We're seeing an ideological battle happening in ebook land. On one hand you have the e-ink advocates, who argue that anything but e-ink is hopeless for ebook reading, and that ebook readers should do one thing really, really well. On the other, you've got the LCD fans, who reckon that there's more to life than just books and that having a device that can only handle one kind of media is a bit silly.

View Quest is firmly in the second camp, so its Bookbox is a multimedia device as well as an ebook reader.

At first glance the View Quest Bookbox looks like an oversized smartphone: it's dominated by the screen, there's a bunch of buttons at the bottom and the whole thing slips happily into a reasonably roomy pocket. Its price is similar to an Amazon Kindle or a Kobo Wireless eReader, with an RRP of £79.99.

Above is how it physically compares to an Amazon Kindle.

However, it's much thicker than an ereader or smartphone - at 16mm it's a bit of a porker. And the shiny screen means that, unlike e-ink devices, the View Quest Bookbox isn't something you'd take to the beach - like all backlit LCDs, its screen is useless in direct sunlight.

That doesn't mean you should write the View Quest Bookbox off, however. We're in media player territory here, where devices are designed not for poolside reading but for the odd ebook at bedtime and watching blockbusters on the bus. That five-inch backlit LCD isn't ideal for protracted periods of reading, but it's crisp, clear and really rather good for video.

Factor in support for a surprisingly large range of file formats and the View Quest Bookbox starts to look much more interesting and attractive.

The View Quest Bookbox, then, is a kind of cross between Amazon's latest Kindle and Apple's latest iPod touch: more functional than the former and bigger and cheaper than the latter.

We wouldn't recommend it for bookworms, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't recommend it at all.