serif font (or in Russian, as I often do). Perhaps I am spoiled by the Nook app, but their two page spread actually looks like you are reading a book! It has a wonderful page turn animation and between the pages you see the book binding. Not to mention you can make the font whatever size you want and maintain a two page spread. I really don't believe this is just me - I'm certain that if people were given the choice between the two they would choose the layout of the Nook app. And it's unfortunate too since I LOVE Mantano for everything else - just not reading in it.

I love this app, but the Amazon app store version is consistently at least 2 versions behind other app stores. I've discussed it with the devs, with Amazon, and can't seem to get prompt updates. I'm reduced to using the free (ad supported) version from Android. It's very frustrating! Amazon is very convenient (which is why I purchased it here in the first place) but not being able to get updates unless I whine and cry (and the dev whines and cries as well) is a deal breaker for me.

I never usually do reviews, but in this case had to justice to this piece of software (app).
I have used a couple of ebook readers for my Asus Transformer, each of them have had their own "learning curve" to get them to work the way I need them to...

This app is one of the easiest to "learn", in fact the manual for it was one of the best pieces of support for an app (the majority of paid apps tend to be learn on your own).

I loved the easy way I could rename books to suit my need (as some downloads tend to keep their own weird name...ie my PDF fime for my own car, which is easy to remember when you download it but later on in life when you need it again can take time).

I agree totally with the other reviews for ease of operation and certainly the speed is great, not to sure about the bookfinder which I found very slow and certainly did not find what i was looking for although I know the books were "out there", this option I wont probably use...

Great app and certainly can recommend as it did impress me

CP

Mantano'ss PDF handling is enough of a reason to buy this great program. It opens every PDF I own, regardless of size and allows for very quick navigation. Every other reader was slow and clunky that I tried. Another great thing I like about it's PDF handling is that is smartly crops out all the wasted margin space. This is great as it seems most publishers (especially those that create programming books) find it necessary to include an inch of wasted space on every side.

Epub handing is nice as well, but I have not used it as much for that.

Finally, it also creates a nice searchable library of all your material and will generate thumbnails so your library view is also easy to find items by sight alone.

After trying at least 3-4 other pdf readers and 3-4 epub readers I'm glad I found this one!

This app is wonderful; it's user friendly and it comes with a userguide already installed! However, I wish it had an underlining feature and I don't know how to register the product. I went to the website to get support but I was told I have to be a paid and registered merchant. I assumed when I purchased the app I would be taken to a webpage to register for it but still don't have a clue how to register this app and prove that I purchased it from Amazon...still looking into it. Overall, this is the best app I've used that keeps your Pda's and your Epubs all in one location and the thumbnails are great too!

I have tried all of the main ereaders. This is clearly the best. A newcomer, but they get it in what is needed in a pro level ereader. Worth every penny!

best 5 stars now with catalogs...oh and if u go to their website ..ad version is free. vers. 1.64 versus 1.63 here. I bought it to support them but I use the ad version since amazon is slow to update.