I’ve ordered a Sony Reader Touch Edition
After selling my Asus EEE PC I was then on the hunt to use the cash to find a decent e-book reader. I have so many e-books and it’s such a hassle to read them on my Mac and the iPhone screen is just a tad too small, especially for images in the text.
I wasn’t too impressed with the Kindle which is now selling in Australia through Amazon. It’s too restrictive and I don’t like the idea of wireless downloads and the costs involved, particularly when I don’t need the reader to buy more books, I have plenty to read as it is. There are quite a number of other brands out there, all of which were either too pricey or the features were too basic. I started to go down the path of the re-branded Hanlin, the ECO Reader. The reviews looked decent however it was still pricey compared to it’s features. What really drew me to it was the number of file formats it supported.
It’s also rumoured that Asus are bringing out a new reader in December, not sure if it will be available in Australia, the digital reader market isn’t exactly booming here. I’m not a patient person so I don’t want to wait in hope that it might be released here and have better features. LG is also releasing a solar powered reader but out of my price range.
So in the end my final decision was with the Sony Reader Touch Edition (model PRS-600).
The PRS-600 sports a touch screen, after reviewing quite a few videos it appears to be quite responsive. It’s a 6 inch screen using E Ink technology which is quite common in majority of the popular readers. The device comes with a stylus to use however the screen buttons and menus are large enough to use your fingers. The only time you would require the stylus is to select words or make notes.
The freehand highlighting and annotation will be quite handy, this isn’t a feature found in all readers. I believe the Kindle or Kindle 2 has this however. The Sony reader allows you to highlight words in the text so you can revisit later and you can write comments onto the page which you can also refer back to from a menu – it will take you straight back to the page with your notes on it. There is also a search feature to look for key words and a built in dictionary based on the American Oxford dictionary. In the videos I’ve watched, I did notice that writing/drawing with the stylus is a bit laggy however it appears like it wouldn’t be much of an issue so long as you’re not scribbling at 100 mile an hour.
Other features include:
- Adjustable font sizes, there are 5 to choose from
- You can get around two weeks per charge of reading or 7,500 page turns. The unit will charge via the USB cable or power adapter
- You can expand on the built in memory (512MB) with either a standard SD card or you can use the Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo cards, I have a number of each given I have a camera and a PSP
- The screen resolution is 800×600 and has 8 grey scales
- Compatible with both the PC and Mac. There have been reports that the Sony software doesn’t work well on the Mac, not sure if this is correct but I plan on using Calibre anyway
- You can read books in either a landscape or portrait orientation
Here are some videos of the PRS-600:
Cons: A lot of people are reporting the screen glare is worse than most readers because of the touch screen. However by moving the screen slightly you can reduce the glare so it’s not an issue. The unit is also quite small, many believed it would be larger until they opened the box. For me, I’m not worried about that, I just need something that’s a bit bigger than the iPhone and isn’t as big as a netbook screen.
Once I receive the device, I’ll post further comments.
October 17, 2009 8:31 pm 
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