Category: accessible Devices
Has anyone used this? What did you think of it? I am mostly wondering how well the ocr works?
Thanks
http://hims-inc.com/products/blaze-ez/
I used to have one and did like it, especially the idea of a portable audio reader having the ability of OCR built in. I mainly used it to listen to music though, both via an sd card and the radio. I honestly liked how it sounded and that it was able to pick up a certain station that I couldn't seem to get on other portable devices (excluding my iPhone of course). As for the OCR, I did try that as well, and it did pick up some text, but I didn't use it enough to be able to give an honest idea of whether or not it is good, so unfortunately can't really comment on that part. I think having some kind of stand or holder (which HIMS does sell specificly for it but which I didn't have), might have made my scanned results better than they were though.
It really depends on what OCR you need to do. For the price, and also the OCR option, i personally think there are some better option out there... Especially if you use a smart phone. But as a portable book reader, with DAISY option, maybe, it does worth the price...
Probably will make me unpopular but:
iPhone + KNFBReader, + VoiceDream for Daisy / Bookshare + the Bard Mobile app if you're in the U.S. Wonder, add all that up, which is gonna be more expensive. Unless the Blaze-EZ has integrated Braille which in and of itself is beautiful.
Hey there,
I actually currently have 2 of these little devices. I'm trying to sell one, if anyone is interested.
So, how well does the ocr work? At first, I seemed to have had a lot of trouble with it. Problem was I realized, the room's lights were not on, haha. After I turned on the lights, it does pretty well. It doesn't do the best with say, cans, but I got it to read a newspaper from my region pretty well. And before anyone asks, yes, we actually have tv here in Alaska, but the newspaper still exist, haha.
I would say honestly that it can be a hit or miss. If it doesn't work once, try it again.
I personally think the price should be a little lower, but that's just me. I do like the fact that it does have 12 gb of space in it, and you can save, as you might expect, your ocr in a folder on the unit's flash. It plays all types of files, and as twinklestar09 stated, the radio is decent.
Contact me privately if you're interested in the unit I'm selling. It's in the garage sale, and I may lower the price, if you're interested.
Well, Leo got my point. i'm trying to be, not so, bias with iphone and all the apps, you see. haha
The OCR on the EZ is slower, compare to KNFB reader on the iphone. and the iphone got at least 5mp of camera, compare to, um, i think its like, 2mp or something, on the EZ.
I have heard mixed things about the knfb reader app. Some love it, others say it doesn't work well. Honestly though, this blaze device has not gotten as much attention as I would have thought, but that's just me.
Well, if it's gonna cost a lot more than these mobile apps and devices, it is gonna have to have more. This isn't bias, it's just economics. So, does it have integrated Braille or not? With integrated Braille, one could see the value. But a voice-only device nowadays seems like you could do better.Just get the iPod Touch 5th generation, or hell, an iPad Air for that matter, and do all the same things.
Or explain to us how this is better. It has to be, for the price, right?This isn't bias, it's economics. Wishfully hoping for rational arguments over here.
The device is quite similar to the devices of the book port plus or booksense digital talking book players. So they can read different electronic formats as well as read text formats, record, play music, and read daisy books. They generally cost about 3 to 400 dollars, depending on the device you get.
With the blaze ez, it offers more memory than all of the other digital book players combined, as well as ocr functions. I'm not so sure on how good the camera is, but it's not bad. I won't say it's perfect, because it certainly isn't.
Original price is 695 plus shipping. Trying to sell mine for 450 or a little less.
Again, why? iPod Touch 5th gen plus KNFB Reader + VoiceDream all the cost you need and you have all that.
They'll need to do something better at $600 when Apple has it for $399 or something.
For some people, using touch screen and devices of that nature, don't work for them. Maybe they have trouble getting used to those type of devices, so they would rather have something like the blaze ez?
Uncle Leo, it doesn't have integrated Braille. But, it can read brf format, as TTS. To put it in context, this is a DAISY/mp3/audiofile/"limited"EReader Player that come with the OCR capability of a camera. Now, something with the OCR front, for any type of OCR is depends on the environment, angle, distant, lightining, etc on how you place your OCR object to the camera. There is no 100% certain, or 100% accuracy, on any given time. you might gt 99.99% accuracy on a good day, with all the right tools and right factors in place, but you might not.
No braille display, leo. It's worthless to me, if you ask me. I'd rather actually just have a booksense xt, personally, and pay a little less. I love my iPhone and iPad, but I hate iTunes, so though some say it's weird, I don't store any music or other media on mine, aside from BARD books and magazines. So for me, I like the idea of a basic digital media player. I used to have a booksense; I loved it. Sold it though a while back. My notetaker does what my booksense used to, so I don't need one, but for me the booksense has a purpose for a while.
The blaze ez is basically a shiny piece of shit. My beef with it is: they dressed it up with all these bells and whistles, but these bells and wistles are from ancient times. Want to outfit a player with OCR? Put a decent camera in it. Give me about sixty gigs of volume. Let me go online with it; give me wireless access. Because they can do that so easily these days. All they did was jacked up the price and put in the bare minimum to differentiate this from the BookSense. No thank you.
And oops. sorry paul. I'm dont' mean to dissuade any potential buyers from your effort to sell one of these. Nothing against you at all; I bet these are well-liked by some people and they have some significant place on the market, but just barely. If this is anyone's cup of tea, I bet paul's is in perfect condition; you should buy it from him for a couple hundred less and avoid getting ripped off by the company as badly. Better to line the pocket of a fellow young man rather than a corporation.
:)
For the record Write away, this does have wireless and bluetooth. I guess much like the victor products, in theory, you should be able to download podcasts and things like bard directly to the player. I don't use the wifi, because I don't really read books that much, or am not really a big subscriber to podcasts, but I know some people that would.
Like you as well, I am not a big fan of intunes, and prefer to keep all my music on sd cards or on the pc. I've heard window-eyes works well with itunes, I just used it with jaws before, and didn't have a great experience, so have given up on the whole itunes thing, and am quite happy.
Anyone have the ET now? Does it have Skype?