I have two of those readers (review here). They do have quite an incredible range, even with implants. But the crucial bit is, the active reading area is torus-shaped. With transponders that couple well, the torus is fat enough that it become a single blob. With implants that couple less well, there’s a dark zone in the middle of the antenna where the chip hardly ever registers.
Not that it matters too much though: those readers are so forgiving in terms of placement that all you have to do is move your hand a bit, and bam it reads.
Orientation doesn’t matter one bit with those readers: they put out so much power they’ll read in any direction - provided you’re inside the torus.