Pros & Cons
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- Easy-to-read display.
- Long battery life.
- Reads non-DRM file formats, such as RTF and PDFs.
- Adjustable text size.
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- Limited eBook selection on Sony Connect.
- Won?t work with protected PDFs.
- RSS feeds look a little choppy.
- Sluggish performance.
- No backlight.Watch the Sony Reader (PRS-500) Video Review!
The Sony Portable Reader System (PRS-500) is a slim, sleek, and very readable device for viewing electronic books. Expected to hit Borders bookstore shelves this holiday season, the Reader will no doubt draw a great deal of attention from bookish shoppers. Although it's innovative enough to impress diehard eBook fans, the device still lacks the polish needed to be a best-seller.
You can order the Reader now at SonyStyle.com for $349.99, but the company says it may not actually ship them until Nov. 30 because of "overwhelming demand." For a limited time, Sony will throw in a $50 credit for buying eBooks—from its own Sony Connect store, of course. The Reader is about the size of a thin trade-paperback book, weighing nine ounces and just half an inch thick. It comes with a fold-around portfolio that protects the screen. This protection adds a little bulk, but slipping the device into a briefcase or backpack is easy enough. In short, the form factor is great.
There are a few ways to navigate the Reader's interface—maybe too many ways. You can change pages by using small arrow keys or a circular pad that is perfectly positioned to be under your left thumb while you are holding the device. There's also a series of buttons labeled 1 to 9 at the bottom of the screen; these keys will jump you to different menu options. A joystick on the lower right side serves as the Enter button and is surrounded by a circular toggle. All of this takes some getting used to, but if you hold the Reader naturally, most of the controls will be under one thumb or the other. I think that having two different ways for turning pages is a bit redundant, but it is nice to have options. I was flipping through pages in minutes.
The Reader's main attraction, of course, is the 6-inch screen. Unlike conventional displays, the Reader uses E Ink display technology. The screen is actually filled with small capsules containing charged pigment. When the charge applied to each capsule is adjusted, they will appear as black, white, or multiple shades of gray. Though the screen is designed primarily for text, it can also display drawings and photographs. The resolution is 800-by-600 and about 170 pixels per inch, which is more than sufficient for nice smooth letters. Text can be magnified by as much as 200 percent, making this a great tool for the visually impaired. Electronic ink is an incredibly energy-efficient way to manage the display; it only uses power to change (turn) pages. Keeping a page displayed requires no energy. Sony estimates the Reader can turn 7,500 pages on a single charge. In my informal tests, it lasted for a full week without needing a recharge.
That battery life comes at a cost. The Reader has no backlight, which means you really have to be in a well-lit area or even—gasp—use a reading light to see the non-reflective screen. For some people this is a deal-breaker, but it doesn't bother me so much, since it's just like reading an ordinary book. Who needs to read in the dark? More troubling, however, is the Reader's performance.—
Slow Reader
It takes about half a second for the Reader to turn a page. That is fine for normal reading, but it becomes frustrating when you are navigating the Reader's interface. It just takes too many clicks to switch between one book and another. Flipping through pages is also a bit of a chore. In addition, each time a page turns, the entire screen flashes black before it displays the next page. This can be distracting, and, interestingly, seems to be common to all of the electronic-ink products on the market at the moment. The iRex Technologies Iliad does the same thing. But the Iliad has a touch-sensitive screen that lets you navigate through pages. The Sony Reader doesn't.
The Reader can store a whopping 160 e-books on its 128MB of internal memory. The Reader came preloaded with sample chapters from books such as Freakonomics and Stephen King's Cell. It also accepts MemoryStick and SD cards, so you can load books yourself. I tried loading unprotected PDFs and RTFs from an SD card, and the Reader was able to find and open the books without much fuss. Unfortunately, the formatting didn't carry over well. Text was often choppy and too small to read. Of course, all the content purchased from the Sony Connect online store looked great.
Connecting to your PC via a USB cord, the Reader can also use a docking station that holds the book upright, available separately. Once you attach the reader and install the Sony Connect software, loading books is a simple matter of dragging files onto the device. The selection at the Sony Connect Store is pretty good, but not great. Sony's Library consists of 10,000 titles, but chances are you won't find all the titles you want. The store was among the first vendors to offer Bob Woodward's State of Denial, but I couldn't find other popular authors, such as John Grisham and Richard Dawkins, at all. To be sure, the catalog of eBooks will continue to grow over time, but even now, you should be able to find something decent to read.
Sony is selling books for about 75 percent of the price of paper editions. The hardcover of Cesar's Way sells for $24.95; it's available for $14.36 on Sony Connect. Not bad, but not great, either, considering the cost of making and distributing an eBook is next to nothing. Remember, too, that the reader can display pictures as well as text, and the company has signed up Tokyo Pop to offer manga titles for the device. I couldn't find Astonishing X-Men, but I downloaded a copy of Princess Ai, written by none other than Courtney Love (who knew!). I would love to see some syndicated cartoons, such as Doonesbury, made available on the Reader. They would have to be in black-and-white, of course, but Doonesbury looks great in B/W anyway.
One of the most anticipated features of the Reader is the ability to access and display content from RSS feeds. Unfortunately, this feature isn't quite ready for prime time. Text is too small and poorly organized. Most pages I transferred were also filled with odd-looking ads and broken text, and it takes nearly a full second to turn each one. Another annoyance is that only a handful of feeds are available at the moment from SonyConnect, although more are coming. This could be a killer feature in the future, but some serious time needs to be spent on formatting feeds for the Reader.
There is no doubt that the Reader is a huge step forward for eBooks. The screen is great, the battery life is superb, and it looks good, to boot. The device does a really good job of reading books bought from Sony's online store, too, provided you are in a well-lit environment. Many of the Reader's limitations, such as the performance and the RSS feeds, seem easily fixable via firmware. But until they are, it is better suited for early adopters than avid readers.
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