Sony Digital Reader Touch Edition – Black
- Elegant 6 display with touch screen navigation
- Carry up to 350 of your favorite books at a time
- Freehand highlighting and annotation
- Access a wide number of online bookstores
- Thin, light, highly portable design
Product Description
The Reader Touch Edition features a 6″display with simple, easy-to-use touchscreen navigation. Turn pages with the swipe of a finger and enjoy fast and intuitive navigation of your favorite books. Take freehand notes and highlight sections of text you want to revisit later, just as you would in a real book, using the included stylus. If you prefer, a virtual keyboard is also available for entering quick notes or searching your eBooks. If you want, you can even export your notes to your computer using the eBook Library software. Enjoy access to a wider number of books from a wider number of places. By supporting both industry standard formats, ePub and PDF, you can access books at Sony’s eBookstore, check out books from public libraries, access over 500,000 free public domain titles from Google, as well as sharing sites, online aggregators and personal publishers (Internet access is required). Not sure which books to bring on your trip? With the Reader Touc… More >>
Sony Digital Reader Touch Edition – Black
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5 comments
Jason Eggert on December 18, 2009 at 12:36 pm
stay away. I bought this and now use it as a door stop. Not even good at that. screen is hard to read with any glare.
Kevin Currie-Knight on December 18, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I am a kindle owner and have been looking into the Sony Touch. My verdict is that the Sony is slightly inferior to the kindle. Though an interesting machine, its benefits are not as beneficial as one might think at first blush.
Quite simply, the Sony Touch can do just about everything that the Amazon kindle can do. One can highlight and annotate (with a stylus rather than a cursor). One can easily turn pages (with a thumb-flick rather than a button-press) and jump to sections of the book easily. And the Sony even has features the kindle does not have: one can draw on a blank ‘page,’ read .pdf files natively, zoom in on text by degrees, and download public domain google books…er…wait.
Here is where I interject by saying that many of these features really aren’t as good as they first appear. Many people, for instance, are sold on the idea of being able to download any public domain google book. Allegedly, the kindle cannot do this…except for…it can! With help from some very free and easy-to-use software online (calibre), one can convert any downloaded google book into a file format that amazon recognizes. The conversion is easy, flawless, and gives the kindle user access to every google book that Sony owners can get.
Second, many people are sold on the touch screen. Imagine highlighting, annotating, and turning the page without having to use cumbersome buttons and cursors. But this sounds better than it is! The thumb-flick page-turning method, for instance, basically means that one must read with two hands (rather than reading with one on a kindle, where the page turn button is located where one’s thumb can click it). And if you swipe your thumb too hard on the Sony screen, it thinks you want to highlight; too light, and it won’t work. As for operating annotations with a stylus, this is no easier, harder, quicker, or slower than the kindle’s cursor method.
The biggest drawback to the Sony Touch is the clumsy software and lack of selection. Every book available for the Sony (that I’ve checked) is available for the kindle at the same or lesser price. But by no means is the opposite true: every book available for the kindle is by no means available for the Sony. Long and short: the kindle simply has a better and more cost-effective selection of books. And in the week that I tried out my Sony Touch, the software malfunctioned three times.
I give the Sony Touch 3 stars because in many ways, it is the Kindle’s equal. The screen is great, it is easy to use, its features are good, and its battery life is PHENOMENAL (one area where the Sony has the Kindle beat by far)! But the features that make the Sony seems like the favorite are, on closer examination, really not all that great. The kindle can, via conversion, access any public domain google book and the touchscreen is just as much trouble as it is an asset. And I have not noticed that the Sony handles .pdf files natively any better than the kindle does via conversion.
So, it is close to a toss-up but…it is the Kindle by a nose!
Herbert A. Wade on December 18, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Maybe the PRS-600 works better under Windows but the Mac experience has been truly horrible for me. The reader library software for the Mac is incredibly slow to react and what is the worst, though I was able to purchase books from the Sony store right away, every time I tried to send the DRM bound books to the reader, it gave me an “oops the store is not available just now” and when I clicked on the option on the “oops” message to return to the store the software says the store is not available — yet I can easily get to the store to buy more books by clicking on the access store box shown elsewhere on the screen. At least the purchased books were readable on the computer. After spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was happening based on the provided documentation, I downloaded the full manual and by reading page by page I found that the reader has to be authorized for DRM books separately from the computer. None of the documentation that came with the reader says that. Why doesn’t the error message that pops up when you try to send DRM books to an unauthorized reader say that the reader still needs to be authorized and then automatically send you to the authorization site instead of saying that the store is not available? I spent most of the day trying to get the thing to work as advertised and in the end more or less succeeded but at this point all I can say is it is not ready for prime time. I have been able to transfer non DRM books and PDF files to the reader with no problems and after figuring out that the reader had to be separately authorized for DRM books, I managed to even get the purchased books to load on the reader. So it is useable though I have issues with the low sensitivity of the touch screen when using fingers instead of the stylus and I find the location of the page turning buttons inconvenient. The experience has not been pleasant and having to figure out workarounds for several software problems should not be necessary. Maybe I am spoiled by the ease and simplicity (and reliability) of iTunes and iPods. I hope the Kindle is more user friendly. Sorry Amazon, I went for the Sony because I have many books in PDF format and the Sony unit seemed more user friendly for PDFs — and it does do PDFs just fine — but I think going through the conversion process to use PDFs on the Kindle might be less hassle than what the Sony unit has put me through. So I suggest that Mac users be wary of this product until Sony gets the software right.
A. Stanciu on December 18, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I just bought the reader yesterday and it’s already back in the box, ready to be returned. I was so excited for this product but was very let down.
What I didn’t like:
- SLOW! Maybe this is a feature of all e-ink devices, but the delay between clicking and the action happening is so very noticeable. This isn’t 1995 and I expect things to be responsive.
- Screen flashing. Every time the screen updates, it flashes all black a few times. It’s quick but gets to you fast.
- Glare. I was inside, at night with a normal lamp on. I kept having to tilt the display to get a good viewing angle. The glass/plastic screen cover creates a very annoying glare.
- No display options. I couldn’t find a setting to change the contrast or brightness. I found it very difficult to read.
- Zooming. This again may be a problem with all readers but… a full page is almost unreadable it’s so small. When you zoom in, you lose the original layout and the text data is used to fill up the screen. This got really messed up on a few pdf’s…
- UNRESPONSIVE!! Again… having to way a second for any action becomes real noticeable real fast.
- Doesn’t come with a charger. You can probably charge it via USB, but the rep who sold me this didn’t mention this and I didn’t think about it at the time.
This product feels like what the first Palm Pilot felt like compared with a modern Smart Phone. It feels like an infant product.
Dennis on December 18, 2009 at 3:47 pm
First off the reader is beautiful, feels well made, and it has a open format: all great things. but the software and the book store are terrible, extremely slow, i mean slow. Hopefully sony will correct this. If you like this device buy it, just be prepared for slow operation going through the web store.