CES: Plastic Logic Que -- how much would you pay for an eBook reader?

There are probably more eBook readers than there are journalists here at CES. (Jeff has a great rundown of everything we've seen so far on his blog.) I agree that the biggest disappointment is the Barnes & Noble Nook. Nice design, but it's slow and not intuitive at all. Same goes for RCA's Lexi, which although only a mock-up, it was the worst mock-up I've seen in my 10+ years covering tech.

I'm a little shocked that the Amazon Kindle is nowhere to be found. (Granted, we haven't covered all of CES yet, but so far it's a no-show.)

So of all the eBook readers we've seen so far, I think Plastic Logic's Que is the one that has intrigued me the most. It's not my favorite (I don't have a favorite), but it's got my attention. They described it to us as a "portable briefcase," so I got the sense they're aiming for a slightly more "sophisticated" consumer. (As opposed to the Kindle who wants the Dan Brown-Harry Potter-Stephen King fan.)

The Que is about the size of a standard piece of paper (8.5x11") and it features a 10.7" display with a 960x1280 resolution and 8 levels of gray scale. That's the largest screen we've seen, although not the best resolution. (Check out our eBook comparo here.) The $649 version will come with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4GB of on-board memory. The $799 version adds access to AT&T's 3G network (so you can make wireless purchases from anywhere) and bumps the storage capacity to 8GB. Both of them are powered by Barnes & Noble's book store.

The e-newspaper they demoed it with looked very nice. You can write notes on the screen, highlight text, etc. Most importantly, it was snappy. It responded relatively quickly to my gestures/touches. The big slap in the face is the Que's price. Even if it were perfect, $649 is absurd.

It's on pre-order now and slated to come out mid-April. If you're heart is set on an eBook reader, you could wait it out and see if the Kindle or the Nook come down in price as the other eBook readers infiltrate the market. Fat chance that'll happen, but, you never know. However, Apple is announcing some tablet-super-device later this month and if it has any eBook-reading capabilities, you can be sure Amazon and Barnes & Noble will react. But that totally depends on what Apple's rumored "tablet" can do.

Which bring us back to square one. What's the best eBook reader out there? My honest opinion is none. Stick with paper. But we still have one more day at CES and tons of eBook readers to discover, so who knows what we'll see tomorrow.